PR SVP and Ex-Gingrich Aide Michelle Giuda to be Asst Secretary of State for Public Affairs

January 8, 2018 By in Appointments, Officially In, Political Appointees, State Department, Trump Tags: , , , , , ,

Posted: 12:24 am ET

 

On January 4, the WH announced the President’s appointment of Michelle Giuda, the former Deputy National Press Secretary to Speaker Newt Gingrich to be the next Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. Ms Giuda has been  Senior VP for PR firm, Weber Shandwick. Via White House:

Michelle Giuda of New York, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (Public Affairs). Ms. Giuda has been the Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Communications at Weber Shandwick in New York, New York, since 2014.  She oversees global communications strategy across 81 countries at Weber Shandwick, a global public relations firms with offices in major media, business, and government capitals around the world.  During her tenure, Weber Shandwick became the most awarded public relations firm at the 2016 Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity, the first firm to be named PRWeek’s Global Agency of the Year for three consecutive years, and the only PR agency on Advertising Age’s A-List in 2014 and 2015.  Ms. Giuda was named one of the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business by the Asian American Business Development Center in 2016.  Previously, she served as Deputy National Press Secretary to Speaker Newt Gingrich and Communications Director for GOPAC in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Giuda graduated, cum laude, with a B.A. from the University of California Los Angeles, where she won an NCAA Championship and captained the UCLA Women’s Gymnastics Team; and she earned an M.P.S. from George Washington University.

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This position does not require Senate confirmation. Here’s a quick summary of the position according to history.state.gov:

The Department of State created the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Public and Cultural Relations during a general reorganization in Dec 1944, after Congress authorized an increase in the number of Assistant Secretaries in the Department from four to six (Dec 8, 1944; P.L. 78-472; 58 Stat. 798). The reorganization was the first to designate substantive designations for specific Assistant Secretary positions. The Department changed the title to Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in 1946. Initially, incumbents supervised the forerunners of the U.S. Information Agency and the Voice of America. P.L. 112-116, the Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011 (signed into law August 10, 2012), removed the requirement for Senate confirmation of Assistant Secretaries of State for Public Affairs.

Previous appointees to this position include Admiral John F. Kirby (2015–2017), Margaret DeBardeleben Tutwiler (1989–1992), American poet and Pulitzer Prize writer, Archibald MacLeish (1944–1945), and Career Ambassador Richard A. Boucher, who served the longest from 2001–2005.

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