Writer and Teacher Elizabeth “Liz” Colton

From civil rights activism in segregated Asheville to international diplomacy and journalism, Elizabeth Colton’s career has spanned continents and causes.

Elizabeth “Liz” Colton, whose global career bridges diplomacy, journalism, politics, and education, continues to speak, write, teach, and advise audiences around the world.

Elizabeth grew up in Asheville, where as a teenager during segregation in the late 1950s and early 1960s she became active in the civil rights movement. She was among the first white students to join ASCORE, an interracial student organization advocating equality. After graduating from high school, Liz pursued her childhood dream of working internationally, dedicating decades to addressing national and global challenges facing women and working to break barriers to equality.

Her career has taken her across multiple fields and continents, serving as a US Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, working as a United Nations international civil servant in New York, and conducting anthropological research in the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Elizabeth later became an Emmy Award-winning journalist and a diplomacy and war correspondent, reporting for ABC and NBC News, Newsweek, and National Public Radio, where she served as diplomatic and foreign affairs correspondent.

In 1988, she joined the presidential campaign of the Rev. Jesse Jackson as press secretary, later authoring the book The Jackson Phenomenon: The Man, The Power, The Message about the historic campaign. Elizabeth also edited newspapers in Virginia and chaired the Mass Communications Department at Shenandoah University.

In 2000, Colton joined the US Foreign Service and served as an American diplomat in posts across the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia—regions where she had previously reported as a journalist. After challenging the State Department’s mandatory retirement policy for Foreign Service officers in a nationally noted age-discrimination lawsuit, she returned to her hometown of Asheville.

Today, she teaches global online courses on diplomacy, media, and communications for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), headquartered in Geneva.

Elizabeth Colton remains active in community and civic life in western North Carolina. She has long been involved with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County and with Warren Wilson College. She currently serves on the boards of Blue Ridge Public Radio and the statewide ERA-NC Alliance, and is active at Trinity Episcopal Church.

She is a recipient of Leadership Asheville Forum’s Circle of Excellence Award and serves as board chair of Reporters Without Borders RSF-USA/North America.

Colton holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of two books, The Jackson Phenomenon: The Man, The Power, The Message (Doubleday, 1989) and Connecting with Creativity: Ten Keys to Unlocking Your Creative Potential, co-authored with Elizabeth W. Bergmann (Capital Books, 1999). She is currently completing several new manuscripts and hopes to bring additional works to publication soon.