Susan Swain is co-Chief Executive Officer and President of C-SPAN, the nation’s eighth largest cable television network. Since March 2012, she and Rob Kennedy have shared responsibility for day-to-day operations and longterm strategy for the nonprofit public affairs network, seen in about 70 million cable and satellite homes and globally via the internet. In December 2020, Susan was elected to C-SPAN’s board of directors.

Susan oversees programming for C-SPAN’s three television channels, C-SPAN.org and C-SPAN Radio. She helped launch BookTV and American History TV–weekend blocks featuring non-fiction books and history.” She has been involved in the creation of numerous C-SPAN history series, such as American Presidents, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, American Writers, The Contenders,First Ladies, and Landmark Cases. On the marketing side, Susan oversees press and social media efforts for C-SPAN, and led the publication of C-SPAN’s ten books, including First Ladies (2015) and The Presidents (2019).

For thirty plus years, Susan has also been an on-air interviewer for C-SPAN and currently hosts Q&A, an hour-long weekly interview program. She has covered eight presidential elections and interviewed hundreds of members of Congress, policy experts, journalists, Supreme Court justices, and several presidents and first ladies. She has been the on-air moderator for C-SPAN’s major history series, most recently two seasons of Landmark Cases.

In 2019, she and Rob Kennedy were inducted together into the Cable Hall of Fame; in 2017, the pair was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame. A two-time winner of the Vanguard Award, the cable industry’s highest professional recognition, Susan has also been recognized as a CableTV Pioneer. She has served on several nonprofit boards, including as a current board member and former chair of the National Press Foundation. A longtime member of the National Press Club, Susan was also founding board member of the Cable Television Public Affairs Association. Since October 2016, Susan has served as a corporate director of Discovery, Inc. which produces multimedia real-life entertainment content for audiences across the globe.

Long interested in education, Susan launched the company’s “C-SPANClassroom” effort, one of the cable industry’s first outreach programs to middle and high schools, which now serves more than 40,000 teachers. She served for six years as a trustee of her alma mater, The University of Scranton (PA), which awarded her a BA in communications, magna cum laude and, in 1999, an honorary doctorate. In recent years, she co-chaired the advisory committee for the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University and remains involved with the school’s communications programs.

Susan got her start in broadcasting in college as a part-time reporter for Scranton, PA’s CBS affiliate. She has spent much of her professional career at C-SPAN, beginning as a producer in the network’s start-up days. Later positions included Vice President of Corporate Communications, Senior Vice President and more recently, Executive Vice President and co-COO. Before joining C-SPAN, Susan worked for Raytheon Service Company in Cambridge, MA and in marketing and PR for Up with People, an international education company.

A native Philadelphian, Susan is a longtime resident of northern Virginia. She can be found on Twitter at @CSPANSusan