Full-Time Staff

Geoffrey Cowan

Director

Geoffrey Cowan is a University Professor and the inaugural holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership. He directs the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. From 2010-2016, he was the founding President of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. From 1996-2007, Cowan served as Dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Adam Clayton Powell III

Senior Fellow

Adam Clayton Powell III led CCLP’s initiative on election cybersecurity, in association with USC’s schools of business, engineering, law and public policy and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He has coordinated CCLP’s Washington DC programming, which includes monthly public forums on subjects including public diplomacy, national security and the future of communications.

Susan Goelz

Office Manager and Budget/Business Analyst

Susan Crookston Goelz is CCLP’s office manager and Professor Geoffrey Cowan’s administrative assistant. She is responsible for the Center’s budget administration, event coordination, office management and payroll administration, among other duties.

Jung-hwa (Judy) Kang

Coordinator of Washington, D.C. Programs

Jung-hwa “Judy” Kang is a public diplomat, researcher, and art exhibit curator. Judy graduated with a Master of Public Diplomacy (2018) where she was selected as a banner bearer on a commencement for the Annenberg School and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History (2014) where she was nominated as valedictorian. She received both degrees with summa cum laude from USC. She was a Cowan Scholar from 2015 to 2018. She is currently working on CCLP’s Election Cybersecurity Initiative and Public Diplomacy Programs.

Grace Huang

Research Fellow

Grace Huang worked with CCLP as a Cowan Scholar throughout the 2021-2022 academic year and has joined the center full-time as the Research Fellow. She recently received her MSc and MA from the London School of Economics and USC Annenberg as part of LSE and USC’s Global Media and Communications joint master’s program. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from New York University (2020) in Media, Culture, and Communication. Having a passion for digital media and infrastructures, Grace actively engages with digital platform innovations from both technological and sociological perspectives.

Owen Foster

Junior Fellow

Owen Foster is the Junior Fellow at the CCLP, joining the center after completing a B.A. from Williams College in 2022. He studied politics at Exeter College, Oxford and at Williams completed a senior thesis on how cognitive biases can be harnessed to reduce political polarization. Previously he has worked for the John Hickenlooper Presidential Campaign, the Global Livingston Institute, the Search for Common Ground, and Scorpion for CBS. His work has focused on building trust as well as non-partisan efforts to connect communities to needed resources.

Talia Abrahamson

Junior Fellow

Talia Abrahamson is a Junior Fellow at CCLP. She received her B.A. from Columbia University in 2024 with a double major in English and Russian Language & Culture. She has worked for the U.S. Department of State, PEN America, Transparency International, Columbia’s Institute for Global Politics and her local newspaper the Larchmont Chronicle. Her interests focus on supporting independent media and local journalism, domestically and in the post-Soviet space.

Election Cybersecurity Initiative Team Members