Directing Communications at the National Endowment for the Humanities

In February 2021, Senior Fellow Miriam Magdieli was announced as a political appointee to lead the Office of Communications at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As Communications Director, Miriam leads the public outreach of the agency, working to advance the Biden-Harris administration’s goals in expanding access to cultural and educational resources.

The National Endowment for the Humanities was established in 1965 as an independent federal agency, in order to “supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation.”

Before taking on the Communications Director role at NEH, Miriam served as Chief Communications Officer and Director of Marketing for the Phillips Collection, a private art museum and gallery in Washington, DC. She also previously served as a career Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. State Department, specializing in media relations, public affairs, and communications, cultural programming, and public-private partnership management. Her time as a Foreign Service Officer took her to multiple locations around the world, including U.S. embassies in Riyadh, Amman, and Tel Aviv.