Seay graduated from Hobart and William Smith College in 1962, and joined the Peace Corps. In 1973, he earned a master’s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. Altogether he spent more than a decade in Latin America with the Peace Corps, the Foreign Service, and the Ford Foundation.
He joined the Wilson Center in 1976 as special assistant to then-director James H. Billington ’50, now the Librarian of Congress. Seay then became the center’s congressional liaison, and was its director of development for more than a decade.
In 1988, he began his award-winning radio and TV interview program, Dialogue, in which he served as executive producer and host. For 21 years, he conducted over 950 interviews with important public figures. Last year, a book, The Art of Conversation, was published, containing 24 of his favorite interviews with presidents, diplomats, dissidents, professors, and poets.
Seay was a member of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni (ABPA). His survivors include two sisters.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.