Ernest James Wilson III, Ph.D., is Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He is also a faculty fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School and an adjunct fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Dean Wilson’s experience at the intersection of communication and public policy spans the private and public sectors. He has served as a consultant to international agencies such as the World Bank and the United Nations, worked in government at the White House National Security Council and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, led research centers and academic departments at premier institutions of higher education, and held positions with media companies and other corporations. Most recently he served on Barack Obama’s presidential transition team.

With an academic focus on the convergence of communication and information technology, public policy, and the public interest, Dean Wilson is a student of the “information champions,” the leaders of the information revolution around the world. His current work concentrates on China-Africa relations, global sustainable innovation in high-technology industries, and the role of politics in the diffusion of information and communication technologies.

In addition to his most recent books – Governing Global Electronic Networks and Negotiating the Net: The Politics of Internet Diffusion in Africa – Dean Wilson co-edits the MIT Press series The Information Revolution and Global Politics and the journal Information Technologies and International Development.

Nominated by President Bill Clinton and reappointed by President George W. Bush in 2004, Dean Wilson is the ranking senior member of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He is founding chair of the board’s New Digital Media Committee and Public Awareness Initiative Committee. He is also a member of the Carnegie-Knight Commission on the Future of Journalism Education and The National Academies Board on Research Data and Information. He served as a policy advisor to candidate and President-Elect Barack Obama in areas of information technology and public diplomacy.

Dean Wilson’s other government experience includes service as director of International Programs and Resources on the National Security Council at the White House (1993–94); director of the Policy and Planning Unit, Office of the Director, U.S. Information Agency (1994); and deputy director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission (1994–95).

Prior to his appointment at USC Annenberg, Dean Wilson was a professor and senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park. From 1995 to 2002, Dean Wilson was director of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at Maryland. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania.

Dean Wilson is the recipient of numerous research fellowships and awards, including the Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Communication section of the ISA, an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Originally from Washington, D.C., Dean Wilson earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Harvard College. He is married to Francille Rusan Wilson (pictured), Ph.D., a labor and intellectual historian. They have two sons.

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