ACVFA Public Outreach Subcommittee Members' Biographies
Public Outreach Sub-Committee Co-Chairs
Paul Clark
Mr. Clark is the Principal of Paul Clark Communications. He has extensive litigation and crisis communications experience, and is among the most experienced communications professionals in the country in counseling clients on how to work with the media during times of crisis. He also conducts for clients executive-level Media Training, Speech/Presentation Training and Congressional Testimony Training.
Before establishing his own communications consultancy, Mr. Clark was a Senior Vice President at The Walker Marchant Group. Mr. Clark spent nine years with Hill & Knowlton, most recently as U.S. Director of Crisis Media. Previously he served as Communications Director and spokesperson for the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs during the Senate's high profile investigation into campaign finance abuses during the 1996 federal election cycle.
Mr. Clark was the Communications Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1989-1992. Mr. Clark also was associate publisher of Saturday Review magazine, news editor of National Journal magazine and a senior editor with McGraw Hill.
Mr. Clark received a Master of Arts degree in International Relations from The American University's School of International Service, and is a graduate of Gettysburg College. In 1991, he received the Chairman's Award from the million-member Public Employees Roundtable for his support of excellence in government and public service. In 2004, he won the Public Relations Society of America's Bronze Sabre Award for placement of a national media story with CBS's 60 Minutes on American POWs tortured during the First Gulf War.
Sig Rogich
As president of The Rogich Communications Group, Mr. Rogich offers counsel in the areas of strategic planning and business development, crisis communication, issues management, corporate and media relations, business and community relations, and special projects. RCG maintains a diverse client list ranging from Fortune 500 companies to niche operations in the industries of gaming, entertainment, transportation, engineering, health care, and technology.
Rogich's history in Nevada dates back to his days in elementary school in Las Vegas. Eventually, he graduated from Las Vegas High School, earned a degree in Journalism from the University of Nevada at Reno, and, in 1973, founded R&R Advertising. The
original four-man shop mushroomed into the largest advertising agency in the state, with offices in Las Vegas, Reno and Salt Lake City. Under Rogich's direction, the agency developed and created concepts that shifted the image of Las Vegas to an upscale dining and entertainment destination that continues to serve a wide variety of visitors. Today, R&R Advertising continues to handle all the advertising and media for both the Las Vegas Convention & Visitor's Authority and the Nevada State Tourism board.
Rogich served as Assistant to President George Bush for the creative development of public events from 1988-92. As a Presidential media advisor, he directed all of the President's videotaping and filming sessions, assisted with speech preparation and delivery for Oval Office and State of the Union addresses, handled strategic planning and execution of the President's official visits and public events and traveled extensively
with the President. By the request of President Bush, Mr. Rogich accompanied former Soviet Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, on his nationwide tour of the United States.
After serving as Ambassador to Iceland, the country in which he was born, Rogich returned to his home state of Nevada to begin private consulting and in 1995, he founded The Rogich Communications Group.
Since his return to Nevada, he has been instrumental in numerous business endeavors and charitable causes. Among his most noteworthy accomplishments; the co-conceptualization of New York-New York Hotel & Casino, assisting former President George Bush with the development and creation of two international conferences featuring world leaders from Europe, Asia, and North America, and assisting Nevada gaming executives with strategic plans and business development projects.
Rogich currently sits on numerous charitable and corporate boards including: Las Vegas Water District Advisory Board, Opportunity Village Advisory Board of Directors, The Keep Memory Alive Foundation Board of Directors, Spring Valley Hospital Board of Directors, WorldDoc Board of Directors, and Chairman, of the Clark County Public Education Foundation.
Subcommittee Members
Deborah Bensen
Ms. Bensen serves as the Vice President of Media and Government Relations for Operation Blessing International (OBI). She oversees all of OBI's government relations and media projects including government partnerships, grant programs, multi-media campaigns, productions and publications. Government programs target outreach such as hunger relief, emergency disaster aid, orphans & vulnerable children programs, and HIV/AIDS prevention and care through agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).
