2012 INSTRUCTORS

• Robert Banks
  U.S. Public Diplomat in Residence 2009-2011, USC Center on Public Diplomacy
• Nicholas Cull
  Professor and Director of the Master of Public Diplomacy program, USC
• Mai'a K. Davis Cross
  Assistant Professor of International Relations, School of International Relations, USC
• Eytan Gilboa
  Professor of International Communication, Bar-Ilan University
• Cari Guittard
  Senior Associate, Global Strategic Partners
• Shawn Powers
  Assistant Professor of Communication, Georgia State University
• Kelton Rhoads
  Adjunct Professor of Communications and Psychology, USC
• Philip Seib
  Professor of Journalism and Public Diplomacy, USC
• Pamela K. Starr
  Associate Professor (Teaching) of International Relations and Public Diplomacy, School of International Relations and Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, USC
• Jian (Jay) Wang
  Associate Professor of Public Relations, USC
• Rebecca Weintraub
  Clinical Professor; Director, Master of Communication Management program, USC

FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES

Robert Banks joined the Foreign Service with USIA in 1983. During his 26 year career as a Public Diplomacy practitioner, he has served as Assistant Executive Officer in Bonn, West Germany, Deputy Public Affairs Officer (PAO) in Nicosia, Cyprus, Assistant Press Attaché in Seoul, Korea, East Asia Policy Officer in USIA's Worldnet TV service, Press Attaché in Managua, Nicaragua, Cultural Affairs Officer in Seoul, Examiner for the Foreign Service oral entrance exam in the Bureau of Human Resources, Planning and Coordination Officer in the Office of Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, PAO in Buenos Aires, Argentina and most recently State Department Chair on the faculty of the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va., where he taught regional studies. He is currently the U.S. Public Diplomat in Residence at the Center on Public Diplomacy at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Mai’a K. Davis Cross researches issues of European security and diplomacy, especially in the context of the European Union. She is the author of two books: Security Integration in Europe: How Knowledge-based Networks are Transforming the EU (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming) and The European Diplomatic Corps: Diplomats and International Cooperation from Westphalia to Maastricht (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Her most recent research, supported by the Fulbright foundation, examines how epistemic communities of diplomats, military officials, scientists, and crisis management experts in Europe promote EU security integration. She holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree in Government from Harvard University.

Nicholas J. Cull is Professor of Public Diplomacy and Director of the Masters Program in Public Diplomacy at USC. His research and teaching interests are broad and inter-disciplinary, and focus on the the role of culture, information, news and propaganda in foreign policy. He is the author of The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989 (Cambridge, 2008). His first book was Selling War (Oxford,1995), a study of British information work in the United States before Pearl Harbor. Both books were named by Choice Magazine as one of the best academic books of their respective year. He is the co-editor (with David Culbert and David Welch) of Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500-present (ABC-Clio, 2003) which was one of Booklist magazine's reference books of the year, and co-editor with David Carrasco of Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (University of New Mexico Press, 2004). He has published numerous articles on the theme of propaganda and media history. He is an active film historian who has been part of the movement to include film and other media within the mainstream of historical sources. His film work includes two volumes co-authored with James Chapman, Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (I. B. Tauris, 2009) and the forthcoming Projecting Tomorrow: Science Fiction and Popular Cinema (I.B.Tauris, 2012). He is a member of the Public Diplomacy Council and Pacific Council on International Policy, and president of the International Association for Media and History.

Eytan Gilboa is a professor of international communication, Chair of the Communication Program, senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and a Visiting Professor of Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. He is also a commentator on world television networks and contributes op-ed articles to newspapers around the world. He received his PhD from Harvard University and has been a visiting professor in several leading American and European universities including Harvard, UCLA, Georgetown, Tufts, and the University of Hamburg. In 2002, he was a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Gilboa has won several significant awards including the 2001 Best Article Award of the International Communication Association. He has written extensively on media diplomacy and public diplomacy. His most recent publications include Media and Conflict: Framing Issues, Making Policies, Shaping Opinions (2002); articles published in Political Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Harvard International Journal of Press Politics, Journal of Dispute Resolution and Georgetown Journal of International Affairs; and chapters published in: J. Oetzel & S. Ting-Toomey (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication (2006), and P. Seib (Ed.), New Media and the New Middle East (2007).

