Geoffrey Cowan is a University Professor and holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, where he also directs the Center on Communication Leadership. He served as dean of the USC Annenberg School from 1996 – 2007 and recently completed service as a Fellow of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  In 2007, he was elected to be the Walter Lippman Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Before coming to USC, Cowan served under President Clinton as director of the Voice of America and director of the International Broadcasting Bureau. In other public service roles, Cowan served on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, chaired the Los Angeles commission that drafted the city’s ethics and campaign finance law, and chaired the California Bipartisan Commission on Internet Political Practices. He is an award-winning and best-selling author whose books include See No Evil: The Backstage Battle Over Sex and Violence on Television and The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America’s Greatest Lawyer. With Leroy Aarons, he co-wrote Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, a play about the tension between a free press and government secrecy that will be featured in a national tour during the 2007-08 season. He won a primetime Emmy in 1992 for his work as an executive producer of the Disney Channel movie Mark Twain & Me.

He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School and is married to Aileen Adams. They have two children, Gabriel and Mandy.