FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 21, 2002

CONTACT
Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119

FOUR NEW MEMBERS JOIN DRAKE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

A distinguished journalist, a newspaper publisher, the co-founder of one of Iowa's largest advertising agencies and a business consultant with extensive international experience have been elected to the Drake University Board of Trustees.

The four new members are:

• Paul Leavitt, Washington news editor of USA Today;
• Mary P. Stier, president and publisher of The Des Moines Register and senior group president of the Gannett Midwest Newspaper Group;
• Liz Newell, vice president of The Integer Group, which merged with Kragie/Newell, the Des Moines advertising agency she founded with her husband, Jack Kragie;
• Richard S. Cusac, a strategic business consultant who served in senior positions with Citicorp in Asia and the Middle East and as CEO of The Gulf Bank of Kuwait and managing director of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets in London.

Leavitt, Newell and Cusac are Drake alumni. All four new members will serve three-year terms on the Board of Trustees, which meets four times yearly and serves as the University's policy-making and governing body.

Leavitt has been a guest lecturer in news reporting classes in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a member of the school's National Advisory Board. He also created a faculty development fund and a dean's discretionary fund for the school. Prior to joining USA Today, Leavitt was a reporter and editor for The Des Moines Register from 1975 to 1985. He also worked as a news reporter and sportscaster for KCCI-TV and KRNT Radio.

Stier first came to Iowa as a student at the University of Iowa in 1974. She joined Gannett in 1982 as retail advertising manager of The Iowa City Press-Citizen and eventually worked her way up to publisher. She was president and publisher of the Rockford Register Star in Rockford, Ill., before joining The Des Moines Register in 2000. She is a member of Gannett's Newspaper Operating Committee, which sets policy for Gannett's newspaper division.

Newell and her husband founded Kragie/Newell advertising agency in 1977. The agency grew from a staff of three to 200 marketing professionals with offices in six cities. In 1997, she engineered the merger of Kragie/Newell with The Integer Group. The merged entity was purchased later that year by Omnicom, the world's largest advertising agency holding company. Newell continued to run the state's largest agency through 2000.

Cusac has held several senior executive positions in both major corporate and small entrepreneurial enterprises during his career. He is currently a director of the Learning Forum, a privately owned company involved with advanced learning and teaching skills, and also the Rancho Santa Fe Community Foundation. He has served on the National Advisory Board for Drake's College of Business and Public Administration since March 2000. He also participated in Drake's first symposium on international business in 2000.