hall of fame 2012

Introducing the Communication Alumni Hall of Fame Class of 2012

The UW Department of Communication will induct the following alumni into the Alumni Hall of Fame on Oct. 16:

• Ann Darling: Ph.D., 1987
  Award-winning professor and researcher, writer, editor, community leader
• Lorraine Howell: B.A., 1982
  Author, teacher, producer, transformative communications professional
• Katie King: B.A., 1983
  Writer, editor, digital media leader, journalist, producer, teacher
• Elaine Ikoma Ko: B.A., 1975
  Community builder and civic activist, mentor, leading communication executive
• Doug Ramsey: B.A., 1956
  Award-winning author, journalist, lecturer, exceptional American jazz scholar

Ann Darling: Ph.D., 1987

Ann Darling is the Senior Associate Dean, Office of Undergraduate Studies and an associate professor of the Department Communication at the University of Utah. She served as chair of the department for 9 years. Darling began her academic career at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Her research interests include classroom communication patterns and, most recently, how communication pedagogy intersects with issues of social justice. She served as Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and as the Center’s Interim Director. Other professional activities include Chair, Presidential Task Force on Media Education, University of Utah; Member, Tanner Lectures on Human Values, University of Utah; 2002-2005 Associate Editor for Communication Education, President, Northwest Communication Association. She received the University of Utah Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002. She is also the 2004 recipient of a $1.1 million William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Grant for her research work in improving education communication in engineering. Darling is also a UW Excellence in Teaching Award recipient (1987). She is Co-Chair for the University Neighbors Partnership Board.

Lorraine Howell: B.A., 1982

Lorraine Howell started Media Skills Training in 1998 after 12 years as a television news and talk show producer in the San Francisco Bay Area. She coaches top executives and professionals on how to be more effective speakers for speeches, presentations, and media interviews. Since January 2011 she has been an instructor at the UW Foster School of Business in the Technology Management, the Executive and the Global Executive MBA programs. From 2007 through 2009, Lorraine coached the five finalists in the Forbes.com national Boost Your Business Contest in New York City. Her book Give Your Elevator Speech a Lift! is a step-by-step guide through her proven process for creating a winning elevator speech, personal branding, and social media. As the Senior Segment Producer on the top rated news show at KTVU, the Fox affiliate in Oakland, she specialized in booking exclusive, live interviews with top names in the news, public figures and celebrities. She produced live broadcasts from the White House and from the Capitol in Washington, D.C., from the 1996 Republican & Democratic National Conventions, and from “Camp O.J.” during the Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles. At KPIX, the CBS affiliate, she produced live, one-hour programs featuring breaking news stories, controversial issues and emerging trends, and a long list of celebrities on the number-one morning talk show. She speaks on media relations and presentation skills at conferences and seminars. Her clients include Starbucks Coffee Company, the UW, Microsoft, Group Health Cooperative, Seattle Children’s, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seneca Group, The Mountaineers Books, ZymoGenetics, Kibble & Prentice, U.S. Small Business Administration, Edelman Public Relations Worldwide. She is a Cum Laude graduate from the University of Washington, Phi Beta Kappa. Lorraine is also a member of Women in Communications, Women Business Owners, Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Public Relations Society of America, and a Washington State Certified OMWBE. Lorraine received the national AWC Headliner Award for 2009 from the Association for Women in Communications. She was the first Washington state candidate for the National Organization for Women. She ran for office while a student at UW in 1979.

