Kevin Klose
Acting President and Chief Executive Officer
Kevin Klose became Acting President and CEO of RFE/RL, Inc. on January 26, 2013. RFE/RL's board of directors appointed Klose on January 17, 2013, to serve for a period of up to one year.
A former editor, and national and foreign correspondent with The Washington Post, Klose is an award-winning author and worldwide broadcasting executive. He served most recently as dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland from April 2009 to July 2012. Klose remains a tenured professor at the journalism college, and will be on leave from his faculty position while at RFE/RL.
Klose joined the Merrill College from his post as president emeritus of National Public Radio, where he served as president from 1998 to 2008. Prior to joining NPR, Klose was director of the International Broadcasting Bureau at the U.S. Information Agency from 1997 to 1998 and president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) from 1994 to 1997. As president, he relocated RFE/RL from Munich to Prague. He joined RFE/RL in 1992 as director of Radio Liberty, broadcasting to the former Soviet Union in its national languages.
Klose previously was an editor and reporter at The Washington Post for 25 years, serving as city editor, Moscow bureau chief, Midwest correspondent and deputy national editor.
Klose received a B.A., cum laude, from Harvard. A former Woodrow Wilson National Fellow, he is the author of
Russia and the Russians: Inside the Closed Society, the winner of the Overseas Press Club's “Cornelius Ryan Award” and is co-author of four other books.
John Giambalvo
Vice President of Finance / Chief Financial Officer / Treasurer
John Giambalvo became RFE/RL’s Vice President of Finance, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer on April 1, 2012, succeeding Michael R. Marchetti. Mr. Giambalvo has been associated with U.S. international broadcasting since 2004, when he joined the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) as Policy and Program Coordinator, where he served as liaison with all five BBG broadcast networks and worked with the BBG’s CFO on capital planning and federal budget issues. In 2009, he was named Deputy Chief Financial Officer at RFE/RL, assisting the CFO in directing the worldwide fiscal functions of the corporation, supervising Finance Division staff and ensuring that RFE/RL’s strategic planning is aligned with budgetary constraints.
Mr. Giambalvo, a 1997 graduate of the Duke University School of Law, served as an Associate at Hale and Dorr LLP from 2000-2003 and as an Associate at White & Case LLP from 1997-2000. He also holds a Master’s degree from the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University and has earned a B.S. in Business Administration at the State University of New York at Albany.
Julia Ragona
Vice President of Content, Distribution, and Marketing
Julia Ragona is responsible for content, strategy, operations, distribution and marketing across 28 languages and 19 language services in RFE/RL’s fast-moving media environments and closed societies. As head of the Content, Distribution and Marketing Division, her portfolio includes management and supervision of content production and its alignment with target audiences, platforms and delivery strategies via external partnerships and traditional and alternative delivery channels; budgetary, administrative and crisis management as well as oversight of business development and marketing initiatives.
Julia joined RFE in May 2003 to manage the organization's re-branding, and served as Director of Marketing and Affiliate Development and Chief Broadcast Operations Officer before taking on her current duties. Prior to joining RFE/RL, she spent seven years in Moscow in the private sector, as managing director of an international marketing firm, a management consultant advising Russian and Western companies and as Regional COO and Business Development Director of a leading international law firm’s network of CIS offices. She has also worked in international film production and as a global strategy analyst on Wall Street.
A fluent speaker of Russian, Italian and Spanish as well as conversational French, Portuguese and Czech, Julia holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in Soviet Studies and U.S. Foreign Policy from Vassar College.