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Former White House reporter to lead ASU media relations, strategic communications


portrait of Kevin Galvin
May 21, 2014

Kevin Galvin, senior communications director at Harvard University who has served as a White House reporter, national editor and foreign correspondent, will be the new head of strategic communications at Arizona State University.

Galvin will serve as vice president for media relations and strategic communications. He will take over this summer for Virgil Renzulli, who is moving into a full-time faculty position at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication after serving as vice president for the past 12 years.

Galvin is senior director at Harvard Public Affairs & Communications, where he handles media issues related to university management and the institution's endowment, and also leads a team of public relations officers responsible for communicating everything from breakthroughs in stem cell research to institutional engagement with local public schools.

Previously, he served as Harvard’s director of news and media relations, working with reporters from around the world, as well as heading a team of writers and editors who transformed the century-old Harvard Gazette into the centerpiece of the university's digital communications efforts.

Before joining Harvard in 2008, Galvin was deputy national editor, and later technology and innovation editor at the Boston Globe, New England’s largest daily newspaper.

Galvin, a 1988 graduate of Emerson College who holds master’s degrees from Georgetown University and the University of Southern California, started his journalism career at the Associated Press in Boston.

He later was a foreign correspondent for the AP in Latin America before moving to Washington, where he served as the news service’s national labor writer and eventually a White House reporter, covering President Bill Clinton during his impeachment and the war in Kosovo.

He also served as a Washington correspondent for The Seattle Times, the largest daily newspaper in the Northwest, and States News Service, a D.C.-based regional news service.

Galvin has been co-editor of two books: “State of the American Newspaper” (2002) and “Explore Harvard: The Yard and Beyond” (2011).

At ASU, Galvin and his public relations team will work closely with Dan Dillon, the university’s new chief marketing officer.

“President Michael Crow’s vision for a New American University drew me to ASU with its focus on excellence, access and impact,” Galvin said. “The transformation underway at the university makes for a compelling story about the role institutions of higher education can play as forces for the public good. I look forward to working with the media relations team to tell that story and highlight the achievements of ASU’s outstanding students, faculty and programs.”