photo: Jacques Coughlin
You hear her signature voice reporting
from Rome, the Balkans, other parts of Europe, and the
Middle East. She’s Sylvia Poggioli, senior European
correspondent for National Public Radio.
Since joining
NPR’s foreign desk in 1982, Poggioli’s on-air
analysis has encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern
Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and
noteworthy coverage from Prague. In early 1991, she
supplemented NPR’s Gulf War coverage, reporting from
London on European reactions to events surrounding the war. You
hear her almost daily during NPR newsbreaks, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend
Edition.
In 2000, Poggioli
received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from
Brandeis University. In 1994, she was elected a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences “for her
distinctive, cultivated, and authoritative reports on
‘ethnic cleansing’ in Bosnia.” In 1990,
Poggioli spent an academic year at Harvard University as a
research fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Press,
Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of
Government.
From 1971 to 1986,
Poggioli served as an editor on the English-language desk for
the Ansa News Agency in Italy. Prior to her duties as editor,
she worked at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. She
was actively involved with women’s film and theater
groups.
Poggioli’s
reports on the Bosnian conflict earned two awards in 1993: the
George Foster Peabody Award and the Edward Weintal Journalism
Prize. She also won two awards in 1994: the National
Women’s Political Caucus/Radcliffe College Exceptional
Merit Media Award and the Silver Angel Excellence in the Media
Award. She was part of the NPR team that won the 2000 Overseas
Press Club award for coverage of NATO’s 1999 air war
against Yugoslavia.
The daughter of
Italian anti-fascists who were forced to flee Italy under
Mussolini, Poggioli was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and
grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Harvard
College in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in romance
languages and literature. She later studied in Italy under a
Fulbright Scholarship.
