Lynne Weil named Director of Communications and External Affairs of the Broadcasting Board of Governors

25 January 2012

Lynne Weil has been named Director of Communications and External Affairs of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Weil will act as the Board’s primary strategist on communications and outreach activities, and as the Board’s chief advisor for Congressional and external affairs.

“Lynne Weil brings a wealth of knowledge of foreign affairs and journalistic experience as well as first-hand knowledge of how Congress works,” said BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson. “The Board will draw heavily on Lynne’s expertise as we craft the proposed legislation to innovate U.S. international broadcasting for the 21st Century.”

Weil will advise the Board on agency-wide external communications strategy and will coordinate communications operations of the BBG’s media networks — Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), and Radio and TV Marti.

Weil has spent the past two years working for the U.S. State Department, first as the Press Director and Spokeswoman for the U.S. Agency for International Development and then as a Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Prior to this, she worked on Capitol Hill, serving as a legislative fellow for Senator Ted Kennedy, the Press Secretary for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Communications Director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Before entering public service, Weil was a journalist; she started on the police beat with United Press International in Los Angeles, was a reporter for the California Public Radio Network, and moved to Germany to be a reporter/editor for Radio Deutche Welle after the fall of the Berlin Wall. During nearly nine years in Europe she filed stories from 17 countries and freelanced for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and the Voice of America, among others. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications Studies from UCLA and a Masters in Public Policy from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

Weil will assume her duties on February 6.