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An award-winning journalist has joined Boston University’s Board of Trustees and the leader of a public policy research organization has been named to the Board of Overseers.
Kevin Merida (COM’79), a senior vice president of the multinational sports entertainment company ESPN and editor in chief of The Undefeated, an ESPN sports blog that explores the intersection of race, sports, and culture, was elected in December to a two-year term on the Board of Trustees.
James Stergios (CAS’85, UNI’03), executive director of the Boston-based Pioneer Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, was elected to a two-year term on the Board of Overseers in October.
“Boston University is fortunate to have two highly accomplished leaders in critically important fields—Kevin in global media and Jim in public policy—joining the trustees and overseers at this time,” says Kenneth J. Feld (Questrom’70), chair of the Board of Trustees. “We very much look forward to working with them in the years to come.”
Before launching The Undefeated, Merida spent more than two decades at the Washington Post. His last position there was managing editor, and as such he oversaw all news and features coverage and helped lead the newspaper’s digital transformation. The Post won four Pulitzer Prizes for journalism during Merida’s tenure as managing editor. Prior to that, he was a Congressional correspondent, a “Style” section feature writer, a magazine columnist, an associate editor, and national editor. While he was national editor, Post staff were twice Pulitzer Prize finalists and produced a book on changes to the US health care system, Landmark: The Inside Story of America’s New Health-Care Law—the Affordable Care Act—and What It Means for Us All.
Merida is coauthor of Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs (HarperCollins, 2008) and the Essence Literary Awards nonfiction prizewinner Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas (Doubleday, 2007), a biography of the Supreme Court justice. He was both the editor of, and a contributor to, Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril (Public Affairs, 2007), an anthology based on an award-winning Post series. A former public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Merida currently serves on the boards of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at the College of Communication and received its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2005. Merida lives in metropolitan Washington, DC, with his wife, author and former syndicated columnist Donna Britt. They have three sons.
The privately funded Pioneer Institute advances public policy solutions based on the principles of free markets, individual liberty, and responsibility. As executive director, Stergios has spent the past decade overseeing the production and promotion of nearly 300 books and papers on education, health care, government operations, and the economy. He frequently writes papers on K–12 education policy and is coeditor of the institute’s Agenda for Leadership book series. He is also a regular public affairs commentator, appearing in both local and national media outlets, among them Fox News Channel, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post.
Before joining the Pioneer Institute, he was chief of staff and undersecretary for policy at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, where he oversaw efforts related to water policy, regulatory and permit reform, and urban revitalization.
Sergios graduated from the College of Arts & Sciences in 1985 with degrees in economics and philosophy and earned a PhD in political science at the University Professors program in 2003. He is a member of BU’s Institute for the Advancement of the Social Sciences. His daughter Teruha is a 2015 graduate of BU Academy and his daughter Asaghi is currently a freshman there.
Michael Goldberg can be reached at michaelscottgoldberg@gmail.com.
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