Speakers

Kayce Ataiyero is the Chief External Affairs Officer at the Joyce Foundation, where she oversees the Foundation’s strategic communications, the Journalism Program and the Lend A Hand community grants fund. She is also a member of the Foundation’s leadership team.

Ataiyero has extensive experience in communications, journalism and politics. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2018, she served as director of external affairs for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, where she led communications and community engagement. She has also led communications for U.S. Congresswoman Robin Kelly, the Illinois Governor’s Office and the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office.

As an award-winning journalist, Ataiyero previously worked as a staff writer for the Chicago Tribune, The Raleigh News and Observer, Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Post.

Kayce has a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. She is board chair of Media Impact Funders, a national organization that advances the work of a broad range of funders committed to supporting media in the public interest. She also serves on the board of Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, an organization committed to the unfinished business of our nation’s civil rights movement. She is a Leadership Greater Chicago Daniel Burnham Fellow, was named one of the Top 50 Women Leaders of Illinois by Women We Admire, a Notable Black Leader and Executive by Crain’s Chicago Business and one of Chicago’s most influential Black leaders by The Chicago Tribune. She also at one time was general manager of the Chicago Steam, a minor-league basketball team.

Christina Snider-Ashtari serves as the first Tribal Affairs Secretary to California Governor Gavin Newsom and leads the Governor’s Office of Tribal Affairs. As a member of the Cabinet, Secretary Snider-Ashtari oversees effective government-to-government consultation between the Governor’s Administration and California tribes; informs, develops and implements policy directives related to tribal governments and Native American communities; oversees the California Indian Heritage Center Task Force and the Tribal Nation Grant Fund Program; and leads the California Truth & Healing Council, an effort aimed at shifting the California narrative and providing historical restorative justice for the first people of California. Secretary Snider-Ashtari is an enrolled member of the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians in Sonoma County, California.

Monika Bauerlein is the Center for Investigative Reporting’s CEO, and prior to that role she served as Mother Jones’ chief executive officer, and co-editor (with Clara Jeffery). Under her tenure, Mother Jones grew its audience twentyfold, doubled the size of its staff, established bureaus in Washington and New York, won multiple awards, and launched a campaign to establish a new media business model centered on reader support for investigative and in-depth reporting. In 2024, Bauerlein and CEO emeritus Robert Rosenthal led the merger of Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting. The resulting organization produces journalism, alone and in partnership with other newsrooms, on multiple platforms including Mother Jones’ print, digital, and social channels as well as the investigative radio show Reveal (heard on 500+ public media stations around the nation) and Emmy Award-winning CIR Studios.

Ed is the CEO and Board Chair of the global technology non-profit Meedan. Since founding Meedan in 2006 he has devoted his professional energies to improving equity, accessibility, and credibility in online environments. Ed has led strategy and project definition on open source software development focused on human-in-the-loop approaches to translating, verifying, investigating and fact-checking digital content.

Ed was a recipient of the 2024 Skoll Award for Social Innovation. He is a member of the PAI (Partnership on AI) AI and Media Steering Committee.

Meedan’s work has received numerous awards including two Knight News Challenge Awards, two Online News Association Awards and two International Fact-Checking Networks’ Collaborative Impact awards. Meedan’s technical work on a platform that enables journalists to leverage AI to better respond to questions on closed messaging platforms received a National Science Foundation Convergence grant (2022-24).

Khiara M. Bridges is a professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law. She has written many articles concerning race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three. Her scholarship has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the California Law Review, the NYU Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among others. She is also the author of three books: Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization (2011), The Poverty of Privacy Rights (2017), and Critical Race Theory: A Primer (2019). She is a coeditor of a reproductive justice book series that is published under the imprint of the University of California Press.

She graduated as valedictorian from Spelman College, receiving her degree in three years. She received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her Ph.D., with distinction, from Columbia University’s Department of Anthropology. While in law school, she was a teaching assistant for the former dean, David Leebron (Torts), as well as for the late E. Allan Farnsworth (Contracts). She was a member of the Columbia Law Review and a Kent Scholar. She speaks fluent Spanish and basic Arabic, and she is a classically trained ballet dancer.

Bruce D. Brown, a former journalist and partner in the Washington office of Baker & Hostetler, became executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in September 2012.

He is a former lecturer at the University of Virginia Law School, where he co-directed its First Amendment Clinic, and a former adjunct faculty member in Georgetown University’s master’s program in professional studies in journalism. Brown has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, USA Today, and The National Law Journal, among other publications.

Prior to joining Baker & Hostetler, Brown worked as a federal court reporter for Legal Times and as a newsroom assistant to David Broder at The Washington Post. Brown received a J.D. from Yale Law School, a master’s in English Literature from Harvard University, where he was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities, and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Stanford University.

Neil Chase is the chief executive officer at CalMatters, the nonprofit newsroom explaining California policy and politics. He was previously executive editor of The Mercury News and the East Bay Times, where his team won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. Neil worked as an editor at The San Francisco Examiner, The Arizona Republic, CBS MarketWatch and The New York Times, was an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and has worked in advertising and marketing.

Sonya Childress is Co-Executive Director of Color Congress, an intermediary that resources, supports, and connects organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the US and US islands, with Sahar Driver. A veteran strategist and organizer in the documentary field, she has held positions at Active Voice, California Newsreel, Firelight Media and was a Senior Fellow with the Perspective Fund. Her board work includes the Center for Cultural Power and the Documentary Accountability Working Group. She was an inaugural Just Films/Rockwood Fellow, a recipient of the 2022 Leading Light Award from Doc NYC, and is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Sonya is a daughter of Puerto Rican and African American parents and a mother of two.

