Geneva Overholser is a senior fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and an independent journalist in New York City. She was until 2013 director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. She is a former editor of the Des Moines Register, ombudsman of the Washington Post and editorial board member of the New York Times.  She held the Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism.

 

Overholser is a member of the boards of the Rita Allen Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the Women’s Media Center. She is co-author of  “The Press” and author of “On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change.” She served on the Pulitzer Prize Board and was an officer of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. She is a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held a Nieman fellowship at Harvard.

 

She graduated from Wellesley College and has a master’s from the Medill School of Journalism, honorary doctorates from Grinnell College and St. Andrews Presbyterian College, and alumnae achievement awards from Wellesley, Northwestern and Medill.