Amy L. Kovac-Ashley

Head of National Programs

Amy L. Kovac-Ashley is The Lenfest Institute for Journalism’s Head of National Programs.

Amy leads the Institute’s programs, initiatives and grantmaking that support the sustainability of local news organizations across the United States, in service of their communities. She oversees the portfolio of the Institute’s communities of practice, which support individuals and news organizations as they strive to grow and deepen relationships with audiences and build viable revenue streams. She also leads the Institute’s Beyond Print program, as well as its Advisory Services and other national initiatives.

Prior to joining the Institute in 2022, she was Executive Vice President and Chief of News Transformation at the American Press Institute and served as the Interim Executive Director of API. She has also worked as a journalism educator as managing director of West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media Innovation Center and as assistant dean of Georgetown University’s master’s in journalism program.

In the earlier part of her career, Amy spent a dozen years as a professional journalist. She reported on education and other local affairs and was an editor at Foreign Policy magazine, Patch.com and The Washington Post, where she was the paper’s first social media editor. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She completed the Media Transformation Challenge program at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard in 2020 and was a 2022-23 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow, where she authored the “News Executive Leadership Transition Guide.”

Amy has been an adviser and coach to news leaders on organizational and cultural change, leadership transition and succession planning, and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives, including mentorship programs. She serves on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit news organization Open Campus Media and on the Strategic Council of the nonprofit news organization EducationNC. Originally from Southern California, she now lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, two children and dog.