Carol Melamed
Carol Melamed worked as a lawyer at The Washington Post newspaper from 1979 to 2006. For the last ten years of her tenure, she was Vice President Government Affairs. Her responsibilities included handling federal, state, and local legislative and regulatory matters affecting the business and editorial sides of the newspaper. She also was The Post’s representative to many local organizations, including the Council for Court Excellence and Washington Performing Arts. She was on the boards of the Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia Press Association and the Virginia Press Association and served as president of these organizations in 1999-2000 and 2003, respectively.
After retiring from the Post, Carol has focused on several press-related organizations. She was president of the First Amendment Coalition (based in California) from 2014 to 2017 and remains a devoted executive committee and board member. She served as a trustee, and is a past president, of the Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia Press Foundation.
Carol has also gotten involved in many dog-related activities. They include: volunteering at the Humane Rescue Alliance (in Washington, DC) and serving as a member of the Founder’s Council of Alaska Geographic. For over two years, she and her dog were a certified therapy team with National Capital Therapy Dogs, and before that, she was a disaster volunteer for the Humane Society of the United States, working in animal shelters in Mississippi (after Hurricane Katrina) and Iowa (after the Cedar Rapids floods).
Recently, Carol joined the board of HIAS, an organization that provides vital services to refugees, asylum seekers, and other displaced and stateless persons around the world.
Before joining The Post, Carol practiced law at the D.C. firm of Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering (from 1975 to 1979), and she clerked in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. for a year prior to that. She graduated from Brown University in 1967, magna cum laude with high honors in English Literature, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She earned an MAT in 1969 from Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a JD in 1974 from the Catholic University of America
Carol lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband, Doug. She has four daughters (and sons-in-law) and eight grandchildren.