Leadership Team

Dave Lougee is president and CEO of TEGNA Inc., one of the most geographically diverse broadcasters in the U.S. He also serves on the company’s Board of Directors.

Prior to becoming CEO, Lougee spent 10 years as president of TEGNA Media. During that time, the company acquired Belo Corp. and London Broadcasting, nearly doubling its broadcast portfolio.

Prior to joining TEGNA, Lougee served as executive vice president, media operations for Belo. He also served as senior vice president and president and general manager of TV and cable operations in Seattle/Tacoma. Earlier in his career, Lougee was vice president, news at WRC, the NBC owned and operated station in Washington, DC and vice president, news director at TEGNA’s KUSA in Denver.

Lougee is a past chairman of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Board of Directors as well as the NBC Affiliates Board of Directors and the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) Board of Directors. He is currently vice chairman of the BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) Board of Directors and serves on the Board of the Broadcasters Foundation of America.

Lougee is a graduate of the University of Colorado and attended the Stanford Executive Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2004.

He and his wife, Danni, reside in Northern Virginia.

As executive vice president and chief operating officer of Media Operations for TEGNA Inc., Lynn Beall leads operations across the company’s 64 broadcast stations that reach approximately thirty-nine percent of all television households nationwide. This includes setting the vision and strategy for content and sales innovation initiatives that are transforming local journalism and marketing solutions in the digital age. Due to these efforts, TEGNA has won more national Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University, Edward R. Murrow and Peabody awards than any other local broadcaster in the past five years.

Beall is currently chair of the CBS Television Affiliates Association Board, vice chair of the National Association of Broadcasters Television Board and serves on the T. Howard Foundation Board of Directors. In 2018, Beall received the Alliance for Women in Media’s Gracie Leadership Award recognizing the media’s industry’s outstanding business leaders.

Previously, Beall was executive vice president and senior vice president of Gannett Broadcasting, positions she held while President and General Manager of KSDK-TV, the NBC affiliate in St. Louis, MO. Earlier, Beall was general executive of Gannett Television where she worked with stations on special projects and retransmission agreements. Prior to her corporate roles, Beall held marketing, programming and sales positions at five TEGNA stations, including WUSA in Washington, DC; KPNX in Phoenix, AZ; KTHV in Little Rock, AR; WKYC in Cleveland, OH and KSDK in St. Louis, MO. She has twice been named Manager of the Year during her tenure.

She has previously served as a board member or advisor for organizations including the Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the St. Louis affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the Urban League and the St. Louis Sports Commission Board.

Victoria Harker is executive vice president and chief financial officer of TEGNA Inc. (NYSE: TGNA), formerly Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI), a global $10 billion media and digital communications company. Before joining Gannett in 2012, Harker served as CFO and president of global business services of the AES Corp. (NYSE: AES), a multinational power company. Prior to joining AES, Harker was CFO and treasurer of MCI from 2002 to 2006 and served as CFO of the MCI Group from 1998 to 2002. Harker also held several positions at MCI within the consumer and small business divisions in finance, information technology, and operations between 1990 and 1998.

Beyond her management experience, Harker holds leadership roles on several public company boards, including Huntington Ingalls (NYSE: HII) and Xylem Inc. (NYSE: XYL).  At HII, the $12 billion builder of ships and submarines for the U.S. government, she serves as chair of the Compensation Committee and on the Finance Committee. At Xylem, the $13 billion global water infrastructure company, Harker has been Audit Committee chair since the company’s 2012 inception and a member of the Nominating and Governance Committee and Finance Committees. She also previously served on the Board of Directors of Darden Restaurants (NYSE: DRI) from 2007-2014 and STRIDE (NYSE: LRN) from 2020–2022.

In the not-for-profit space, Harker also serves on several boards, primarily focused on education. She was appointed to the UVA Board of Visitors by Governor Robert McDonnell in 2012, where she chaired the Finance Committee and was a member of the Executive Committee, the Academic Affairs Committee, the Health System Board and the Presidential Search Committee. She remains a member of the UVA Health System Board, Chair of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy Board, and the Rare Book School Board. She is emeritus to the UVA Jefferson Trust, the College of Arts & Sciences Foundation and the Alumni Association Boards, which she chaired from 2010-2012.

In 2019, Harker was appointed by Governor Ralph Northam to the Board of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), responsible for the accreditation and financial oversight for Virginia’s school systems, where she chairs the Board’s Financial Resources and Planning Committee. She is also actively engaged in the Virginia Business Higher Education Council (VBHEC) Board, one of the nation’s leading public private partnerships, chartered to advance economic growth through the advancement of higher education. She serves as a trustee on the Board of the Virginia Historical Society, providing oversight for the $90 million bi-partisan endowment and Richmond’s Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Harker received her bachelor’s degree in English, with a concentration in economics, from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in business administration, with a concentration in finance, from American University. A two-time ironman triathlete, marathon runner, long-distance swimmer, biker and golfer, she lives in McLean, Virginia, with her husband and three sons.