Cari Guittard is a Senior Associate at Global Strategic Partners, boutique intelligence, defense and strategic communications firm. In this capacity Guittard will continue her corporate diplomacy efforts as well as work on an extensive global portfolio of issues including strategic communications, geopolitical strategy, and work with the military and intelligence community. For the past seven and a half years Guittard has served as Executive Director of Business for Diplomatic Action, a private sector-led public diplomacy non-profit whose mission involved engaging and guiding corporations in a variety of global affairs activities. Prior to BDA, Guittard served in senior positions at the US Department of State working on a variety of portfolios ranging from public diplomacy and public affairs to cyber security, counter-terrorism, and political military affairs. Guittard has served as a spokesman, media representative, and law enforcement liaison and trainer for cyber threats and critical infrastructure initiatives, as well as advised senior officials of foreign governments, national and global non-profits, and corporations. Guittard has extensive experience in the Middle East, Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. She has appeared in numerous media and radio outlets to include The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Guittard is a noted public speaker, speech writer and facilitator on issues related to foreign policy, public diplomacy, international affairs, cyber security and corporate diplomacy. Guittard currently serves in an adjunct faculty capacity teaching graduate courses in Corporate Diplomacy & Geopolitics for the University of Southern California Annenberg School and the University of San Francisco MBA School. Guittard earned a Bachelors of Arts in Government & Political Science in 1997 and an MPA in 1998 from the University of Texas at Dallas. In 1998 Guittard was selected nationally for the Presidential Management Fellowship.

Shawn Powers is a Visiting Assistant Professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism London Program and a Visiting Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He earned his Ph.D. from USC Annenberg in 2009 where he studied and wrote about the geopolitical uses of news and information by international actors. Shawn's research interests include mass media and society, new and social media technologies, diasporic communities, globalization and traditional and public diplomacy. He has conducted field research in Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern and Western Europe and North America. Shawn's work has been published in several journals, including: Media, War & Conflict, Global Media & Communication, Ethnopolitics and Media Development. In 2007, Shawn was the co-recipient of a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study global news broadcasters and in 2008 Shawn helped design and managed CPD's evaluation of Alhurra, the US-supported international broadcaster in the Middle East. His current projects include revising his dissertation into a book on how the Al Jazeera Network has helped Qatar transition from a "micro-state" to an influential "network-state," a comparative analysis of how different international broadcasters report news of China, and a case study of exemplar uses of social media for development and good governance in Asia and the Middle East.

Kelton Rhoads currently serves as adjunct professor of Communications and Psychology at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, and also at the U.S. Air Force's Joint Special Operations University. He has also served as Senior Mentor for PSYOP forces at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School in Ft. Bragg, N.C. He holds a doctorate in Social Psychology, with an emphasis in Influence, from Arizona State University. Rhoads has studied and practiced persuasion for years as a grant writer, a public relations officer, and a director of marketing and communications. Since the mid-1990s, he has consulted for various government and defense agencies, political campaigns, banking firms, non-profit organizations, educational agencies, public relations firms and medical entities, helping people apply the principles of influence to real-world situations.

Philip Seib is Professor of Journalism and Public Diplomacy and Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, and is director of USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Headline Diplomacy: How News Coverage Affects Foreign Policy; The Global Journalist: News and Conscience in a World of Conflict; Beyond the Front Lines: How the News Media Cover a World Shaped by War; Broadcasts from the Blitz: How Edward R. Murrow Helped Lead America into War; New Media and the New Middle East; The Al Jazeera Effect: How the New Global Media Are Reshaping World Politics; Global Terrorism and New Media: The Post-Al Qaeda Generation; Al Jazeera English: Global News in a Changing World; and the forthcoming Real-time Diplomacy: Politics and Power in the Social Media Era. He is editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Series in International Political Communication, co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy, and co-editor of the journal Media, War, and Conflict.

Dr. Pamela K. Starr is Director of the US-Mexico Network @ USC, an associate professor (NTT) in Public Diplomacy and the School of International Relations, and a university fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy She came to USC from the Eurasia Group, one of the world's leading global political risk advisory and consulting firms, where she was senior analyst responsible for Mexico. Prior to that, she spent eight years in Mexico as a professor of Latin American political economy at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), a private university in Mexico City. Dr. Starr is an active speaker, commentator, and author on Mexican politics, economic policy, security affairs, and foreign policy, US-Mexico relations, and economic policy-making in Latin America. She is the author of a 2009 Pacific Council on International Policy report, “Mexico and the United States: A Window of Opportunity?”, and the Council on Foreign Relation’s special report on the 2006 Mexican election, “Challenges for a Postelection Mexico: Issues for US Policy”. Starr has advised the US Secretary of State, the US Ambassador to Mexico and other high-level officials from the Mexican and the US executive branches, as well as US mayors and members of Congress, and the staff of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the US and Mexican Senates. She has also worked as a consultant to investment banks and securities firms.

Jian “Jay” Wang, a scholar and consultant in the fields of strategic communication and public diplomacy, is an associate professor at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His research and writings address the role of communication in the contemporary process of globalization. He wrote Foreign Advertising in China: Becoming Global, Becoming Local and was a co-author of China's Window on the World: TV News, Social Knowledge and International Spectacles. His current research examines China’s pursuit of public diplomacy and nation-branding practices at the upcoming World Exposition 2010. Wang has worked for the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company as a senior communications specialist. He has also taught at Purdue University and Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Rebecca Weintraub has spent more than twenty years in the field of communication, facilitation, change management and organizational behavior. Dr. Weintraub is a clinical associate professor at USC in the Annenberg School for Communication. She teaches strategic communication classes in the MA program and provides communication and facilitation consulting services to organizations in the public, private and non-profit sectors.