Marguerite Hoxie Sullivan is an international media and communications consultant with extensive experience as a trainer, public affairs and media specialist, a journalist and editor, and a senior executive in government and international non-governmental organizations. She specializes in effective and transparent government-media engagement, and has worked with all branches of government. She has assessed, trained, written, and advised through more than 200 projects in nearly 50 countries in virtually every region of the world. Most of her engagements have resulted in repeat assignments.
She is the author of the U.S. Department of State’s A Responsible Press Office in the Digital Age (2012) and the first edition A Responsible Press Office: An Insider’s Guide (2002), which have been translated into 30 languages, received several awards, and are being used by governments, civil society executives, and journalists around the world.
Marguerite established and served as senior director of the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Under her leadership, CIMA published nearly 80 reports on global independent media and organized nearly 90 events. Further, the center was the lead organizer in partnership with UNESCO and the U.S. Department of State of the three-day event for 2011 World Press Freedom Day, with 800 attendees from around the world. She also organized the first international meeting exclusively for media development donors—public and private.
Marguerite began her career as a journalist working for newspapers in Boston and California before moving to Washington, D.C., where she reported for a news service on Congress and federal agencies and departments. She served as president of the Washington Press Club (now the National Press Club) and was a magazine editor and free-lance writer.
She was an executive in the U.S. government including at the U.S. Department of State and the National Endowment for Humanities and the White House, and served as a Cabinet member for a U.S. state governor. She was executive director of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, and was vice president for communications and external affairs at IRI, a NED institute.
A native of California, Marguerite has a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University. She has lectured at numerous universities and institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, and was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. For three terms, she represented Region One (comprising the U.S., Canada and Western Europe) on the grant-making Bureau for UNESCO’s Programme for the Development of Communications.