Anne Bentley is chief communications officer for TEGNA Inc. and is responsible for leading the company’s external and internal communications strategy, employee experience, corporate social responsibility initiatives and overseeing the TEGNA Foundation.

Before joining TEGNA, Bentley was vice president of corporate communications at PBS, the nation’s largest non-commercial media organization with more than 350 member stations. In this position, she served as the lead communications officer with responsibility for the organization’s communication strategy and positioning.

During her tenure at PBS, which began in 2010, Bentley was instrumental in enhancing the organization’s visibility in the media landscape. In addition to serving as PBS’ chief spokesperson, she oversaw all aspects of the development and implementation of corporate communications strategy, including corporate positioning and reputation management, media relations, PBS KIDS and General Audience (TV, Web, mobile) publicity, social media, employee, executive and system communications and events.

Prior to joining PBS, Bentley worked for more than a decade at AOL and, most recently, served as senior vice president, corporate communications, developing communications strategies and advising senior executives during AOL’s transformation from a subscription-based business to a global Web-services company.

Bentley serves on the Board of Directors of the IRTS Foundation. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Richmond.

W. Edmond (Ed) Busby is senior vice president and chief strategy officer for TEGNA. He joined the company in December 2015 and is responsible for driving existing strategic initiatives and identifying new growth opportunities for TEGNA.

Prior to TEGNA, Busby served as both an independent advisor and as a Partner in The Boston Consulting Group’s Media Practice where he served a broad array of media companies and private equity firms investing in the media sector. He also served as the chief commerce officer for Softcard, the carrier-led mobile wallet that was sold to Google in 2015.

Busby is an active angel investor and has funded start-ups in the Hispanic media, fin tech, and local ad services sectors. He has also served as an adjunct professor of mobile marketing at Columbia Business School.

Busby is a graduate of The George Washington University and holds an MBA in Finance and Media from Columbia Business School.

Akin Harrison leads TEGNA’s legal department. Harrison has held several roles within the company since joining as assistant general counsel in 2003.

Prior to joining TEGNA, Harrison was a corporate attorney in private practice in New York City and Washington, D.C. where his practice included representing Fortune 500 companies, venture capital firms and early stage companies in mergers and acquisitions, venture capital financings and corporate lending transactions.

Harrison earned his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and his undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Jeff Newman was named senior vice president and chief human resources officer for TEGNA Inc. in April 2017. He joined the company in 2013 as vice president of total rewards and HR services.

Prior to joining TEGNA, Newman worked in the financial services sector for over 15 years. He was the head of compensation and benefits for the North American Operations of HSBC. At HSBC, he was also responsible for leading human resources functions for mergers and acquisitions. Newman has held similar leadership positions at GE and Capital One.

Newman is a graduate of Towson State University with a degree in Business and a minor in Mathematics. He is an active member of several HR professional associations, including presenting at national conferences and serving on advisory boards.

Jeff and his wife, Laurie, have two children.

Kurt Rao currently serves as the senior vice president and chief technology officer at TEGNA.

Rao leads all facets of TEGNA’s technology strategy, including the development and implementation of the company’s next-generation client and customer technology solutions in the areas of content, advertising, data and insights and media distribution, in addition to broadcast operations and information technology.

Previously, Rao was chief information and technology officer for Time Inc., where he led the transformation and growth of the media publishing organization into a digital content platform company. In addition, he optimized technology operations across the organization and built platforms to support content across video and digital while enhancing consumer data analytics.

Prior to joining Time Inc., Rao was an executive at Time Warner Inc., where he most recently served as corporate chief information officer. During his tenure, he helped build and implement a shared, internal services technology organization. Rao has also worked as vice president of technology for NBC Universal and director of application development at Viacom Inc.

Rao received his B.S. in Computer Science from Monmouth University. He currently sits on the advisory boards of several software companies.

Grady Tripp is vice president and chief diversity officer for TEGNA Inc. where he oversees all aspects of TEGNA’s diversity strategy, including attracting, retaining and growing diverse talent at all levels of the company, developing training programs to enhance awareness and accountability in diversity issues, and facilitating the company’s racial diversity and inclusion employee working group.

Since joining TEGNA in 2017, Tripp has been an integral part of the company’s people and culture strategy. As senior director of human resources and talent acquisition, he oversaw strategy and execution for TEGNA’s talent acquisition team, in addition to leading a team of human resources professionals supporting television stations in 15 markets.

Prior to TEGNA, Tripp was a human capital performance and change management leader within Accenture’s talent and organization practice in the United States and Europe and has held human resources leadership roles for companies across five industries.

Tripp holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management and an MBA in Finance from Florida A&M University.