Alfred Ironside
Director of Communications
The Ford Foundation

Alfred Ironside has been Director of Communications for the Ford Foundation since January 2006.

He joined the foundation from the United Nations, where he had served as Chief of Media Relations for UNICEF. Over six and a half years, Mr. Ironside traveled from East Timor to Iraq, North Korea to Liberia. He oversaw UNICEF’s communications response following the tsunami, helping put children at the center of the news and generating over $700 million in relief funds.

Before that, Mr. Ironside was part of the team that launched the English edition of Ha’artez, Israel’s leading daily newspaper, in conjunction with the International Herald Tribune. Based in Tel Aviv, he managed night editing at the fledgling paper for two and a half years and worked on its website and promotional strategy.

Mr. Ironside began his career as a radio reporter for stations in Indianapolis and Philadelphia. He spent three years in the U.S. Foreign Service as a press officer stationed in East Berlin, and four years as a disaster relief spokesman for the American Red Cross. In the early 1990s he helped launch the first Western advertising agency in Bulgaria, and lived in Sofia.

He holds undergraduate degrees in political science and communications from Butler University in Indianapolis, and a Master’s in Media Administration from the Newhouse School and the Graduate School of Business at Syracuse University.