Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:
I am very pleased to announce my appointment of Shailagh Murray as Executive Vice President for Public Affairs, as of September 4, 2018. Shailagh will oversee both the Office of Communications and Public Affairs and the Office of Government and Community Affairs.
Let me briefly introduce Shailagh. Shailagh earned her BA from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and her MS in Journalism from Northwestern University. She began her career in journalism, spending more than two decades covering local, national, and international stories for The Tampa Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Her areas of focus included the transition from communism to democracy in Eastern Europe, the rise of the European Union, four United States presidential elections, and major legislative and political developments in the U.S. Congress. In 2011, Shailagh was appointed Communications Director for Vice President Biden and shortly thereafter became his Deputy Chief of Staff. She then served as Senior Advisor to President Obama for the final two years of his presidency.
Clearly, Shailagh’s exceptional depth of experience—at the highest levels of journalism and government and as a trusted advisor both to Vice President Biden and to President Obama on a wide range of policy, communications, and legislative issues—makes her extraordinarily well suited to this position and to serving the current and future needs and interests of the University. All of us are greatly looking forward to working with her on behalf of Columbia.
Please extend a warm welcome to Shailagh.
Sincerely,
Lee C. Bollinger