Susan King is the dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She is also the school’s John Thomas Kerr Distinguished Professor. Prior to her appointment, she was the vice president of external affairs and the director of Journalism Initiative, Special initiatives, and Strategy at the Carnegie Corporation of New York. There, she was responsible for the Corporation's relations with outside groups and devising strategies to ensure the Corporation's work has an impact on society. She also oversaw the Corporation's communications, including its publications, web site and media and dissemination grant program. She led the Corporation's Journalism Initiative, begun in 2005, which focuses on university based journalism education, its role in America's research universities, in preparing the next generation of media leaders and its commitment to strengthening journalism's seminal position in a democratic society.

A presidential appointee confirmed twice by the Senate, King served three cabinet secretaries as a communications strategist. At the Department of Labor, where she oversaw the work of 16 agencies, King worked with Secretaries Robert B. Reich and Alexis Herman. She crafted the successful No Sweat initiative under Reich that led to the Presidential Apparel Industry Partnership and a movement to improve sweatshop conditions domestically and abroad. The initiative won an Innovation in Government award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. During her service with Herman, King oversaw the UPS strike coverage, Welfare to Work initiatives and the YO! Youth Opportunity movement. King shaped communication strategies for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo's first six months in office. She joined public service as Executive Director of the Family and Medical Leave Commission, a bipartisan congressionally mandated commission.

During her years as a journalist, King was both anchor in Washington television and a political analyst known for cover story reports on politics, diplomacy and major issues of the day. She worked for ABC News and served as a White House correspondent during the Reagan administration. She has reported for CNN and served as host for CNBC's Equal Time, NPR's Talk of the Nation and WAMU's Diane Rehm Show. She began her career working for Walter Cronkite and became an on air reporter in Buffalo, New York.

King received a B.A. in English from Marymount College, Tarrytown, New York and an M.A. in communications from Fairfield University. She also studied at University College of London University. She has won numerous journalism awards including Emmies for her reporting from Lebanon and for Coverstory, three National Women's Political Caucus awards, and recognition from American Women in Communications and Sigma Delta Chi. In 1999, she was DC's Women in Communication's Matrix awardee.

King is active in community and professional organizations and serves on the Board of Trustees of the BBC World Service Trust, the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management and Philanthropy, New York. King is a founder of the International Women's Media Foundation and is a member of its Advisory Committee d. She has worked in the philanthropic world with the Independent Sector and the Council on Foundation's Media and Public Affairs Committees. King is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is married and the mother of a daughter in college.