Maya Chupkov is the Media & Democracy Program Manager at California Common Cause where she is working on local journalism policy on the local, regional, and statewide levels. She also leads the Bay Area Independent Community Media Coalition, a group of local newsrooms serving communities across San Francisco and the Bay Area. She is the founder and president of Proud Stutter, an award-winning multi-media and advocacy nonprofit. Its mission is to shift the narrative around stuttering and create safer spaces for people who stutter worldwide. Maya is the creator and host of the award-winning podcast of the same name, author of “My Stutter: Life of Verbal Turbulence,” and is producing two documentaries on the intersection of stuttering, race, and the justice system. You can learn more at proudstutter.org.

Rusty Coats is Executive Director of Journalism Funding Partners, an organization whose mission is increase the depth, diversity and sustainability of local news by building and shepherding connections between funders and news organizations. He has a long track record of building innovative funding paths for local journalism and a passion for local news. Prior to JFP,he was a consultant and worked with entrepreneurial local news startups, public media, large news chains and tech giants to generate revenue through a mix of philanthropy and earned income. As an executive with McClatchy, Media General and E.E. Scripps, he was an early leader in growing audience and driving digital revenue to support newsrooms. Prior to that, he was an award-winning investigative reporter and columnist at news organizations in Indiana, Maine, Miami and California. He is married to Janet Coats, Managing Director at the Consortium on Trust at the University of Florida.

Kevin Corcoran leads communication strategy and outreach for Lumina Foundation, an independent, private foundation committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Before assuming this role in 2016, he directed a multi-state effort for the foundation to rethink higher education business and finance models and craft related public policy principles rooted in nonpartisan research and analysis.

Corcoran’s higher education expertise includes competency-based learning, state authorization of online degree programs, and outcomes-based funding. The five-member communications team he leads executes a cutting-edge strategy rooted in audience, narrative, and storytelling research to advance Lumina’s leadership in higher education and workforce training. He also fashioned a grant portfolio that supports public and nonprofit newsrooms and training organizations, including PBS NewsHour, Washington Monthly, and WGBH in Boston. He leads Lumina’s involvement in the national Press Forward initiative.

Before joining Lumina in 2007, Corcoran worked as a newspaper reporter for nearly 20 years, including as an investigative reporter for The Indianapolis Star. He has received local, state, and national awards, including the George Polk Award and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel. In addition, his work has been cited by groups such as Human Rights Watch and the National Mental Health Association, now known as Mental Health America.

Corcoran holds a bachelor of arts in journalism and master of business administration in corporate finance from Indiana University.

Angelica Das is associate director on the Public Square Team at Democracy Fund, an independent foundation working toward an open and just democracy. Democracy Fund makes grants in pursuit of a vibrant and diverse public square, free and fair elections, effective and accountable government, and a just and inclusive society. Angelica leads the Journalism and Power Building initiative, which aims to support new models of journalism that help to dismantle systems of oppression and authoritarianism, and create conditions for thriving, active civic engagement. Angelica joined Democracy Fund in 2019 after working as a consultant and Senior Associate with Dot Connector Studio, a production company that collaborates with funders, journalists, and experts to research and develop social impact media. She was previously associate director at the Center for Media & Social Impact Media at American University. She directed the Center’s annual Media That Matters industry conference, and helped filmmakers learn from and exercise journalistic practice to mitigate safety, security, and litigation risks in investigative storytelling. She has worked extensively with independent filmmakers on impact strategies and held prior positions in communications, operations, and grant management at nonprofits including Wild Earth Allies, Machik, and National Geographic. Angelica holds an M.A. in International Media from American University and a B.A. in Political Science and History from the University of Rochester.

Florangela Davila has been working in journalism for more than 2 decades. After a long reporting career at The Seattle Times, she became managing editor and a TV host at the PBS affiliate in Seattle. Most recently, her four-year leadership as news director at the NPR affiliate in Seattle culminated in a 2024 national Edward R. Murrow award for Overall Excellence in the Large Market Radio category. Florangela has also served on the faculty at the University of Washington, reported on the arts for public radio, and launched a storytelling initiative for an environmental nonprofit. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she’s the proud daughter of Colombian and Peruvian immigrants.

Eric Dhan is the Community Manager of the PRX Podcast Garage at KQED, where he runs events and workshops that foster connection and learning between podcast creators, multimedia storytellers, and public media stations. Previously, Eric was a project manager on PRX’s training team, where he facilitated workshops that brought together audio creators in the United States and abroad, through cohort-based accelerator programs such as the Google Podcasts creator program and the Ready To Learn Podcast Accelerator from CPB and PBS. Eric also managed PRX’s Gateway Cities Audio Project, a community outreach and asset mapping initiative focused on building community and support for local podcasters and storytellers in communities around Massachusetts. Eric enjoys signing up for sprint triathlons and lake swims as ways to travel the world and face his fear of deep, dark open waters.

Mikel Ellcessor is a career media executive, coach, and not-for-profit leader. His expertise centers on multi-disciplinary approaches to the integration of growth, mission fulfillment, and revenue.  While at WNYC, New York he was the head of local programming through the 9/11 years, launched WNYC’s podcast strategy, pioneered individual giving for podcasts, raising over $6.5M along the way, and was the co-creator with Jad Abumrad of Radiolab.

In over 30 years of breaking new ground with original content, marketing, engagement, distribution and individual giving, Mikel’s has the privilege to lead teams that have impacted the lives of hundreds of millions of individuals and raised tens of millions of dollars to support mission-driven work.

