Cinny Kennard

Cinny Kennard serves as the executive director of the Annenberg Foundation, one of the largest family foundations in the United States.

Prior to joining the Annenberg Foundation in January 2015, Kennard had a long career in executive leadership, most recently as senior vice president in charge of programming at the Smithsonian Institution. In that role, she created partnerships with the Smithsonian involving national and international partners for special educational and media initiatives, managed the programming relationships in the joint venture between the Smithsonian and Showtime/CBS known as the Smithsonian Networks, and brought President Barack Obama for a first-ever interview on Smithsonian Channel. Before Smithsonian, Kennard was the first managing director of National Public Radio’s West Coast Production Center—NPR West—in Culver City, with executive responsibility for operational and editorial oversight.

For over a decade, Kennard has played a key role in a variety of Annenberg initiatives. As a senior advisor to the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, she organized outreach to Washington, DC stakeholders including the White House, Capitol Hill leadership, and the U.S. State Department. Those efforts significantly contributed to bringing President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping to Sunnylands for the “2013 Sunnylands Summit.” She also facilitated the president’s second meeting at Sunnylands with King Abdullah II of Jordan as well as the visit of then U.S. House Speaker John Boehner to Sunnylands. Kennard served as the executive producer of the award-winning film “A Place Called Sunnylands.” Kennard is currently the Chairman of the Board of the University of Southern California Center on Philanthropy and Public policy, a longtime member of the Trusteeship of the International Women’s Forum, and a senior fellow at the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism.

Kennard also co-founded the Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Television Journalism, the Walter Cronkite Awards, and the Reliable Resources for Broadcast Political Coverage. 

An accomplished author, Cinny helped write Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a Digital Age by G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; co-authored a piece for The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation; co-authored “Characteristics of War Coverage by Female Correspondents” in Media and Conflict in the 21st Century; and authored numerous articles for The Huffington Post.

Earlier in her career, Cinny was an award-winning television news correspondent for CBS News in Los Angeles, Moscow and London. She won the DuPont Columbia University Award for coverage of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. 

Kennard is currently working on a book on women and philanthropy.