Katie King: B.A., 1983

Katie King is a writer, editor, literary translator and digital media executive whose 20 plus-year career includes working as a foreign correspondent, documentary producer, digital story-teller, business leader and journalism professor. Katie is currently Senior Product Manager Portal and Partnerships for MSN UK in London, where she has lived and worked since 2008. After graduating from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1985, Katie spent 16 years of her career at Reuters, where she worked in posts including Chief Correspondent in Mexico, Central America and Panama and Chief Correspondent Brazil. She covered the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama and the 1992 Carandiru prison massacre in Sao Paulo. She was a digital publishing pioneer at Reuters, launching the company's first daily multimedia news publication in the fall of 1994 through Denver-based Ingenius, a joint venture of TCI and Reuters. As Senior Vice President for Reuters Global General News, she later developed multimedia Internet and mobile products, working with Reuters’ clients around the world including Yahoo!, MSNBC.com, AOL and The New York Times. In 1993-94, Katie spent an academic year at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow studying the impact of digital technology on journalism. She now serves on the Nieman Foundation’s Advisory Board. After leaving Reuters at the end of 2001, Katie worked as a consultant for a number of Washington, D.C.-based companies and non-profit organizations. She worked as communications lead for the Center for Public Integrity and was a digital media strategist for two years with the U.S.-based Marsteller Interactive division of the global communications firm Burson-Marsteller. During this time she also taught online journalism as an adjunct professor at The George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. Katie has been a member of the Online News Association almost since it began in 1999 and was founding co-chair of the ONA International Committee. Over the last six years with the International Committee and four years on the ONA board she has worked to forge global connections among digital journalists. The year 2012 marks the fifth since Katie led the launch of the ONA’s non-English language awards honoring outstanding online journalism worldwide. In London, Katie serves as a Trustee for the free speech non-profit group Index on Censorship. In addition to her UW Communications degree Katie holds a UW degree in Spanish language and literature. She lived in Spain during and after her UW studies and in 1985/86 worked as an associate producer on a PBS documentary on Spain’s transition to democracy called “Spain: 10 Years After, A Reporter’s Notebook.” Katie is passionate about Spanish culture and history and translates Spanish poetry and short stories into English for the literary non-profit Words Without Borders.

Elaine Ikoma Ko: B.A., 1975

Elaine Ikoma Ko has been a community builder for more than 30 years. She worked for a variety of important organizations such as The Inter*Im Community Development Association (ICDA) and the Port of Seattle as director of the Office of Social Responsibility. She served as executive director for ICDA, upholding the company’s mission to promote, advocate for, and revitalize the International District and other Asian Pacific communities in the Puget Sound region. Prior to working for ICDA, she was a Regional Manager and Vice President for Primerica. She worked for City of Seattle’s Office for Women’s Rights from 1991-1994 as director and she coordinated the King County’s Women’s Program. Ko sits on the Alumni Leadership Committee for Leadership Tomorrow and she is a founding group member of the Asia Pacific Islander Roundtable, a volunteer at Union Gospel Mission’s Women & Family Shelter, and active in her church. Ko began her career in the late 1970s, in the private sector, where she focused on investment services. She was the founding director of the International District Housing Alliance and remained there until the early '80s. She has a master's in Business Administration from City University.

Doug Ramsey: B.A., 1956

Doug Ramsey has written and published several books and written magazine pieces regarding American jazz. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. He also was executive vice president for an extended period of an international press institute in Los Angeles. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism. Ramsey is the author of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond” and Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He is a winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for writing about the music of Bill Evans. Rifftides: Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters… appears in the weblog ArtsJournal.com. He has contributed to Jazz Times since 1975 and, before that, wrote regularly for Down Beat. He was a contributing editor of Texas Monthly for 25 years and wrote a jazz column for the Dallas Morning News. His articles, reviews and op-ed pieces on music and on free press and First Amendment issues have appeared in the Washington Post, The Seattle Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Oregonian, and Congressional Quarterly, among other publications. He contributed to The Oxford Companion to Jazz and co-edited (with Dale Shaps) Journalism Ethics: Why Change? Under the American Speakers program of the United States Information Agency, he lectured in Germany and Eastern Europe on jazz and on the role of a free press in a democracy. He traveled with President Richard Nixon while he was Chief Correspondent in Washington, D.C., and rebuilt a television news department from the ground up. He also became Senior Vice President for the Foundation for American Communications where he was in charge of educating professional journalists. With this organization, he taught what he found to be important aspects of journalism, helping people understand public policy issues and the news process of sources in business, the independent sector and government.

About the Hall of Fame

The Communication Alumni Hall of Fame Award is bestowed upon a University of Washington Communication graduate and is presented annually by the UW Department of Communication. The award is for outstanding alumni who are distinguished for their service and achievements over a period of years since graduation from the University of Washington.

Hall of Fame members are people who have “made a difference” in an important way: as prominent journalists (e.g., winners of the Pulitzer Prize), public servants, celebrities who have used that celebrity to help others, leaders in their field, devoted mentors to our students and academic stand-outs. They are people who did more than just have a job or career; they did it with great success and often with great dedication to others. Since its inception in 2004, 61 alumni have received this prestigious honor. Inductees are chosen on the basis of involvement and recognition in their community. This is judged by the number of people and organizations impacted by their involvement, the breadth of their impact, and the quality and quantity of evidence of national or international recognition.

The Communication Alumni Hall of Fame selection committee consists of all living members of the Alumni Hall of Fame and the department chair and alumni outreach manager. Committee members receive ballots in April and selection is generally determined in May or early June and the winners notified shortly thereafter.