At The Colorado Health Foundation (CHF), Taryn Fort leads the Communications team, where she sets the vision for the communications department to advance CHF’s goals, strategy and mission through effective and equitable communications. She’s also responsible for CHF’s journalism and media investing and supports community relations programming that highlights and advances the nonprofit executive leadership sector. Through all of this work, Taryn is driven by her belief that everyone deserves to be healthy, regardless of economic, social or geographic circumstances. As a communicator, she also believes we have a responsibility to tell the story of Colorado’s health and create a sense of belonging for those CHF serves.

Taryn has worked in health-related strategic communications for more than 23 years and has been at the Foundation since 2013. She started her career as a journalist, eventually moving into the corporate communications sector working for about a decade in New York City at leading communications agencies where she honed her skills in public relations, brand development and marketing. After moving to Denver, she transitioned to the nonprofit sector, working as a marketing and communications director for a national patient advocacy organization that is now part of the American Stroke Association/American Heart Association. She then transitioned to the philanthropic health sector to lead communications at The Foundation, where she has been for tenyears, developing and institutionalizing an approach to doing equitable and strategic communications that centers equity and the people The Foundation serves.

Taryn has a bachelor’s degree in English from Kansas State University. She grew up in a small rural agricultural community in southwest Kansas and now lives in Denver with her partner, daughter and three cats.

Senator Steve Glazer is now in his 10th and final year in the California State Senate, representing all of Contra Costa County and parts of Alameda County.

In his time, more than two dozen of his bills have been signed into law, including one that helped create the California Local News Fellowship program at UC Berkeley. That program supports 40 fellows a year, placing them into newsrooms across California – with a focus on covering underrepresented communities.

Journalism is a great passion of the senator’s. He also authored a bill this year to invest heavily into newsrooms across the state, SB 1327, which would create tax credits for news publications and broadcast outlets to support the retention and new hiring of journalists.

During his tenure in the Senate, he has served as the Chair of 7 Senate Committees, including the one he currently chairs, the Revenue & Taxation Committee.

Having previously served on the CSU Board of Trustees, he also chairs the Select Committee on Student Success.

He previously served for ten years as an Orinda City Council member, including three terms as Mayor.

A former senior advisor to California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, Senator Glazer worked with Gov. Brown to help return California to solid financial footing in the midst of the Great Recession.

Carlissia Graham is an investor, startup mentor, and serial entrepreneur working at the intersections of technology, culture, and politics. Her work centers on getting capital to people who are reimagining and building a greater future as evidenced by a thriving democracy, responsible tech ecosystem, and equal capital opportunities for underinvested communities.

She is the President of New Media Ventures (NMV), a mission-driven venture fund focused on early-stage media and tech-for-good startups. NMV has been an industry leader in seeding innovative disruptors like Blavity, Savi, ActBlue Civics, BallotReady, CrowdTangle, Hustle, Vote.org, Juggernaut, and over 150 other mission-driven entities that are working to shift the structures of power in the US to benefit more people; many of which are now widely recognized pillars of the social change community.

In addition to her entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem pursuits, Carlissia has spent over a decade shaping the policy and governance of American institutions that are shifting society at scale – from the Obama White House to the U.S. Senate to Planned Parenthood Federation of America and even the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy. She’s held multiple senior-level government positions democratizing access to publicly-funded technology, commercializing publicly-funded R&D, and directing billion-dollar capital investments in public-tech infrastructure.

Alongside her work at New Media Ventures, Carlissia sits on several investment committees and actively counsels founders as they navigate the startup journey.

Lucas Guilkey is a documentary filmmaker and journalist based in Oakland, California. He recently directed and produced The Strike, a film about the largest hunger strike in U.S. history, which premiered at Hot Docs and will be airing on PBS’ Independent Lens. Before that he was story producer for Aftershock, a feature documentary about racism in the U.S. maternal healthcare system, which premiered at Sundance and is now streaming on Hulu. His directorial debut, What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?, a short documentary about the coverup of a young man’s death in county jail, won best documentary at the BAFTA student film awards.

Burt Herman is a journalist, entrepreneur and technologist who has worked at tech startups, media companies and non-profit organizations focused on advancing journalism innovation through adoption of new technologies. He co-founded and is the principal of Hacks/Hackers, a non-profit organization that unites diverse communities to innovate in media and build public trust. He previously co-founded Storify, a social media curation platform that was acquired by Livefyre and eventually Adobe. Burt began his career at The Associated Press as a bureau chief and correspondent, reporting for more than a decade across Asia, Europe, the former Soviet Union and the U.S. He also was on the founding team of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism as
innovation director and worked as a product director at Condé Nast, among other roles. Burt was a JSK fellow at Stanford University, where he also got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and was editor in chief of The Stanford Daily.

Sandy Herz is an established philanthropic leader, strategist and storytelling evangelist. Most recently, Sandy served as President of Sobrato Philanthropies, leading an ambitious growth strategy for a multigenerational Giving Pledge family, supporting their individual philanthropy and expanding their collective philanthropy from local place-based giving to include global initiatives such as climate change. Previously at the Skoll Foundation, she led Skoll’s early Connect & Celebrate programs, including the Skoll World Forum, before diving deep into storytelling, curating Skoll’s award-winning film, media, and publishing portfolio and developing a multisector network strategy leveraging partnerships to attract resources and amplify the impact of Skoll entrepreneurs.

As the Chief Executive Officer of PRX, a globally recognized public media company and leading podcast publisher, Kerri Hoffman has been pivotal in shaping the organization’s growth and success. Under her leadership, PRX launched groundbreaking programs such as Radiotopia, The Moth Radio Hour, and Reveal. The organization also distributes widely acclaimed shows like This American Life, Snap Judgment, and Latino USA.

