Founder and President, The Peace Aid Foundation (LinkedIn)
Lynn Scheid is a global media executive, journalist, and storyteller whose career spans more than four decades across 195 countries and nearly every major conflict zone since 1980. A former Foreign Correspondent News Producer, he has reported from war zones, collapsed states, and emerging democracies, documenting both the cost of conflict and the resilience of the human spirit.
He began his career in the 1970s at WGN Tribune Broadcasting in Chicago, where he learned the craft of live broadcast news before joining Charles Kuralt on CBS Sunday Morning. He later worked with Walter Cronkite and joined 60 Minutes under Don Hewitt, producing investigative and long-form reporting that helped define the program’s reputation for depth and integrity. Scheid went on to produce for ABC, CNN, PBS, and the BBC, covering many of the defining events of the modern era, including the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Afghan-Soviet war, the Salvadoran civil war, cartel violence in Colombia, the Romanian revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Intifada, the Gulf War, the Rwandan genocide, and the wars in Chechnya, Kosovo, and the Balkans.
Over his career, he has lived in twenty-three countries and worked on every continent, including both poles. His field experience shaped a leadership style grounded in clarity, cultural fluency, and a global perspective.
Today, Scheid serves as Chairman of Atlantic Media Group PLC, a global holding company comprising sixty-seven independently branded businesses operating across more than sixty-five countries. The Atlantic Media Group is not associated with The Atlantic magazine or its parent company, Atlantic Media LLC.
The group’s portfolio spans media production, technology, real estate, and professional services, with teams representing over sixty-five nationalities. Its media division produces original scripted and unscripted programming for broadcast, digital, and streaming platforms, and provides comprehensive services in production management, post-production, design, and technical infrastructure.
His production credits include 60 Minutes, Larry King Live, COPS, America’s Most Wanted, Wild Russia, Ultimate Cops, Antarctica, The Travel Show, PBS Millennium 2000, The Big Five, and Siberian Cut, in partnership with Discovery, National Geographic, BBC, CNN, PBS, ESPN, NBC Sports, Animal Planet, and Disney. He served as Co-Executive Producer of BBC Today and PBS Millennium 2000, the largest continuous television broadcast in history. The twenty-five-hour global event involved more than forty thousand participants in one hundred countries and three hundred live locations, viewed in more than eighty nations worldwide.
Scheid is also the Founder and President of Common Ground Productions, an international nonprofit organization that produces film, television, and digital media for social change. Since 2001, Common Ground has partnered with the United Nations, USAID, the Canadian International Development Agency, the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the World Bank, and numerous foundations and agencies. Operating across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, it uses storytelling to advance peace, dialogue, and social cohesion. Its work is often carried out quietly in politically sensitive regions where safety and discretion are essential.
Beyond media, Scheid has led humanitarian and development programs in more than thirty countries through the United Nations Development Programme, USAID, and private foundations, focusing on conflict recovery, education, and access to information. He received the Clinton Global Initiative Award in 2004 for his relief work in Nigeria.
He has served on the boards of Hughes DirecTV, The Learning Channel, The Ocean Cleanup, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. His work has been honored by the Academy Awards, the Emmys, BAFTA, the Berlinale, and the Cannes Film Festival.
Scheid is also a musician and producer with several albums to his name. Music has been a constant thread in his life and work, shaping his sense of rhythm, empathy, and creative purpose. It remains central to how he understands storytelling and the human condition.
This connection to art and humanity culminated in the founding of The Peace Aid Foundation Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to building peace as a functioning system rather than a sentiment. The Foundation uses the power of music to help create an ecosystem that supports sustainable peacebuilding and humanitarian work by nonprofits around the world.
From the newsrooms of Chicago to the front lines of global reporting and the leadership of a worldwide media enterprise, Lynn Scheid’s life has been defined by one conviction: that stories, whether told through words, images, or music, can bridge divides and bring the world closer to peace.
He has now stepped down from all other professional roles to dedicate his full time and energy to leading The Peace Aid Foundation.