Washington, DC - Judith A. McHale is a leading media and communications executive whose career has been devoted to building companies and nonprofit organizations dedicated to reaching out to and connecting people around the world. She is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Discovery Communications. From 1987 to 2006, Ms. McHale helped build the parent company of the Discovery Channel into one of the world's most extensive media enterprises, with more than 100 channels telecast in over 170 countries and 35 languages to more than 1 billion subscribers. In the 1990s, she launched the nonprofit Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership, which supplies free educational video programming to more than half a million students across Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. 

After two decades at Discovery, Ms. McHale extended her commitment to helping build opportunity for people in Africa.  With the Global Environment Fund (GEF), a private equity firm, she worked to launch the GEF/Africa Growth Fund, an investment vehicle intending to focus on supplying  expansion capital to small and medium-sized businesses that provide consumer goods and services in emerging African markets.  Her commitment to global outreach efforts also includes her service on the boards of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the National Democratic Institute, and Vital Voices. She previously served on the board of Africare. The daughter of a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Ms. McHale was born in New York City and grew up in Britain and apartheid-era South Africa. Before joining Discovery, Ms. McHale served as General Counsel for MTV Networks and helped guide the company's international expansion.