PRX stands as a leader in public media innovation, driving progress through the use of cutting-edge technology, offering training opportunities, and forging strategic partnerships to create original productions.

Michael is KQED’s 10th President.

Michael has a quarter century of media experience and has played a critical role in KQED’s growth and transformation into a multimedia organization. Michael joined KQED in 2001 as a Television Executive Producer and has served in a number of senior-level roles, including Senior VP & Chief Content Officer and Executive VP & Chief Operating Officer.

Michael has led strategic initiatives enabling KQED to become one of the largest and most successful public media institutions. Michael shepherded the growth in multimedia production and distribution. Additionally, he has focused operations on engaging audiences across multiple platforms by reorganizing the content division away from distribution platforms to a structure of multimedia teams in news, arts, science and education. This restructure facilitated greater collaboration and increased digital content and services. This transformation also brought upgrades to the station’s technological infrastructure. KQED’s total audience and membership are at all-time highs.

Prior to KQED, Michael led production at KVIE Public Television, Sacramento. He started his career at WLS-TV, Chicago. Michael is a senior fellow for the American Leadership Forum – Silicon Valley and serves on the boards of Public Radio Exchange, American Documentary Inc. (producer of the PBS documentary series POV), Joint Venture Silicon Valley, and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Michael has a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D. from DePaul College of Law.

Beth Kanter is an internationally recognized thought leader and trainer in digital transformation and well-being in the nonprofit workplace. She is the co-author of the award-winning “Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Impact without Burnout” and co-author with Allison Fine of “The Smart Nonprofit.”  Named one of the most influential women in technology by Fast Company and recipient of the NTEN Lifetime Achievement Award, she has over three decades of experience in designing and delivering training programs for nonprofits and foundations. As a sought-after keynote speaker and workshop leader, she has presented at nonprofit conferences around the world to thousands of nonprofits. Learn more about Beth at www.bethkanter.org.

Mina Kim is host of the statewide hour of KQED Forum; a daily, call-in talk show. Through intimate and informative conversations, Mina connects the state’s many residents and illuminates the issues affecting California and the nation. Before joining Forum, Mina was KQED’s award-winning evening news anchor and health reporter for The California Report.

Keisha Knight is an educator and cultural organizer based in Los Angeles, California who currently serves as the Director of IDA Funds & Advocacy. Keisha oversees IDA’s granting portfolio and artist support programs. She also leads IDA’s research initiatives such as the Nonfiction Access Initiative for Disabled MediaMakers and the IDA Justice Impacted Filmmakers Brain Trust. Keisha holds a BA in Comparative Religion from Barnard College, an MA in Media Studies from Pratt Institute, and is currently a PhD candidate in Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University. As an educator, Keisha has taught in classrooms from Palembang, Indonesia to Bennington, Vermont, and as co-founder of the film distribution initiative Sentient.Art.Film Keisha has had the honor of working closely with filmmakers and moving image artists from around the world to circulate their visions.

Jacob Kornbluth is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker who has directed 5 theatrically released feature films and over 200 shorts. Of his 5 films, 3 have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, one was a Netflix Original Film, and the other has a 100% “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes.  Jacob was awarded a Special Jury Prize for excellence in Filmmaking from the Sundance Film Festival for his feature documentary Inequality For All, which at the time was the highest grossing issue documentary for 7 years. Jacob co-founded Inequality Media, with Robert Reich, which has been a “light house” brand for economic storytelling and played a crucial role in framing an economic case for policies in ways everyone can understand.  His videos have been viewed over a billion times on social media.

Vidya Krishnamurthy is chief communications officer and senior adviser to the president of the Hewlett Foundation. In this role, she oversees strategic communications in support of the foundation’s charitable goals, including leadership and counsel on communications-related grantmaking and development and execution of communications tactics, including thought leadership, events and media relations, digital strategy, and publications. She also oversees internal organization learning and chairs the foundation’s learning council.

She joined the foundation in 2015 after nearly a decade with the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., serving as its first-ever communications director. During that time, she helped the center significantly expand its U.S. and global audience and become one of the most trusted and widely cited sources of nonpartisan information about trends shaping America and the world.

Her previous experience cuts across a wide swath of communications specialties, including issues management, media relations and digital content strategy, with organizations from think tank/academic, corporate, labor and education arenas. She serves on the board of the Communications Network, the leading community of social sector communicators; is a member of ColorComm, an association of women of color in communications; and has written and spoken about media policy, political reform and strategic communications. She holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Born in Lusaka, Zambia, she is an American immigrant of Indian origin. She lives with her husband and two children in the Bay Area.

Nico Leone is the President and CEO of KERA — a nonprofit public media organization in North Texas reaching more than 4.5 million people each month. KERA’s mission is to inform and inspire the North Texas community through essential services — including a public television station, three radio stations and a newspaper.

Nico began his tenure at KERA in February 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to surge. Under his leadership, the organization was able to not only sustain, but grow its essential services to audiences during a challenging time. Since then, Nico has continuously positioned the organization for exceptional growth and innovation.

Key to Nico’s leadership style is collaboration. Under his tenure, KERA has launched several journalism partnerships — including with the Fort Worth Report and the Dallas Morning News — in order to expand accessible and essential reporting to the people of North Texas. Nico also oversaw the successful merger of two organizations into KERA’s services — the classical music station WRR 101.1, and the Denton Record-Chronicle, Denton County’s primary source of local news. And, as CEO, Nico leads The Texas Newsroom, a first-of-its-kind journalism collaboration between NPR and the four largest public media newsrooms in Texas. Each of these innovative collaborations serves as a model for newsrooms and public media organizations across the country, while also positioning KERA to be more embedded in the communities it serves.

