Calvin Sims was named Program Officer for News Media for the Ford Foundation in September, 2007. In this role, he manages Ford's portfolio of journalism grants, which aim to strengthen investigative and foreign reporting, public television and radio, traditional, new, and ethnic media, standards and ethics, and press freedoms.

Prior to joining Ford, Mr. Sims was a reporter, foreign correspondent, and producer for The New York Times for two decades. His work has appeared in multimedia platforms, in print, podcast, documentary, and web video. He served as host of "The Conversation," a web video program at www.nytimes.com that features in-depth interviews with prominent personalities. He also anchored the website's "World View" podcast, a weekly discussion of foreign affairs with Times correspondents across the globe, and "Page One," a nightly news program of the stories on the newspaper's front page, broadcast on the Discovery Times channel.

Mr. Sims was senior producer for "Struggle for the Soul of Islam," a critically acclaimed documentary for PBS on the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, based on his reporting for The Times. Before joining the television division, Mr. Sims was a foreign correspondent based in Buenos Aires, Tokyo, and Jakarta. He has covered guerrilla insurgencies in South America, political developments on the Korean peninsula, and the advent of democracy in Indonesia. He has interviewed 30 heads of state.

During a sabbatical from The Times, Mr. Sims was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he led a research project that examined the rise of radical Islamic forces in Indonesia. Concurrently, he held the Ferris Professorship of Journalism at Princeton University, where he taught a course on the media and terrorism. He also conducted workshops and cultural exchange programs for journalists in Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan as part of an effort to resolve historical conflicts.

Mr. Sims is a graduate of Yale University and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowship of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves as a trustee of the Overseas Press Club, National Book Foundation, and the Harlem Educational Activities Fund.