Former experience includes working in television media at three national cable TV networks (Fox Family Channel, The Family Channel and Fit TV) plus working in newspaper media in a top 35 U.S. daily newspaper. Previously, Ms. Bensen was also
the Director of Media Relations for CBN International, an organization which provides values-oriented television programming to more than 158 countries.
Recent executive producer roles include two documentaries (Restavek child slaves of Haiti and Rebuilding of Post-Tsunami Indonesia) plus she and her Operation Blessing team won a Telly award for Darfur IDP camp coverage. Currently, through PEPFAR sub-grants, she leads a production team implementing national ABY prevention and OVC PSA campaigns in Haiti, Nigeria and Zambia which air weekly on 87 radio and television networks/stations with potential audience size totaling more than 56 million.
Ms. Bensen is an Emmy-voting member of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) headquartered in Hollywood, California. With a dedicated interest in mass media and its influence on behavioral change, she holds a bachelor's degree in organizational psychology and a master's degree in counseling plus is credentialed by the National Counseling Association as a nationally certified counselor (NCC).
She currently serves on the board of Christian Service Charities and also on the board of the Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations (AERDO). She is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian USA church. She and her husband, William, reside in Virginia with their preschool twins.
Craig Charney
Dr. Charney, President of Charney Research, an international polling and market research firm in New York, is an experienced pollster and political scientist and an expert on Muslim extremism, democratization, and civil society, as well as communications for political campaigns, market research and social and economic reform. He has polled in over 30 countries. His 2005 report, A New Beginning: Strategies for a More Fruitful Dialogue with the Muslim World, involved focus groups on reducing anti-Americanism among Muslims in Egypt, Morocco, and Indonesia on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations. Since 2005, he has done annual opinion polls in Afghanistan for ABC News, UNDP, and the World Bank. Later this year he will publish the results of a major study on Muslim extremism in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. His work on public diplomacy, Afghanistan, and Muslim extremism has been presented at high-level briefings at the White House, State Department, Pentagon, and USAID, and had an impact on policy-makers in these areas.
Earlier noteworthy projects included the first-ever nationwide political polls in Afghanistan, East Timor, Cambodia and Indonesia. These followed a similar "first" in South Africa, where he directed voter education polling for Nelson Mandela and the ANC before the 1994 election, working with Stanley Greenberg, as well as work in new democracies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Dr. Charney also has experience in market research and corporate image work in the US, India, South Africa, and Vietnam. Other major projects have involved communications strategy for corporate, non-profit, government, and political clients. These have included the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development, ABC News, Honda USA, the US Agency for International Development, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Monsanto, and the New York City Mayor's Office, among others. Prior to the establishment of Charney Research in 1997, Dr. Charney was the Senior Analyst on President Clinton's re-election polling effort at Penn+Schoen, where Doug Schoen called him "a central member of our team." He played a similar role there for the campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
Dr. Charney holds a Yale Ph.D. in political science, specializing in comparative politics, a masters' in politics from Oxford and a diploma in the sociology of development from the Sorbonne. He has taught at Yale and the University of the Witwatersrand, and trained officials and party activists from new democracies for the World Bank and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. From 2002 through 2004, he was a Senior
Research Fellow at the New School University, where he taught research methods and directed polling on the New York metropolitan region.
Dr. Charney has published four books, over 20 research reports, and a dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals scholarly journals on democratization, African, and South African politics. He has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Jerusalem Report, The Politico, Boston Globe, New York Daily News, New York Post, and other top newspapers and magazines.
Mike Kiernan
Mr. Kiernan, currently senior director of communications and media for Save the Children, is a veteran newsman and publicist who has spent the past two decades working for government and non-profit agencies successfully advocating on behalf of many social issues - ranging from providing more educational assistance to homeless children to improving protections for children and families worldwide caught in emergency situations.
Since February 2003, Kiernan has served as Save the Children's principle spokesperson for its responses to various crises including the tsunami in south Asia, Hurricane Katrina, and more recently cyclones in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Kiernan spent three weeks in Banda Aceh, Indonesia working on tsunami-related issues in January 2005 and he was among the agency's first responders in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. Kiernan has also played a major role in helping increase the visibility of Save the Children in the U.S. and worldwide during the past five years.
