Sylvia Poggioli

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Sylvia Poggioli bigraphy, stories - American journalist

Sylvia Poggioli : biography

1946 –

Sylvia Poggioli ( born 19 May 1946)

is an American radio reporter for National Public Radio. She is the network’s senior European correspondent.

Early life

Poggioli was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she attended the Buckingham School, now Buckingham Browne & Nichols. She graduated from Harvard College in 1968. She did post-graduate work at the University of Rome as a Fulbright Scholar. The selection of Rome was no coincidence, as she is the daughter of Italian anti-fascists who were forced to flee Italy under Mussolini, in the 1930s. Her father was Renato Poggioli, author of The Theory of the Avant-Garde.

Career

Beginning in 1971, Poggioli worked for Ansa, the Italian news service, on their English desk. She made her debut on NPR on September 4, 1982. She continued serving both Ansa and NPR for four years before leaving Ansa in 1986.

Poggioli eventually rose to European correspondent for NPR. Her radio career was interrupted in 1990 when she spent a year as a research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Poggioli was in London, gathering European reaction, during the 1991 Gulf War. Later, she was lauded for her coverage of the war between the Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats. For her coverage of the Balkans, she won the George Foster Peabody Award in 1993.

In 2005 Poggioli was the featured reporter for the funeral of Pope John Paul II and subsequent conclave.

Poggioli has become a favorite reporter of the Magliozzi Brothers on Car Talk, possibly on account of their common Italian ancestry. Her name has also been featured in the absurdist comic strip Zippy the Pinhead.

She is currently based in Rome.