Patricia Cahill Elected Board Chair and Elizabeth Sembler Elected Vice Chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

For Immediate Release on September 11, 2012

Washington, D.C. – The board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has elected Patricia Cahill to serve as chair and elected Elizabeth Sembler to serve as vice chair. These are each one-year terms.

Patricia Cahill was appointed to the CPB board by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in August 2009.

She was previously vice chair of the CPB board, and she has worked in public radio for more than 40 years. Earlier this year, she retired as general manager of KCUR-FM, the public radio station at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she also currently serves as an assistant professor of Communication Studies.

Prior to her 25 years of service at KCUR, Ms. Cahill worked as a reporter, producer, program director, news director and general manager of KMUW-FM at Wichita State University, where she was also an instructor in speech communications and journalism.

Ms. Cahill has served on the board of directors for NPR and as the chair of the Distribution/Interconnection Committee, the Membership Committee and the Development Committee. She was also the president of Public Radio in Mid America, a public radio membership organization.

Ms. Cahill earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Kansas. She is the mother of two daughters.

Elizabeth Sembler was appointed to the CPB board by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in October 2008.

Ms. Sembler is a Jewish educator, serving as both the director of engagement at Congregation B’nai Israel in St. Petersburg, Fla., and the director of Kesher, a Jewish afterschool program for students at the Ben Gamla Hebrew Language charter school in Clearwater, Fla.

She has served on the board of WEDU-TV since 1993 and was the chair of its board from 2001-2003. In 2006, she joined the board of the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS), a nonprofit group that supports the continued growth and development of a strong and financially sound noncommercial television service.

Ms. Sembler serves on the board of advisors of the Davidson Graduate School of Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, New York and on the board of directors of the Academy Prep Center of St. Petersburg in Florida, a privately funded middle school for students qualifying for needs-based scholarships. She also serves on the board of directors of the Florida Orchestra and was a member of the United Jewish Communities National Young Leadership Cabinet in the 1990s.

She began her career as a staff writer for the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) after earning her bachelor's degree in newspaper journalism and political science from Syracuse University. She later earned a master's degree in English from the University of South Florida.

Ms. Sembler lives in Seminole, Fla., with her husband Greg. They are the parents of four university students.

About CPB

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government's investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,300 locally-owned and -operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.

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