Julia A. Wilson

Ms. Julia A. Wilson is the dean of Hampton University’s Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications and one of 12 recipients of the 2023 Alex Trebek Legacy Fellowship from the TV Academy Foundation. She also is the CEO and founder of Wilson Global Communications, LLC, a strategic public affairs and marketing communications consultancy she founded in South Africa and later relocated to Washington, D.C.

Wilson is a former print and broadcast journalist who covered the historic presidential election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, for KCOP-TV in Los Angeles.  After that election, Wilson launched her international public affairs consultancy In Johannesburg, where her firm specialized in cross-cultural communications and relationship-building for business, academic and civic leaders. WGC has served clients that include multinational companies, NGOs and nonprofit organizations, institutions of higher education and media outlets from 13 countries.

Wilson has managed programs on reparations on behalf of Dorothy Butler Gilliam, the first Black woman reporter and columnist at The Washington Post, and eminent domain with media partners WHRO (PBS) and ProPublica. WGC also facilitated a cultural awareness training seminar for executives of Australian-owned oil giant BHP, in Trinidad and Tobago.

In 2023, with the support of Hampton University President Darrell K. Williams, Wilson and her staff secured full reaccreditation for her school from the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. That body reviews and accredits 119 U.S. colleges’ and universities’ communication programs. Wilson also organized the school’s 20^th anniversary celebration attended by 200 persons and the first annual customized Career Fair. She sealed a student-faculty exchange pact between a Ghanaian university and HU and a summer study tour program for 2024.

In 2017, Wilson coordinated the English to Mandarin translation of “Principles of Leadership,”  a book authored by Dr. William R. Harvey, president emeritus of Hampton University, and organized  the book launch at the 2018 Beijing International Book Fair. In 2014, Wilson established a 40-member HBCU – China Network for students from Historically Black Colleges & Universities to participate in study-abroad programs at leading Chinese universities. Sponsored by donors of the China-United States Exchange Foundation, China’s Ministry of Education collaborated with the program by granting scholarship awards. Nearly 1,000 HBCU students studied Chinese language and culture through the program.

A Fulbright grant recipient from the Department of State embassy in Paris, France, Wilson is the lead facilitator of “Going Global, an interactive workshop for doing business in foreign countries for under-resourced small and medium-sized businesses. She has lectured at leading American, European and East Asian universities, including the University of Southern California, her alma mater; Hampton University; Science Po University in Paris, France; and Hebei University of Science and Technology in Qinhuangdao, China.

Wilson earned a bachelor’s of arts degree from the USC School of Journalism in 1991. In 2008, she earned a French language certificate from the Institut de Francais, Villefranche, France, and in 2014, she graduated from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses at Babson College program in its second cohort.

Wilson has been published in traditional, broadcast and digital media. From 2017 to 2022, she contributed to the Relevance Report, a collection of essays authored by top PR professionals  serving on the Advisory Board to the USC Center for Public Relations. Wilson also was published on the USC Center on Public Diplomacy online blog. In 2017, the Huffington Post website published her “Going Global” essay, and in 2011, the Presidency Key Brief, a French-English publication on global issues in France, published and distributed her multiculturalism essay to thought leaders and heads of state worldwide. Wilson has produced and hosted programs, including her “Good News Liberia” radio show and “On the Continent” TV program, which aired in France and francophone Africa.

In 2015, Wilson received the Pat Tobin Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Black Public Relations Society. In 2016, she received the Outstanding Alumna award from the USC Black Alumni Association. Since 2017, Wilson has served on  the Advisory Board for the Center for Public Relations in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. In 2023, she traveled to the Television Academy Saban Media campus in Hollywood, Calif. to participate in the Educator’s Conference as an Alex Trebek Legacy fellow. The award is named after Alex Trebek, the longtime TV talk show host of Jeopardy!