Karen Elliott House

Karen Elliott House, 69, retired in March 2006 as Publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Senior Vice President of Dow Jones & Company, and a member of the company’s executive committee. She is a broadly experienced business executive with particular expertise and experience in international affairs stemming from a distinguished career as a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and editor.

She is Chairman of the Board of the RAND Corp. and author of On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religious, Fault Lines—and Future, published by Knopf in 2012. She also is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and has taught Mideast politics at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy for the past two years.

Ms. House served as publisher from 2002 until her retirement and in that role was responsible for all news, editorial, sales and other business functions of The Wall Street Journal and its editions around the world. From 1989 to 2002 she served as vice president international and then president international of Dow Jones, responsible for The Wall Street Journal’s print editions in Asia and Europe as well as for magazine and television ventures overseas.

During a 32-year career with Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, Ms. House also served as foreign editor, diplomatic correspondent, and energy correspondent based in Washington D.C. Her journalism awards include a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for coverage of the Middle East (1984), two Overseas Press Club awards for coverage of the Middle East and of Islam and the Edwin M. Hood award for Excellence in Diplomatic Reporting for a series on Saudi Arabia (1982). She has interviewed numerous world leaders including Vladimir Putin, Zhu Rongji, Saddam Hussein, Benjamin Natanyahu, King Salman of Saudi Arabia and the late King Hussein of Jordan and Yassir Arafat.

She has served and continues to serve on multiple non-profit boards including the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, and Boston University. She also is a member of the advisory board of the College of Communication at the University of Texas.

She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin where in 1996 she was the recipient of the University’s “Distinguished Alumnus” award. She studied and taught at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics and she holds honorary degrees from Boston University (2003) and Lafayette College (1992). Ms. House is married and is the mother of four children ages 21-42.