Patricia Ellis, President
(202) 884-8597
president@wfpg.org

Kimberly Kahnhauser, Associate Director
(202) 884-8131
kahnhauser@wfpg.org

Staff Biographies

Patricia Ellis is President and Co-Founder of the Women’s Foreign Policy  Group. She previously was a foreign affairs reporter and producer for the MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour  and a producer in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Washington bureau. Ms. Ellis taught at American University’s Washington Semester Program specializing in news coverage of foreign affairs. She also previously did research at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, the Center for International Studies at M.I.T, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs and the law firm of Cahill, Gordon and Reindel LLP. In 1989, she was awarded a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Ms. Ellis was subsequently awarded a fellowship by The Freedom Forum for Media Studies at Columbia University. She was part of the Mac Neil-Lehrer team that won the George Peabody Award for the documentary series on South Africa, “Faces of Apartheid” and an Emmy Award for coverage of the Grenada Crisis. She also participated in the European Community Visitor’s Program and received the Netherlands Universities’ Foundation for International Cooperation Scholarship for graduate study at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Ms. Ellis is a founding board member of the International Women’s Media Foundation, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chiefs (heads of foreign policy non-profits), and the Cosmos Club. She previously served on the boards of Women’s Edge, The Overseas Education Fund International and the advisory boards of The Public Diplomacy Foundation, Main Street America and the Third World. She also participated in the Media and Foreign Policy Group at Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute and the Media and Foreign Policy Gulf War Project at the Social Science Research Council. She frequently moderates programs and speaks on the media and foreign policy, and international affairs careers. She received a B.A. in government with honors from Wheaton College, Massachusetts, an M.A. in international relations from New York University, and a graduate diploma in international relations from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. She speaks French.


Kimberly Kahnhauser, Associate Director of Womens Foreign Policy Group, oversees programming, membership outreach, and mentoring activities, as well as website development and publications. Prior to joining WFPG in 2006, Ms. Kahnhauser completed a Fulbright teaching fellowship in Austria; conducted research on DC public housing for Georgetown University's Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service; and managed operations for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. She graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service with a degree in International Politics, during which time she studied at the University of Vienna, the Warsaw School of Economics, and the University of Silesia in Cieszyn, Poland. She is a member of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy was a founding member of Students Stopping Trafficking of People (SSTOP). Ms. Kahnhauser’s areas of interest include human rights, post-conflict reconstruction, international development, and social entrepreneurship.