Nico serves on the board of AT&T Performing Arts Center, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Station Resource Group and Greater Public. He has also previously served on the board of directors for NPR. Prior to KERA, Nico served as General Manager of KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri, where he led the organization to be one of the most collaborative public radio stations in the country.

Nico grew up in small towns in Kansas. He has two degrees in Communications from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where he met his wife, Nicole. They live in Dallas.

Carrie Lozano is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and media executive. She is currently President and CEO of ITVS.

Prior to ITVS, she was director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film and Artist Programs, launched and directed the International Documentary Association’s Enterprise Documentary Fund, and was a documentary executive at Al Jazeera America and senior producer of the Emmy, Peabody and Headliner Award-winning investigative series “Fault Lines.”

In addition to serving on ProPublica’s board of directors, Lozano serves on the advisory boards of U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and PBS Frontline, and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Candice Mays serves as Mapping Black California’s Project Director. Alongside a diverse professional background in grassroots nonprofit organization management, development, and grant making, she spent three years as a literacy teacher with the New York City Department of Education after receiving her M.A. in English Education from New York University. Her time as a public school educator inspired her pursuit of an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Fiction at the University of Miami where was a Michener Teaching Fellow and a M.F.A. Summer Award winner. Her research experience includes conducting cultural and historical analysis of Louisiana Creoles reflecting the content of her fiction which critically examines multi-cultural, African American existence in non-inclusive spaces.

Candice seeks to humanize GIS by mining narratives from data on all things historical, Californian, and most importantly, Black. As a transdisciplinary storyteller, she crafts multimodal narratives aligning passion, social justice, and historical/contemporary contexts. Her experience as an educator and ability to identify patterns across diverse sources through the integration of historical artifacts, the written word, data, and visual mediums have resulted in spearheading campaigns for a more complete count of Black Californians in the 2020 Census, the data informed conceptualization and development of the “HOW DO I…” public health campaign, and the design of easily accessible, digestible, and retainable data visualizations and narrative assets.

Kirstin McCudden is a journalist with more than two decades of experience in legacy and digital outlets. As vice president of editorial for Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit protecting press freedom, she oversees editorial strategy and its audience and reporting teams. She’s also managing editor of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, FPF’s project documenting press freedom violations in the United States. X: @TrackerKK

Gabe Meline entered journalism at age 15 making photocopied zines, and has since earned awards from the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the Society for Professional Journalists, the Online Journalism Awards, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Prior to KQED, he was the editor of the North Bay Bohemian and a touring musician. He lives with his wife, his daughter, and a 1964 Volvo in his hometown of Santa Rosa, CA.

Lenny Mendonca was the Chief Economic and Business Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom of California and Chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority. He is a Senior Partner Emeritus of McKinsey & Company and a Lecturer on Inequality at the Stanford Business School.

He founded McKinsey’s U.S. state and local public sector consulting practice. He also oversaw their knowledge development, Chairing the McKinsey Global Institute and the Firm’s communications, including the McKinsey Quarterly. He served for a decade on the McKinsey Shareholder Council (its Board of Directors). He retired from McKinsey in 2014.

He is the Chair of Fidelity Charitable and Vice-Chair of Western Governors University. He was the Chair of New America, Children Now, co-Chair of California Forward, and co-founder and Chair of Fusecorps. He was the Vice-Chair of Common Cause. He is the Chair Emeritus of the Bay Area Council and their Economic Institute, and was vice-chair of the Stanford GSB Advisory Council. He was a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development. He has served on the boards of UC Merced, The Educational Results Partnership, The College Futures Foundation, California Competes, The Opportunity Institute, Commonwealth Club, National Association of NonPartisan Reformers, Measures for Justice, Rebuild Local News, and The Guardian.org. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served on the Board of Trustees for Junior Statesmen of America, and the Advisory Boards of Y Analytics, QB3, the Haas Center at Stanford, Third Sector Capital, The CA Community College Chancellor’s Office, and the Public Policy Institute of California.

He received his MBA and certificate in public management from Stanford. He holds an AB, magna cum laude, in economics from Harvard.

He lives on the Half Moon Bay coast with his wife, Christine. They raised their two daughters, Allie and Rebecca, there and are the founders and owners of the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company and The Inn at Mavericks. He is also the Founding Chair of the Coastside News Group (Half Moon Bay Review and Pacifica Tribune).

“Retiring” in 2021 after 26 years as a tenured journalism professor at the University of Illinois, Eric Meyer became full-time editor and publisher of the Marion County Record. He and his parents, Bill and Joan Meyer, had gone together 23 years earlier to purchase and preserve local ownership of the weekly, where his parents had worked for nearly five decades and he had worked part-time starting in fifth grade.

Before joining the Illinois faculty in 1996, Meyer taught part-time at Marquette University while working for 18 years as news photo and graphics editor, assistant news editor, systems editor, and copy desk chief at the Milwaukee Journal. He previously worked for two years as Sunday editor of the Daily Pantagraph in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois. While teaching, he also created NewsLink, a prominent online resource; was online publisher of American Journalism Review magazine, and was a consultant about strategic planning for online publishing to more than 350 news organizations worldwide.

