Leonard Cox

Contact

leonardecox@aol.com

About

In December 2018, Leonard Cox retired from his longterm position as the Assistant Vice President for Strategic Communications at Columbia University. Following five months of writing and conducting oral histories, Cox returned to Columbia in June 2019 to work with the Center for Oral History Research.

Prior to joining Columbia, Cox worked as the Senior Vice President at Applied Research and Consulting (ARC; formerly KRC), where he managed the firm’s corporate communications and media entertainment practices.

During his fourteen years working with ARC, Cox developed and managed large-scale communication campaigns. Prior to ARC, Cox was Director of Corporate Communications at the National Broadcast Company (NBC). In this capacity, Cox managed the network’s internal communication initiatives and directed several public and governmental affairs campaigns. In addition, he served as a producer at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

Before moving to New York in 1987, Cox served as the Assistant Press Secretary to Indiana’s Lieutenant Governor.

Cox is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. His film, THE KILLER WITHIN, was nominated for an EMMY Award. Cox received Purdue's 2004 College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Award and the Gold Medal for creativity from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Cox is celebrating his thirty-third year as a volunteer at the Dwelling Place, a shelter for homeless women located in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. Cox is a past member of the Advisory Board for the Brian Lamb School of Communications at Purdue University and has served on the Board of the Columbia University Community Service initiative.

In May 2016, Cox completed his graduate degree in Columbia University's Oral History program. In October 2019, he presented a paper at the annual conference of the Oral History Association. Cox shared segments of his interviews with Dr. Charles Silverstein. In 1973, Dr. Silverstein was one of the psychologists responsible for the removal of the word homosexual from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Cox's paper was titled, "Deleting Homosexuality."