Simone Otus Coxe

Simone Coxe has spent the last twenty years working with nonprofit media from local to global.  She is the chair emeritus, co-founder and current director of CALmatters, a non-partisan non-profit media organization focused on California state politics and government.  She is also a director and former chair of Internews, an international media support organization working in 100 countries, and has recently joined the board of the National Trust for Local News.  She serves on the advisory board of the UC Berkeley Journalism School.  Her previous board experience includes: eleven years at KQED, one of the nation’s largest public media organizations.; board chair of The Pluralism Fund, a philanthropic collaborative focused on civil society in Pakistan and Iran; the World Affairs Council of Northern California, and ; Palo Alto Partners in Education.  She has been a supporter of Human Rights Watch for over 20 years. Coxe was the CEO and co-founder of Blanc & Otus Public Relations, providing services to the high technology industry from offices in San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Atlanta, and London. In 1999, the firm was acquired by Hill and Knowlton, one of the largest public relations firms in the world. Coxe is an alumnus of Sarah Lawrence College and the University of California, Berkeley.