Elisa Tinsley

Elisa Tinsley, Senior Vice President - Programs at Emerging Markets Communications (EMC), has more than three decades of professional journalism and media-management experience. Her focus has been on international reporting, editing, media management and media innovation. From 2007 to 2013, Tinsley led ICFJ’s flagship program, the Knight International Journalism Fellowships. The Fellowships make lasting, tangible changes that improve the free flow of news and information in the public interest around the world – in the digital age.

Previously, Tinsley was USA Today’s world editor. For more than a decade, she helped oversee the expansion of USA Today’s international bureaus and the newspaper’s coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She also developed the newspaper’s network of international freelance reporters and helped conceive and administer the safety policy for journalists working in war zones.

Before joining USA Today in 1988, Tinsley was a Moscow-based reporter. Beginning in 1984, she worked for United Press International and was a freelance reporter for Time, Newsweek, ABC Radio, USA Today and Advertising Age. Tinsley started her journalism career as a business reporter in New York and Chicago.

She majored in English literature and minored in Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating Magna Cum laude. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Tinsley earned an M.A. in English literature and language from the University of Chicago. She is proficient in Russian and Spanish. Tinsley represents ICFJ at conferences and meetings, most recently at the annual conference of the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism in Amman. Follow Tinsley on Twitter @elisatin.