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George Miles
President and Chief Executive Officer, WQED Multimedia
 George L. Miles, Jr. is President and CEO of WQED Multimedia, honored with the 2007 and 2006 Mid-Atlantic Emmy® Award for Station Excellence. Founded in 1954 as the nation's first community-supported broadcaster, WQED creates, produces and distributes quality programs, products and services to engage, inform, educate and entertain the public within its community and around the world. One of the first broadcasters in the country to be fully high-definition (HD) in its studio and field production capabilities, WQED is the parent company of WQED-TV (PBS); WQED-DT; WQED: The Neighborhood Channel; WQED-HD; WQEX-TV (A ShopNBC affiliate); WQED-FM 89.3/Pittsburgh; WQEJ-FM 89.7/Johnstown; local and national television and radio productions; WQED Interactive (www.wqed.org); and The WQED Education Department.
Mr. Miles arrived in Pittsburgh in September 1994 as President and CEO of what was then QED Communications. He assembled a new management team to reorganize the company and to reconnect with the community, restructured the organization to be more flexible in the changing telecommunications market, and later consolidated separate entities into a seamless multimedia enterprise to take advantage of cross-functional disciplines.
From 1984 to 1994, Mr. Miles was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of WNET/Thirteen in New York and directly responsible for day-to-day operations of the PBS flagship station. Prior to his WNET assignment, he was Business Manager and Controller of KDKA-TV and KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh; Controller and Station Manager of WPCQ in Charlotte; Vice President and Controller of Westinghouse Broadcasting Television Group in New York; and Station Manager of WBZ-TV in Boston.
Mr. Miles' experience also includes work as a contract auditor for the U.S. Department of Defense. From 1964 to 1966 he was in the U.S. Army, serving six months in Vietnam. In 1969, Mr. Miles joined the accounting firm of Touche Ross & Co., serving as manager until 1978.
Mr. Miles, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), earned a B.A. in accounting from Seton Hall University, and an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. In 2008, he received a Doctor of Humane letters from LaRoche University and in 2002, an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Business Administration from Robert Morris University. In 1989 he received an honorary Doctor of Law degree from St. Joseph's College, and he was honored with the Pinnacle Award for outstanding achievement as an alumnus from Fairleigh Dickinson University. In 2006, he was named one of the "Fifty Most Influential African Americans" by The New Pittsburgh Courier, one of the country's oldest and most prestigious African American newspapers.
He sits on the Board of Directors of American International Group, Inc. (AIG); Harley-Davidson, Inc.; WESCO International, Inc.; EQT Corporation; HFF,Inc.; Chester Engineers, Inc.; AF/AM Channel; University of Pittsburgh; and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. He is a Director of the Mt. Ararat Community Activity Center's Executive Board.
Former Chairman of the Association for America's Public Television Stations (APTS), and former Co-Chair of Mentoring Partnership of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Mr. Miles has also served as chair of the Board of the Urban League of Pittsburgh, Inc.
He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Janet.
Deborah L. Acklin
President-Elect and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), WQED Multimedia
 Deborah L. Acklin was unanimously voted President-Elect and CEO at the WQED Board Of Directors meeting, effective September 23, 2010 for the Emmy-Award-winning WQED Multimedia in Pittsburgh. Acklin has served in multiple executive roles at WQED and has successfully managed the day-to-day operations and strategies for its three TV channels, two radio stations, an interactive Web-based learning channel, an education department, fundraising, finance, engineering, publishing and marketing communications.
Ms. Acklin is cited as one of America's pre-eminent women in media. In September of 2007, Ms. Acklin received her second consecutive Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for Station Excellence, given by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences - an award given to a general manager of a commercial or public television station in Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia and New Jersey for outstanding programming, commitment to broadcast excellence, and exemplary operations.
Formerly Executive Vice President and General Manager of WQED, Ms. Acklin served as executive producer for "The War That Made America," a four-hour, high-definition (HD), internationally-released docu-drama for PBS which focused on the French and Indian War. Ms. Acklin returned to WQED in 2002 as Senior Vice President of Production and Technology/Chief Content Officer after spending several years at the National Geographic Channel where she was recruited in 2000 from WQED to help launch the cable television startup. Working from the National Geographic Society in Washington DC, she helped lead a team that conceived, developed and produced "National Geographic Today," a daily television journal about life on "planet earth." In her role at National Geographic, Ms. Acklin produced more television hours than any other producer in the Society's long history.
As Executive Producer at WQED Pittsburgh from 1996-2000, Ms. Acklin developed blockbuster music specials for PBS which generated more than $45 million dollars for public television. The programs still hold the record as the most successful fundraising programs to date. She also oversaw production of national documentaries for PBS, and created WQED's nightly television magazine program, "OnQ," now in its 11th year.
The Pittsburgh native's work has been honored with many awards including: a national Emmy award nomination for a documentary about the legendary Mister Rogers; seven Emmy awards (Mid-Atlantic); a CINE Golden Eagle; White House Press Association honors; The Gabriel Award from the Catholic Communicators Conference; the Pearl Award from the descendants of the Warner Brothers; the Pennsylvania TV/Film award from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR); Associated Press honors for Best Newscast; Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters awards for Excellence in Broadcasting; the YWCA Tribute to Women Award in the Arts and Culture category; and the personal honors of being named one of Pittsburgh's Outstanding Women in Science by the Women & Girls' Foundation. On November 5, she will accept for WQED the League of Women Voters 2009 Good Government Award.
Ms. Acklin is active in the Pittsburgh community on a variety of board and advisory boards including: The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust; The Three Rivers Arts Festival; Carlow University, where she also serves as an executive in residence (EIR) for the Executive M.B.A. (EMBA) program; The Steeltown Entertainment Project; St. Vincent Seminary; and The Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Society. She holds a B.A. from Duquesne University and attended Harvard Business School where she completed the prestigious Advanced Management Program.
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