Prior to joining Save the Children, Kiernan served as the principal spokesman for three members of Congress as well as the Appalachian Regional Commission, the AFLCIO's Working for America Institute and InterAction, a coalition of 160 private U.S. humanitarian aid groups.
As a journalist, Kiernan worked for columnist Jack Anderson, the Washington Star, WRC-TV (Channel 4 News) in Washington D.C. and U.S. News and World Report.
He received the Front Page Award for his coverage of the 1976 presidential race and an Emmy in 1986 as an executive producer at WRC-TV for a series he produced about parents of gay teenagers.
Mike McCurry
Mike McCurry is a principal at Public Strategies Washington, Inc., where he provides counsel on communications strategies and management to corporate and non-profit clients.
Mr. McCurry is a veteran political strategist and spokesperson with over 30 years experience in Washington D.C. McCurry served in the White House as press secretary to President Bill Clinton (1995-1998). He also served as spokesman for the Department of State (1993-1995) and director of communications for the Democratic National Committee (1988-1990). McCurry held a variety of leadership roles in national campaigns for the Democratic ticket from 1984 to 2004.
Mr. McCurry began his career on the staff of the United States Senate, working as press secretary to the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and to the committee's chairman, Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (1976-1981). He also served as press secretary to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1981-1983). Mr. McCurry serves on boards or advisory councils for Share Our Strength, the Council for Excellence in Government, the Junior Statesmen Foundation, the Children's Scholarship Fund, the Wesley Theological Seminary, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Mr. McCurry is a member of the Commission on Presidential Debates and also serves as a Senior Advisor to Grassroots Enterprise, Inc., a firm specializing in using Internet technology to build strong grassroots activist campaigns.
Mr. McCurry received his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University in 1976 and a Master of Arts from Georgetown University in 1985.
William Reese
Mr. Reese has served as the President and Chief Executive Office of the Baltimore-based International Youth Foundation (IYF) since January 2005. Previously, he had served as the Chief Operating Office of IYF, managing its operations and programs, which support positive youth development in 68 countries. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Woodrow Wilson National Fellow lecturing on Latin American affairs and development issues. Prior to his work with IYF, Mr. Reese served as President and CEO of Partners of the Americas for 13 years, and also spent 10 years with Peace Corps. Mr. Reese was first appointed to the ACVFA in 1991 and served as its chair from 1997-2005. He was Chairman of the Board of InterAction and continues on its board today. He also sits on the boards of the Basic Education Coalition, Women's Edge Coalition, and Episcopal Relief and Development. Previously, he has served on the Boards of the Independent Sector, Amigos de las Americas, Eureka Communities, Coalition for American Leadership Abroad (COLEAD), the International Development Conference, the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Fundación para la Educación Superior/USA, ChildHope International, and the Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas (OAS). He was Vice Chair of the Debt for Development Coalition and Finance for Development, Inc.
Johanna Schneider
Ms. Schneider has played a key role in successfully managing communications for over 30 years, moving from reporter and anchor to top posts in government--Congress, the Executive Branch--and in the business arena.
Ms. Schneider is currently the Executive Director-External Relations of the Business Roundtable, an organization of top Chief Executive Officers of global companies. Recently cited as "the most influential chief executive lobbying group in the U.S." by the Financial Times, Business Roundtable members are at the forefront of public policy, advocating for a vigorous, dynamic global economy.
Ms. Schneider directs all external relations including communications, media relations, advertising, digital communications, branding and reputation, corporate membership, and all external advocacy. Prior to her appointment as Executive Director-External Relations, she held the post of Director of Communications for the Roundtable. At the Roundtable, she conceived and launched the highly-regarded, CEO Economic Outlook survey. Her work on public policy garnered the Bronze Sabre Award.
Before joining the Roundtable, Ms. Schneider was the Senior Advisor for Media Relations to the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Bernadine Healy. At NIH, Schneider played a major role in launching the groundbreaking Women's Health Initiative, the largest clinical trial ever undertaken in the U.S., focusing on the major causes of death and disability in women. She also managed cDNA patenting, ethics in Science, and AIDS research communications.
