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Jill Oviatt

Jill Oviatt is the Director of Communications at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). She heads up external and media relations for the Institute, as well as Web communications and publications. Jill was a broadcast journalist for 10 years and spent seven years as a communications specialist and trainer in North America and Asia.

Before joining IHME, Jill was located in Hong Kong, where she was the Director of Training for Coory & Associates, a communications firm that handled all of the communications skills training for Edelman Public Relations in the Asia Pacific region. While there, Jill conducted media training for hundreds of executives from numerous multinational corporations in media interview techniques and crisis communications. She also facilitated presentation skills and message development workshops.

Prior to relocating to Hong Kong, Jill was based in Ottawa, Canada, where she managed a media relations team at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). Jill was responsible for media strategy and training the Institute's numerous media spokespeople nationwide. Her work at CIHI followed three years in the Philippines where Jill was a communications consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), working closely with the Stop TB, Malaria and Health Promotion Units on communications strategy and advocacy materials. While in Manila, Jill also worked as a freelance reporter and political commentator for CBC Radio.

Throughout the 1990s, Jill was a television reporter and presenter with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Montreal on one of the network's major-market prime-time news programs. In 1998, she won a bronze medal at the Columbus Film and Video Awards for a two-part documentary on the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Before joining CBC, Jill was a news reporter and producer for Montreal talk radio station CJAD.

Jill is fluent in French and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree (Cum Laude) in Journalism from California State University, Northridge.