Steve TaravellaSteve Taravella has been the World Food Programme’s Senior Spokesperson in Washington, DC, since July 2013. In this role, he regularly speaks to media and other audiences about WFP’s emergency operations around the world.
He joined the United Nations in 2008 as Chief of Internal Communications at WFP’s headquarters in Rome.
Prior to joining WFP, Taravella worked as Director of Communications for the International Partnership for Microbicides and, before that, for Family Health International. Both US-based non-governmental organizations work on HIV and other public health challenges in the developing world.
Prior to those positions, Taravella worked as a journalist in the US, covering health and finance for national business magazines for 15 years. In 1989, he won the Dag Hammarskjold Award for Human Rights Advocacy in Journalism.
Outside the US, Taravella has had communications assignments in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and India, among other countries.
He was born in New York, received a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and Russian from Baylor University, and now lives in Bethesda, Maryland.