Frank O'Donnell

Frank O’Donnell is president of Clean Air Watch, a nonprofit, non-partisan clean air watchdog organization founded in 2004.

Consulting, Communication and Advocacy

O’Donnell is widely recognized as an unbiased authority on clean-air policy. He closely monitors clean-air and related activities on Capitol Hill, at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and at the state and local levels. O’Donnell is regularly sought out by the media for interpretation of clean-air developments. He has appeared on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Headline News, Fox News Channel, National Public Radio, Marketplace, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and many other media outlets. He has been quoted many times in such print media outlets as The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and many dozens of other newspapers and wire services

O’Donnell has served as an effective media consultant for public interest clients including the American Lung Association, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Breakthrough Technologies Institute, the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management and the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials. Services have included strategic counseling, CEO media training, editorial services (press releases, speeches, op-eds, brochures, newspaper advertising) and broadcast services, including creative issue-oriented radio commercials. O’Donnell’s landmark three-part video news release series on air pollution (underwritten by the South Coast Air Quality Management District) was seen by more than 10 million people and has been widely imitated in the public interest community. It was credited with helping lay the groundwork for the tougher air pollution standards on smog and soot issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1997. O’Donnell also brought national prominence to the fuel cell technology.

In December 2004, O’Donnell was named President of a new nonprofit organization, Clean Air Watch, formed to educate the public about air pollution and the need for effective pollution control laws and programs. For more than nine years before that, O’Donnell served as executive director of a similar organization, the Clean Air Trust. In 2004, The Hill newspaper named O’Donnell as one of D.C.’s most effective lobbyists on clean air and global warming issues.

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News Manager and Journalist

Formerly a successful broadcast journalist, O’Donnell managed a staff of 50 to produce the nightly, hour-long “Ten O’Clock News” on Fox Television/Channel 5 in Washington, D.C. for five and a half years. He earned numerous awards, including an Emmy and AP and UPI “Best Newscast” accolades. He transformed the broadcast into the most-watched late newscast in Washington by emphasizing national news and downplaying the usual local television news fare of crime and car chases. More recently, O’Donnell played a prominent on-camera role in the documentary movie “Outfoxed,” a critical look at the Fox news organization. He also appeared in an excerpt from “Outfoxed” that was broadcast on ABC’s “Boston Legal” television show. In addition, O’Donnell served as a consultant for the PBS special, “What Price Clean Air?” produced by Peabody award winner Robert Richter.

As a print journalist, O’Donnell published articles in dozens of national magazines and daily newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun, Newsday, the New Republic, USA Weekend, Washington Monthly, and the Progressive. O’Donnell was a frequent contributor to and later editor of the nationally prominent Regardie’s business magazine. David Gergen, then editor of U.S. News & World Report, told O’Donnell “you know how to go for the jugular.” He covered environmental issues in Congress, federal agencies and state government as editor of the authoritative newsletter Air/Water Pollution Report and as a correspondent for the Fairchild News Service. As senior editor/national issues for the Harper’s Magazine-affiliated Network News Inc. wire service, O’Donnell initiated and oversaw a landmark investigation of military toxic waste. He was an investigator in a Network News/CBS/Bill Moyers special report on the pesticide Temik.

Education and Extra-Curricular

O’Donnell was graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1973 with a major in classical Greek and Roman literature and history (and an unofficial minor as a comic opera producer and performer). He earned a master’s degree in communication in 1975 from The American University in Washington, DC, where he has lectured and taught communication courses. In addition, O’Donnell has twice been an elected member of the Kensington, MD Town Council and was licensed as a private investigator in the state of Virginia. He is past President of the Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States. He has served as chairman of the Local Advisory Panel to the Montgomery County Office of Historic Preservation. O’Donnell also has served as chairman of the Kensington Town Ethics Commission and as vice president of the Kensington Historical Society.