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THE WHITE HOUSE

                     Office of the Press Secretary
                           (Hope, Arkansas)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                     March 12, 1999
                  PRESIDENT CLINTON NAMES THREE MEMBERS 
                       OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF 
                      THE AMERICAN FOLKLIFE CENTER

The President today announced the appointment of Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, William E. Kennard, and G. Mario Moreno to serve as members of the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center.

Ms. Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, of Plainfield, Vermont, is Deputy Assistant to the President and Advisor to the First Lady on the Millennium. She previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady. Before she came to the White House, she was the Executive Director of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, a Presidentially appointed advisory commission created in 1982 to encourage private sector support and to increase public understanding of the arts and the humanities through its projects, publications and meetings. From 1983-1994, she served as Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). While on Capitol Hill, she chaired the board of Vermont Governor's Institute on the Arts. From 1970-1983, she worked for the Vermont Council on the Arts, the state's art agency, where she was the Executive Director for eight years. There, she initiated the Artists-in-the-Schools, Touring Aid, Grants-in-Aid, Artists' Fellowships, Dance Touring, Challenge Grants, Museum Services and Folk Art programs.

Mr. William E. Kennard, of Los Angeles, California, serves as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. From 1993-1997, he served as the Commission's General Counsel. Before joining the FCC, he was a partner and member of the board of directors of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernard, McPherson and Hand. He specialized in communications law, with an emphasis on regulatory matters for communication companies. Before entering private law practice, he served as General Counsel and as legal Fellow for the National Association of Broadcasters. Mr. Kennard received a B.A. degree from Stanford University and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School.

Mr. G. Mario Moreno, of Uvalde, Texas, is the Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs at the Department of Education. As the Assistant Secretary, Moreno works with other federal agencies, educators, and elected officials at the federal, state and local levels to encourage participation in the Secretary's initiatives. Prior to government service, from 1985-1994, he was Regional Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) in Washington, D.C. At MALDEF, he directed the congressional and legislative office, interpreted litigation and advocacy needs, and developed strategies to advance Latino civil rights. From 1982-1984, he was the Executive Director of AYUDA, Inc., which provides bilingual legal aid to indigent Spanish-speaking people in the Washington metropolitan area. While there, he specialized in immigration law. He was awarded the prestigious John L. Loeb fellowship in advanced environmental design by Harvard University's Graduate School of Design for study from 1978-1979. From 1972-1978, he worked for the city of Brownsville, TX as the city's first planning director and later as assistant city manager. Mr. Moreno received a B.A. degree in economics and a Master's Degree in urban and regional planning from Texas A&M, and a J.D. degree from St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.

The Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center is housed within the Library of Congress. The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the Congress to "preserve and present American folklife" through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, publication, and training. The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in the Music Division of the Library of Congress in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.

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