A Pulitzer Prize nominee for his coverage of computer hackers while at the Journal, he directed student projects at Illinois that won a national Mark of Excellence award from the Society of Professional Journalists and Best of the Web and Professor Publishing Awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. While at Illinois, he also served as an associate dean, as chair of the University Senate Committee on Educational Policy, and as a visiting professor of social media at the Dallas Morning News. He is author of two books, “Designing Infographics” and “Tomorrow’s News Today,”

After a now-disavowed police raid in 2023 of the Record’s newsroom and the home he shared with his 98-year-old mother, who died the next day, he and the newspaper were honored with numerous awards. Among them were the Don Bolles Medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors; a Citation of Courage from the Radio, Television, Digital News Association; the William Allen White National Citation from the University of Kansas; the Maria Resa Prize for Courage in Local or Independent Journalism from the University of Maryland ;the Victor Murdock Award from the Kansas Press Association; and the Tom and Pat Gish Award from the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky.

He has degrees from KU, where he was editor-in-chief of the University Daily Kansan, and Marquette.

JoeBill Muñoz is a Mexican-American documentary filmmaker and director and producer of “The Strike.” He has directed short films for Independent Lens and NBC and produced feature films and television series for Left Right Media, the New York Times Presents, Hulu, and more. His work has been supported by Sundance, New America, and Firelight, and he was recently named to DOC NYC’s 40 under 40 list of documentary filmmakers.

Ben Nishimoto is the Vice President of Operations and Philanthropy for Honolulu Civil Beat, responsible for executing revenue, audience, and operating strategies for our statewide newsroom.

Under his leadership, Civil Beat has increased its operational budget, staff size and audience, while exceeding overall operational fundraising goals in each of the past 8 fiscal years. Civil Beat’s revenue and audience growth strategies have been featured by Poynter, Editor & Publisher, Institute for Nonprofit News, American Journalism Project and News Revenue Hub.

Prior to Civil Beat, Ben was the Vice President of Advancement at PBS Hawaii, where he played a leadership role in the station’s capital campaign while also overseeing annual fund strategies.

Born and raised in Aiea, Ben graduated from the University Laboratory School, a public charter school in Manoa. He majored in political science at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Ben believes strongly that journalism can thrive as a public good supported by people and communities who value information without agenda or bias. A news junkie, Ben is thrilled to work in a newsroom and among journalists dedicated to making Hawaii — his home — a better place to live.

He can be reached at bnishimoto@civilbeat.org.

Maggie Nyce is the Human Rights Program Manager at The 11th Hour Project, the main grantmaking arm of The Schmidt Family Foundation. The program focuses at the intersection of human rights and the agriculture, energy, and mining sectors in Africa and Haiti. Maggie manages the program’s grantmaking in the agriculture sector, which aims to support agroecology and food sovereignty movements in Africa. The program’s support goes to farmer-to-farmer agroecology, local enterprise development, policy advocacy, regional movement building, local journalism and media, and corporate and investor accountability initiatives. She also manages the Foundation’s broader journalism and media grantmaking in Africa. She previously worked on women’s rights, justice, and accountability related to gender-based violence in DRC, Mali, and Nigeria. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a Just Economy Institute fellow (2022-2023) and is currently studying Impact and Sustainable Investing.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley is an American educator, leader, and advisor. He is considered a leading voice on improving equity in higher education and positioning institutions for the global shifts in the workforce and the future of learning.

Oakley was appointed President and CEO of the College Futures Foundation on August 1, 2022, where he leads California’s premiere philanthropic and post-secondary success organization focused on improving post-secondary credential attainment for Californians of all backgrounds. Previously, he served as Chancellor of the California Community Colleges for six years where he led the nation’s largest and most diverse system of higher education. Under his leadership, the California community colleges were positioned as a vital source for maintaining the global competitiveness of the California workforce. In 2021, while on a sabbatical, he served as Senior Advisor to US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and the Biden Administration where he supported the development and communication of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda for Higher Education and the America’s College Promise proposal. Oakley’s work included the establishment of the California College Promise, the design and implementation of the system’s strategic vision, the Vision for Success, the elimination of standardized testing, the reform of remedial education, the adoption of a student-centered funding formula, the reform of state-based financial aid for community college students and the design and launch of California’s first public fully online competency-based education college.

Oakley serves on the boards of MDRC, Western Governors University, and the Board of Trustees for the University of California, Irvine, and is a Regent Emeritus of the University of California Board of Regents. He advises various education-related companies such as Guild Education, OpenClassrooms, Handshake, and Certree.

For his leadership, Oakley has been recognized with the 2014 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award, as a 2016 President Barack Obama White House Champion of Change, the 2018 Higher Education Dive President of the Year, the 2018 Roybal Foundation Medal of Courage in Education, and the 2021 Diverse Champions Award.

Tim oversees KQED’s digital partnerships. He works with distributors, technology companies, social media and other local and national partners to expand the reach of KQED content, deepen audience engagement, and meet KQED’s mission and business objectives. Tim manages KQED’s community partner tenants including NPR, KEXP, The Kitchen Sisters, BAVC Media and Ear Hustle and coordinates the work of PRX Podcast Garage at KQED. Tim also manages mission-aligned third party rentals of KQED’s event spaces.

Tim has more than 20 years of experience in directing digital strategies and product development for media companies, and working across the full range of publisher, editorial, technical and business functions. He has a history of leading innovation and transformational change in journalism, media, and education, and is active in Bay Area entrepreneurship, design thinking and startups.

Marcia Parker joined The New York Times in June 2022 as Vice President, Philanthropic Partnerships. She leads a team that develops newsroom initiatives that have a shared public service mission that are funded by foundations and in partnership with nonprofits.

