Ms. Betsy Hubbard and Dr. Debra Jasper
Ohio State’s Kiplinger Program
Betsy Hubbard
Program Manager, Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism
Betsy Hubbard, associate director of the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism, brings more than 10 years of experience in program planning, funding and evaluation to her role. Most recently, Betsy worked as an independent consultant, conducting research on nonprofit leadership and performance for clients such as The Improving Philanthropy Project and the Brooking Institution’s Nonprofit Effectiveness Project. Her most recent report, A Grantmaker’s Framework for Understanding Nonprofit Leadership Development, was published and distributed nationally in 2005 by the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.
Earlier in her career, Betsy served as a Public Policy Program Officer at The Pew Charitable Trusts, overseeing grantmaking on projects related to civic engagement and democratic life. She has also worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Oregon Economic Development Department and the University of Southern California’s Washington Center. Betsy earned her M.A. degree in Public Policy from the University of Minnesota and her B.A. in Political Science at Goucher College, with a year spent studying abroad at the London School of Economics.
Debra Jasper
Director, Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism
Debra Jasper is director of the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism in the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State. Under her leadership, the program has transitioned into a digital media program designed to help midcareer journalists learn how to tell powerful, in-depth public affairs stories through multiple platforms. In addition to working with Kiplinger Fellows, Knight Digital Media Fellows and Issue Fellows, Debra teaches graduate-level classes examining the impact of digital media on public affairs, civic engagement and journalism. She also leads digital media boot camps for journalists and provides training in multimodal storytelling to students and faculty from the fields of public policy, journalism and a wide variety of other disciplines. As well, Debra and her Kiplinger colleagues are involved in partnerships to provide more sophisticated analysis software for crowdsourcing projects and develop tools for newsrooms to more effectively engage the public, detect trends and collect and assess user comments as qualitative data. They also are collaborating with the Climate, Water and Carbon Program at Ohio State to design and host a McCormick Specialized Reporting Institute on Climate Change set for October 2008.
Debra became director of the Kiplinger Program in 2004, after spending nearly two decades covering politics and producing in-depth investigative and enterprise projects for Kentucky and Ohio newspapers. Formerly the Statehouse bureau chief for The Cincinnati Enquirer, she has won more than 40 journalism awards, including 17 first-place investigative and enterprise reporting awards from the Ohio Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists and other journalism organizations.
Debra holds a Ph.D. at Ohio State in cultural studies in Educational Policy and Leadership. She earned her M.A. in journalism at Ohio State and her B.A. in journalism from Eastern Kentucky University.