Prior to her service at NIH, Schneider served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs to Labor Secretaries Elizabeth Dole and Lynn Martin. At the Department of Labor she orchestrated the groundbreaking study on women and minorities difficulty in moving up the career ladder, titled the Glass Ceiling Initiative. She also handled the successful resolution of the Pittston Coal Strike, a historic dispute where more than 17,700 mine workers in seven states went on strike over labor issues and she oversaw pension portability.
Filling one of the top jobs in the U.S. Congress, Ms. Schneider also served as Press Secretary to the House Republican Leader, Bob Michel (R-IL). From l984 to l989, she managed the Leadership press operation, coordinated House and Senate press responses and served as media liaison to the White House. From l980 to l984, Schneider served as Press Secretary to Congresswoman Lynn Martin (R-IL), the highest ranking women in House Republican Leadership.
Schneider also worked as a production assistant at CBS Network News in Washington, and worked as a television reporter and anchor at a CBS affiliate in Illinois. She graduated from Southern Illinois University with a degree in Journalism.
Ms. Schneider is also a member of The Seminar Committee, the Arthur W. Page Society, the Civilian Public Affairs Panel for the U.S. Naval Academy, and a board member of the Center for Corporate Citizenship at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. She resides in Washington, DC with her husband, Jon Plebani, and their three sons.
Robert Tappan
Mr. Tappan currently serves as President of Weber Merritt Public Affairs. His career spans over 20 years in the public and private sectors counseling companies, corporations, CEOs, and trade associations as they deal with issues in the media, before Congress, or in the public eye. He has spoken and appeared extensively before audiences and in the media.
Prior to joining Weber Merritt, Tappan most recently was President of the Washington, DC office of PR giant Burson-Marsteller. He has also held several senior management positions at a number of public affairs agencies in Washington, including Powell Tate, the flagship public affairs unit of Weber Shandwick, as well as The Hannaford Company.
His public sector service includes nearly four years as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, a position that earned him two awards for his contributions and public service achievements. During his tenure at the State Department (2002 - 2006), Tappan was asked by the White House to serve as Director of Strategic Communications for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, Iraq in 2004. During that time, he managed a staff of over 120 military and civilian employees and helped set the CPA's overall communication strategy.
Before entering public relations, Tappan honed his communications skills as a member of The Washington Post's editorial page staff. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, attended the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance studies at Oxford, and
has recently lectured and taught classes at The Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.
Ellen M. Yount
Ms. Yount is a seasoned global communication expert with 20 years experience in media relations and strategic development communications. She has designed
communication strategies, advised governments and development projects and trained in over 30 countries, including extensive work in Eastern Europe.
Ms. Yount currently serves as MSI's Chief Information Officer and leads the firm's strategic communication practice area. Prior to joining MSI in 2006, she served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where she designed and implemented the Development Outreach and Communications (DOC) program. She helped to launch the DOC program in 2004, which sought to build a trained cadre of communications staff in all USAID Missions worldwide; developing long-range country communication strategies; and conducting trainings and consultations worldwide. In 2006, the work was recognized by the League of American Communications Professionals (LACP) in its Spotlight Awards competition, where it received a "first in category" award for the Development Outreach and Communications Survival Manual, which Ms. Yount authored.
Previously, Ms. Yount served as a political appointee to the U.S. State Department, serving as the USAID press office director and chief spokesperson. She has been quoted in numerous publications, including The Washington Post, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Prior to joining USAID, Ms. Yount worked as a consultant for the World Bank and Price Waterhouse Coopers in Eastern Europe, providing expert communication advice to a variety of governmental clients.
From 1997 to 2002, Ms. Yount lived in the Balkans, establishing and serving as the Resident Program Director of the International Republican Institute's (IRI) offices in Serbia and Croatia. IRI is a non-profit organization which promotes democracy worldwide. Prior to her Balkans tenure, Ms. Yount was a senior aide and Communications Director for Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge (1993-1997); prior to 1993, Ms. Yount served as then-Congressman Ridge's congressional press secretary.
Ms. Yount is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Allegheny College and received her Master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Ms. Yount and her husband, live on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. with their daughter, Abigail.
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