Before she joined The Times, Marcia spent more than five years as the publisher and chief operating officer of CalMatters, a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization that covers California and its state government. Prior to that Marcia worked as an editorial director for Patch’s West Coast local news sites and helped launch the Center for Investigative Reporting’s California Watch site. She also served as an assistant dean at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s San Francisco campus and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is the board chair of the Institute for Nonprofit News. Marcia holds a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University.

Elena Chávez Quezada is Senior Advisor on Social Innovation for Governor Newsom, where she spearheads the State’s partnerships with philanthropy to advance shared priorities. Prior to her role in the Governor’s Office, Elena was Chief Impact Officer of End Poverty in California (EPIC), an effort led by former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, and spent a decade in philanthropy, most recently as Vice President of Programs at the San Francisco Foundation. She also worked at the Walter and Elise Haas Fund and Tipping Point Community. Before her time in philanthropy, Elena worked on policy and programs related to economic opportunity at various nonprofits, including Single Stop USA and the Aspen Institute. Originally from New Mexico, Elena earned her Bachelor’s and Master of Public Policy degrees from Harvard University, and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons.

Martin Reynolds oversees fundraising, client relations & external affairs and serves as The Robert C. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education’s lead Fault Lines® diversity trainer. He is the co-founder of Oakland Voices, an award-winning storytelling project that trains residents to serve as community correspondents. The program is now in its 10th year. He previously served as director of the Reveal Investigative Fellowship with the Center for Investigative Reporting. Reynolds served on the board of directors for the David and Reva Logan Family Foundation between 2020 and Feb. 2023. He currently serves on the board of directors of Cityside, the parent company to Berkeleyside, Oaklandside and Richmondside, award-winning hyper-local news sites in the Bay Area. His journalism career with Bay Area News Group spanned 18 years and many roles; among them, managing editor and editor-in-chief of The Oakland Tribune. Reynolds was also a lead editor on the Chauncey Bailey Project, formed in 2007 to investigate his slaying. He is a professional lyricist and among his many musical endeavors, was part of a live album recorded with his band Mingus Amungus in Havana, Cuba.

Nina Sachdev brings more than 20 years of journalism, news editing and marketing experience to her role as a communications director for Media Impact Funders (MIF). Since joining MIF in 2016, Nina has been leading efforts to showcase the power of media, journalism and storytelling to the philanthropic community. Through strategic communications, member engagement strategies and high-profile speaking events, Nina works to educate and inspire funders to make more strategic decisions about their media funding. Nina brings with her from her journalism days a special focus on sexual assault and reproductive health, and is a tireless advocate for the importance of quality, impactful media and journalism around these topics.

Nina cut her teeth in journalism at The Dallas Morning News, where—as an intern on the copy desk—she was tasked with editing the obituaries of famous people who hadn’t yet died. Since then, Nina has worked at The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, The Philadelphia Daily News and The Philadelphia Weekly in almost every editorial capacity imaginable, including senior editor, A1 editor (when that used to be a thing) and slot (does anyone remember that being a thing?).

Nina is the creator and editor of the award-winning The Survivors Project: Telling the Truth About Life After Sexual Abuse, which exposes the reality of healing from the effects of sexual abuse. Nina holds an M.A. in journalism from Temple University. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Anna Sale is the host of Death, Sex & Money, the podcast about “the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.” Anna won a Gracie for best podcast host in 2016 and the show won the 2018 Webby and 2021 Ambie for best interview show. Slate acquired Death, Sex & Money in 2024, after WNYC ended production after nearly a decade. The New Yorker covered “the funeral” we held to mark the end of that era of our show.

Before launching Death, Sex & Money in 2014, Anna covered politics for nearly a decade. In 2021, she published the book Let’s Talk About Hard Things. She grew up in West Virginia and now lives in Berkeley with her husband and two daughters.

David Snyder, a lawyer and former journalist, became executive director of the First Amendment Coalition in 2017. Before leading FAC, David represented journalists and news companies as a lawyer with Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. David had an active pro bono practice that included representing FAC in a long-running case seeking public access to data on applicants for admission to the State Bar of California. David served a two-year term as the volunteer attorney member of the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance T ask Force, which hears citizen complaints about violations of that city’s open-government law.

David began his journalism career at his hometown newspaper, the Albuquerque Tribune, where as a high school student he covered sports. He went on to work at the Dallas Morning News and The Washington Post, where he was a staff writer on the metro desk from 2000 to 2005.

He received a Bachelor of Arts with highest honors from the University of Texas at Austin’s Plan II Honors Program and a Master of Science in Journalism, with honors, from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He earned his law degree from the UC Berkeley School of Law. David is the 2020 recipient of the Freedom of Information award given by the Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and under his leadership, FAC was named the nonprofit recipient of the 2020 James Madison award given by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California Chapter.

David was raised in New Mexico and is a member of the California and New Mexico bars.

Willa Seldon is a partner at The Bridgespan Group, a global social impact consulting firm and advisor that works with mission-driven leaders, philanthropists, and impact investors to address society’s most important challenges and opportunities. She is a leader in place-based work and co-leads the Economic Security and Opportunity Area of Expertise. She collaborates with leaders to develop and refine their strategies, design, and launch bold initiatives, and improve their operating and economic models. Willa’s nonprofit and philanthropy clients have included Low Income Investment Fund, Mercy Housing, PolicyLink, Rockefeller Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, StriveTogether. Willa has helped launch organizations, such as Black Ambition and has supported mobilization efforts, such as OneTen and the White House Council for Community Solutions. Willa has authored numerous publications.

