Bruce M. Ramer was reappointed to the CPB Board of Directors by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate in March 2019. Mr. Ramer was previously appointed by Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. He was vice chair of the CPB Board from 2016 to 2018 and in October 2018 was elected as chair, a position he also held from 2010 to 2012.
He is an attorney and partner at Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown and Passman, a firm specializing in entertainment and media matters.
Mr. Ramer has been active in public television since joining the board of KCET in Los Angeles in 1992. He served as chair from 2001 to 2003.
He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Southern California (USC). He is chair of the USC Institute on Entertainment Law and Business and a member of the Board of Councilors of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Board of Governors of the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg; member of the Board of Councilors of the USC Gould School of Law and the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.
Mr. Ramer is founding chairman and member of the Board of Trustees of the Geffen Playhouse, a board member of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, the Los Angeles Sports Council, the National Archives Foundation; and Chair, Peabody Awards Board of Directors – West Coast and a member of the Board of Directors of the Ellis Island Honors Society. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the Executive Advisory Council of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. He is a former member of the Herrhausen Institute for International Dialogue of Deutsche Bank.
Mr. Ramer received the American Jewish Committee Community Service Award in 1987 and the Learned Hand Award in 2005. He has also received the Beverly Hills Bar Association Entertainment Lawyer of the Year Award in 1996; the Commanders Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2000; the Medal of Honor of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in 2001 and the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation Ambassador for Humanity Award in 2002; and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 2013.
He was named one of the 100 most powerful lawyers in California by California Business Lawyer and one of the top 100 lawyers in California by the Daily Journal.
Mr. Ramer is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Madeline. They have four children and seven grandchildren.
His term expires in 2024.