The Writers Guild of America East named a new executive director.
He is Lowell Peterson, formerly a partner with labor law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein. His past clients have included the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, the UAW and the AFL-CIO.
He will negotiate all the contracts and manage the staff.
Lowell takes the reins from Mona Mangan, who announced in August that she was exiting the union after 29 years.
Michael Winship, a veteran writer for noncommercial programming including Nova and Now with Bill Moyers, was elected president of WGAE last fall.
Lowell enters at a period of relative stability for the union. The minimum basic agreement with networks and studios, covering almost all film and entertainment writing, was ratified Feb. 26, and long-running contract negotiations with ABC and CBS over news writers were also wrapped up within the past few months.
The WGAE represents about 4,000 TV writers -- both entertainment and news -- radio news writers and writers for new media.
