After the dissolution of USIA in 1999, regulation of the program transferred to the Department of State, Educational & Cultural Affairs Bureau.
Alexander Gregory Barmine (1899–1987), a Soviet officer, diplomat, and self-confessed spy, who defected to the West in 1937 and became an official at Voice of America and USIA,
Wick also established the Voice of America's Radio Marti broadcasting to Cuba; created RIAS TV in Berlin; headed the International Youth Exchange Initiative; established an office within USIA to implement the General Exchanges Agreement between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union; and created the Artistic Ambassador Program with its international young artists' exchanges.
He has received many awards including Sponsorship by the New York Foundation for the Arts, Israel-Tennessee Visual Artist Exchange Project Fellowship, USIA Arts America Grant and New Forms Regional Initiative Grant from the NEA.
At the time, Murrow was the head of the United States Information Agency (USIA) and he heard about Sarkisian through his West African recording trips.
He has also received instruction in European Union concerns from the Civil Service College of London, and was a participant in a program hosted by the United States Information Agency (USIA) on the United States Federal Government System.
She worked in Rio de Janeiro and Bogotá for the USIA until 1964 and then moved to Caracas to write for Copley News Service, to which she remained bound by contract until 1967.