John F. Cooke

John F. Cooke
Senior Fellow, USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy

John F. Cooke resides in Denver, Colorado.

Previously, Mr. Cooke was with The Walt Disney Company for fifteen years. For five of those years, he was Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs at Disney Corporate, and earlier, from June 1985 to January 1995, he was President of The Disney Channel. Before joining Disney, Mr. Cooke served for eleven years at the Times Mirror Company where he held senior positions at corporate, the presidency of a subsidiary division, and finally Executive Vice President of Times Mirror Cable (before leaving for Disney).

While Mr. Cooke was at the Disney Channel, the Channel received 32 Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards for programming. At Walt Disney Corporate headquarters, he oversaw several departments including Corporate Alliances which created and managed long-term contractual financial and coordinated marketing and branding relationships with some of the nation’s leading corporate entities.

Mr. Cooke is currently a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. He is a Trustee Emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Trust and is Chairman Emeritus of the American Film Institute. Mr. Cooke is a former president of the Lincoln Club, a position he held for fourteen years before he moved to Denver.  The non-partisan Lincoln Club, founded in Los Angeles in 1921, has had an evolving membership of distinguished Angelenos who have met every year for 101 uninterrupted times to commemorate the leadership of President Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Cooke is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served on the Clinton Administration’s Commission on the Global Information Infrastructure.

Previously, John was a Trustee of Johns Hopkins University; a Trustee of The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (the parent entity and operator of Monticello and The Thomas Jefferson Library); a member of the Board and Chairman of the Los Angeles Public Library Foundation, where he is designated as Chairman Emeritus and Director Emeritus; a member and Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of UCLA School of Public Affairs; a member of the Board of Overseers at the Huntington Library; a member of the Board of the Library of Congress; a member of the Board of the Los Angeles County Art Museum; a founding Board Member of the Pacific Council on International Policy (Board Member for twenty-two years); a member of the Board of Trustees of the Skirball Center; Chairman of the Board of Advisors of USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism; and Director Emeritus of the Constitutional Rights Foundation.