Office of the President

Libby Liu
President
Radio Free Asia

Appointed RFA President in September 2005, Ms. Liu provides the private non-profit grantee corporation with leadership, vision, and mission-based strategic and operational direction.  RFA’s congressionally mandated mission is to provide balanced, objective news and information to citizens in East Asia’s closed societies.  Under Ms. Liu’s administration, RFA has transformed from a radio broadcaster to a wholly digital multi-media interactive news organization.  As president, Ms. Liu sets the operational, editorial and administrative policies and procedures for the corporation.

She engages with and coordinates Radio Free Asia’s work with oversight by the RFA Board of Directors and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.  She works with stakeholders at like-minded organizations, in Congress, in US government agencies, at press freedom groups and with other international broadcasters both US and of other western nations.  Ms. Liu facilitates effective and timely communications and broad-based collaboration between and amongst RFA’s bureaus and divisions as well as within the Human Rights and Press Freedom communities writ large.

In 2011, with federal funding granted through the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Ms. Liu created the Open Technology Fund, a global internet freedom technology program housed within Radio Free Asia.   Although OTF is an RFA program, the program serves citizens anywhere in the world where government denies access, censors content, interferes or monitors online activity.  Due to the nature of RFA’s work, its in-house technologists and journalists have a long history of demonstrable success in combatting online censorship since the advent of the Great Firewall of China.  The OTF program expands the scope of this internet freedom work in a world that is becoming markedly less supportive of free speech, especially online and on mobile networks.

Prior to September 2005, Ms. Liu served as RFA’s Vice-President for Administration and Finance charged with maturing the corporation from a start-up to a sustainable long-term endeavor.  Her main focus was to put processes and structure into the operations of the corporation.  As such, she was responsible for negotiating the company’s first collective bargaining agreement, for correcting the underlying issues leading to the broadcaster organization campaign and to establish the company’s relationship with the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.

Prior to joining RFA, Ms. Liu served as the Director of Administration and Strategic Planning at the Baltimore headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  There she played a pivotal role in the Board’s establishment of the NAACP’s Five-Year Strategic Plan Goals and Objectives and in the implementation of the Plan.

Ms. Liu holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Berkeley, an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

A California native, Ms. Liu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants and has traveled widely in East Asia.  She currently resides in Northern Virginia with a teenage daughter, a dog and three cats.