On Friday, March 29, the College announced that Jackie Judd P’14 will moderate the next installment of the Common Ground series on Thursday, April 11, at 7:30 PM in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House. The event will feature Jim Messina, deputy chief of staff for former President Barack Obama, and Reince Priebus, former chief of staff for President Donald Trump.

Judd is a veteran journalist and independent communications consultant who reported for

ABC News

,

NPR

, and, most recently, the

PBS NewsHour

. Over the course of her career, she has been recognized with numerous awards, including national Emmys and the Edward R. Murrow award for outstanding achievements in electronic journalism.

As a radio and television reporter, Judd has covered a wide array of major national and international events like the fall of Berlin Wall, the Tiananmen Square uprising, the impeachment of President Clinton, and the 2000 election recount.

In an interview with her alma mater, American University, Judd said she planned to pursue a career in broadcast journalism beginning in her teenage years. In addition to her aforementioned national and international reporting, she has consistently focused on issues in politics and social and health care policy.

In 2003, Judd stepped away from her reporting duties to take on the role of vice president and senior advisor for communications at the Kaiser Family Foundation, where she spent the next decade focusing on health policy communications and the international AIDS epidemic. She also oversaw the production of mini-documentaries on healthcare issues and trained journalists in Russia, Ukraine, and the Caribbean on covering HIV-AIDS.

Currently, she serves as a communications consultant specializing in the non-profit sector. Additionally, she is vice-chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation.

Next Thursday’s Common Ground event will not be Judd’s first. In October, she moderated the discussion between Mark Elias ’90, who served as general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and Mike Dubke ’92 P ’19, former White House communications director in the Trump administration. That talk centered on the 2018 midterm elections, political polarization, and the developing role of communications in politics.

Past Common Ground events have featured David Axelrod and Karl Rove, with

USA Today

Washington bureau chief Susan Page as moderator in the fall of 2017, and Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice, with

NBC News

chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell as moderator in the spring of 2018.

Tickets to the Common Ground event are free and available at hamilton.edu/commonground.