Hodding Carter III, an award-winning journalist and commentator with a career-long "minor in public affairs," was elected president and chief executive officer of Knight Foundation in September 1997. He assumed those responsibilities and joined the Board of Trustees on Feb. 1, 1998.

Hodding Carter III graduated summa cum laude in June 1957 with a bachelor's degree from Princeton University. That same month, he reported to duty as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. He returned to Greenville in 1959, where he spent nearly 18 years as reporter-editorial writer, managing editor and editor and associate publisher of the Delta Democrat-Times. In 1961, he won the Society of Professional Journalists' national award for editorial writing. His time in Greenville was interrupted in 1965-66 for a year at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow and for stints with two successful presidential campaigns - Lyndon Johnson's in 1964 and Jimmy Carter's in 1976.