Before Bridgespan, Willa’s experience includes leading nonprofit organizations and executive roles in business. She served as CEO of the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco-based center for social justice, and executive director of the Tides Center, a fiscal sponsor and accelerator for social ventures. Her private sector experience includes co-founding a venture capital firm and leadership roles at AirTouch, a wireless communications company.

Willa is on the boards of directors of College Futures Foundation, Jobs for the Future, Pew Charitable Trusts and Sutter Health. She received a JD from Yale Law School, MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, and AB in economics from Bryn Mawr College, where she is an Emeritus Trustee. She is a trained Executive Coach.

Before joining Media Impact Funders in 2011 as executive director, Vince was program director for Nonprofit Sector Support at the Surdna Foundation, a family foundation based in New York City. Prior to joining Surdna, Stehle worked for 10 years as a reporter for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where he covered a broad range of issues about the nonprofit sector. Stehle has served as chairperson of Philanthropy New York and on the governing boards of VolunteerMatch, the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) and the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

Kara is a senior strategy, learning, and evaluation officer supporting the Environment Program at the Walton Family Foundation. She has over 20 years of experience measuring the impact of interventions in complex systems from the perspective of government agencies, non-profit organizations and as a funder. She has conducted research on small-scale fisheries in Nicaragua, supported national park development in Afghanistan and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal. Kara holds a Ph.D. in fisheries science from Michigan State University.

Drew Sullivan is the publisher of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), one of the largest investigative journalism organizations in the world. He co-founded OCCRP in 2007 with Paul Radu. Under his direction, OCCRP has won numerous awards, including the Tom Renner Award for Crime Reporting, the European Press Prize, and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

Drew is a co-creator of Floodlight, an initiative that connects investigative reporting with the film and television industry to produce informed fiction in the public interest.

Drew also created Reporters Shield, a membership program for media outlets and NGOs that helps defend investigative journalism against SLAPPs and other legal harassment.

Previously, Drew was an investigative reporter for The Tennessean newspaper and the Associated Press’s Special Assignment Team. Before becoming a journalist, Drew was a structural dynamicist on the space shuttle project for Rockwell Space Systems. He has a degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M University. He has also been a professional standup comedian, acted in four films, and plays bodhran in the only authentic Irish/Celtic band in the Balkans.

Lea Trusty is a Senior Program Associate at Democracy Fund, a private foundation working to ensure an open and just American democracy for all. She leads the Journalism and Power Building portfolio, which centers on investing in news outlets led by and serving communities of color, as well as supporting the leadership, collective power and coalition building, and security and care of journalists with an eye towards those from historically marginalized backgrounds.Prior to this role, Lea was a public radio reporter in Connecticut. She received her BA from Princeton University, where she studied politics and Latin America. Lea lives in New Orleans, and in her free time, she enjoys gardening on sunny days, practicing yoga, or catching a movie at her favorite indie theater.

Before creating the “Snap Judgment” radio show, Glynn worked as an educator, diplomat, community activist, actor, political strategist, fist-shaker, mountain-hollerer, and foot stomper.

Glynn composed music for the Kunst Stoff dance performances in San Francisco, rocked live spoken word poetry in Detroit, joined a band in Indonesia, wrote several screenplays, painted a daring series of self portraits, released a blues album, and thinks his stories are best served with cocktails.

In 2022, Glynn was inducted into the Podcasting Hall of Fame.

Amaya Webster is a tech-for-good geek with over a decade of experience. Before joining Tech Matters, Amaya worked at Benetech, creating software-for-good as the project manager for their R&D initiative and the community and marketing manager for their work on digital accessibility of STEM educational materials. Amaya believes there is little more rewarding than doing work that creates a positive, sustainable impact. With degrees in anthropology, biology, and art, a career in tech may not have been the obvious choice, but she has found that her eclectic background lends itself particularly well to the tech-for-good field—especially when it comes to user-centric product design, research, and creative approaches to problem-solving and strategy design.

Jean Westrick is the Executive Director of the Technology Association of Grantmakers, a nonprofit organization that cultivates the strategic, equitable, and innovative use of technology in philanthropy. Westrick brings two decades of experience building communities, leveraging technology, and leading innovative and programmatic strategies. Prior to being named Executive Director of TAG, Westrick was the Director of IT Strategy and Communications at The Chicago Community Trust where she led change management efforts for the foundation’s $6M digital transformation initiative. Also, while at The Trust, Westrick directed On the Table, an award-winning engagement model designed to inspire resident action that was replicated in 30 cities nationwide.

A longtime advocate for equity in STEM education, expanding technology access and increasing science literacy, Westrick holds a Bachelor of Arts from Michigan State University and a Master of Science from DePaul University. Westrick lives in Chicago with her husband Andrew, where she is a practicing multimedia artist and ardent supporter of live music, theater and the visual arts. She is currently enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago’s continuing education program where she is pursuing a certificate in painting.

Yehong Zhu is the Founder and CEO of Zette, a Top Woman Entrepreneur in Media & Ad Tech, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Media honoree.

A first generation American, Zhu is a philosophy graduate of Harvard University and an avid writer. It was her experience as a business reporter in the Forbes newsroom that inspired her to found Zette. “I wanted to build a better way to access high quality content, while also ensuring journalists could still get paid.”

Zhu later worked at Twitter, where she was a product manager on two teams in San Francisco and London, working with designers and engineers to ship features across Twitter’s 400M users.

Bridging the gap between premium journalism and consumer technology, Zhu founded Zette—the “Netflix for News.” Today Zette is a venture-backed news AI startup that gives readers pay-per-article access to hundreds of publications while sharing revenue with newsrooms.