Master's in Public Relations & Corporate Communications
Alan Bjerga

Alan Bjerga is the author of the book "Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest," and a past president of both the National Press Club and the North American Agricultural Journalists. He is currently the Senior Vice President of Communications at the National Milk Producers Federation, the largest U.S. organization of dairy cooperatives, work he began in 2018. He has taught at Georgetown since 2012, receiving a School of Continuing Studies Tropaia Award for outstanding teaching in 2018.

In his 20-year career in journalism he received numbers awards for his work from organizations including the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the New York Press Club, the Kansas Press Association, and the Overseas Press Club, much of it for his work with Bloomberg News, where he was the lead writer on agricultural policy and rural issues. Before his work at Bloomberg, Bjerga won the NAAJ's top writing award in 2005 while working for the Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau. He also co-hosted "Politics, Policy and Power," a public-affairs program on Bloomberg Radio that revived his early roots in broadcast, which included brief stints at KCCM-FM (Moorhead, Minn.) and KFAI-FM (Minneapolis, Minn.)

Bjerga grew up on a farm near the town of Motley, Minnesota. He has earned a bachelor's degree in History and English Literature at Concordia College (Moorhead), and a master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota. He began his print-journalism career with the St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minn.) and also reported for the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader and The Wichita Eagle (Kan.). He's has been a frequent guest commentator on numerous national and global broadcast and print outlets, including PBS Newshour, NPR's Morning Edition, and the BBC. He was featured in a TEDx talk on global hunger in 2016.

An avid musician, Bjerga sings with Georgetown's festival choir that annually performs at the Kennedy Center to commemorate the Rev. Martin Luther King; he also performs at an annual July 4 concert for veterans at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, DC. He has completed five marathons. Finally, Bjerga is a trivia master, with appearances on both "Jeopardy!" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"