FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wednesday, November 19, 1997

Joseph Permetti Named as Peace Corps Director for Domestic Programs

Washington, D.C., November 19, 1997—Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan has appointed Joseph Permetti, 46, of Washington, D.C., to be the agency\'s director for Domestic Programs. "Joseph\'s professional accomplishments and his volunteer service—both as a Peace Corps volunteer overseas and here at home—exemplify the finest traditions of the Peace Corps," said Gearan. "One of the Peace Corps\' goals is to strengthen Americans\' understanding about the world and its peoples, and Joseph\'s background is testimony to what a difference volunteerism makes." The office of Domestic Programs works with more than 150,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers across the country. It has three programs which Permetti will oversee: the World Wise Schools program, which links 3,500 United States classrooms with Peace Corps volunteers around the world; the Fellows USA program, which provides masters level credit for Returned Peace Corps volunteers at 26 colleges and universities in exchange for a two-year commitment to serve in an underserved community in the United States; and returned Volunteer Services, which provide transition assistance and training to Peace Corps volunteers who have completed their service overseas. A Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya from 1979 to 1982 and later a staff member in the agency\'s Los Angeles recruiting office, Permetti is past president of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Washington, D.C., an organization of 1,500 returned Peace Corps volunteers. For the past 18 months, he has served as an account executive with the strategic communications firm Strat@comm. For two years prior to that, he was deputy director of the Friends of the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. Before joining the staff of the Arboretum, he worked as an independent consultant in fund-raising and public relations for five years. Permetti earned a bachelor\'s degree in political science from the University of Houston in 1973, and completed a second bachelor\'s in geography from Houston in 1974. Permetti, who began work at the Peace Corps this week, replaces Sherwood Guernsey, who resigned the position in September to return to his law practice in western Massachusetts.

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