"Craig Aaron is senior program director of Free Press, a national media reform group, where he leads all program, public advocacy and communications work, including the SavetheInternet.com and SaveTheNews.org campaigns. He works in the Washington office and speaks often on media, Internet and journalism issues. His commentaries appear regularly in the Guardian and the Huffington Post. He recently edited and co-authored the book Changing Media: Public Interest Policies for the Digital Age.
2009 Conference Speakers
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"Joaquin Alvarado is senior vice president for Diversity and Innovation at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In this role, Alvarado provides strategic guidance and leadership for strengthening the Corporation's capacity to serve as a catalyst for innovation and inclusion within public media. Alvarado has served as director of the San Francisco State University's Institute for Next Generation Internet (INGI) and he is architecting the National Public Lightpath as a framework for public media, education and community leadership in the future of the Internet."
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"W. Kamau Bell is a comedian, writer, and educator based in San Francisco. He is credited with telling the first ever Barack Obama joke on Comedy Central and was honored as San Francisco's Comedian of the Year in 2008. He is featured regularly on radio as one half of the movie review team Siskel & Negro, and is published as a writer What Would Bill Hicks Say? Bell is currently performing his acclaimed solo performance show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour, at the New York International Fringe Festival."
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David Bollier has spent much of the past ten years studying the commons as a new paradigm for economics, politics and culture. He has pursued this work as an editor of Onthecommons.org, and as an author, activist and speaker. Bollier's most recent books include Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Commons Wealth (2002); Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture (2005); and Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (2009).
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"Tamara Gould has worked in public media for the last fifteen years, most recently as the Vice President of Distribution for the Independent Television Service (ITVS) where she oversees domestic distribution of international documentaries from around the world through the ITVS International Media Development Fund (IMDF). Tamara is involved in all aspects of bringing international programs to U.S. audiences through broadcast and digital outlets. Tamara also is Supervising Producer of the ITVS True Stories and Global Voices series, and runs the ITVS International Production unit.
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"Marc Bamuthi Joseph is one of America's leading voices in performance, arts education, and artistic curation. In the Fall of 2007, Bamuthi graced the cover of Smithsonian Magazine after being named one of America's Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. He is the artistic director of the 7-part HBO documentary "Russell Simmons presents Brave New Voices" and an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country's "greatest living artists." Mr.
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"Valerie Linson is the Series Producer for Basic Black and the Executive Editor for its accompanying website at WGBH. Basic Black is Boston's longest-running television program devoted to explorations of the black experience. In her experience with independent documentary film, Linson produced Inheritors of the Faith, an episode of This Far By Faith: African American Spiritual Journeys, a Blackside, Inc. documentary mini-series that was broadcast nationally on PBS in June 2003.
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"Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Kristina Newman-Scott is a practicing artist and Director of Visual Arts at Real Art Ways. Kristina has organized and curated exhibitions large and small with a particular focus on curating emerging artists in innovative ways. Most recently, she has organized Real Public, four public art projects in Hartford. She is currently co-curating an exhibition on contemporary art from the Anglophone Caribbean and diaspora."
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"Holly Sidford is President of Helicon Collaborative, a cultural development company with offices in New York and California. She is a strategic planner, program developer and fundraiser with more than 30 years' experience leading and developing nonprofit cultural and philanthropic organizations. She has worked as a funder at the state, regional and national levels; and has developed programming and management systems at a range of nonprofit cultural organizations in the U.S. and U.K."
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Sara Simonson is Managing Director of Art21, an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to illuminating the creative process of today's visual artists through the production of documentary media and educational resources. Art21's flagship project is its Peabody Award-winning television series, Art21- Art in the Twenty-First Century, which is broadcast nationally in primetime on PBS. Sara earned her B.A. in Art History and Film Studies from Stanford University, and her M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she specialized in Entertainment and Media Strategy.
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Will K. Wilkins, currently the NAMAC board president, is the executive director of Real Art Ways, one of the country’s most dynamic contemporary arts organizations, located in Hartford, Connecticut. Real Art Ways presents film screenings 7 nights a week, produces visual arts exhibitions, commissions public art projects, presents and commissions performing arts programming, presents literary programming, offers a variety of educational programs, and produces innovative social events. Artists and community are at the core of Real Art Ways’ mission.
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"San San Wong has over 20 years of working in the arts. Prior to joining the Arts Commission, she was a consultant focused on the exploration of new aesthetics, the impact of changing demographics and increased internationalism on arts and cultural practice, and strengthening support systems for bringing artists and communities together. Her clients have included: the Ford Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Leveraging Investments in Creativity, the Fund for Folk Culture, and the Asia Society, among others.
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Tom Borrup is a national leader and innovator in creative community building – leveraging cultural and other community assets to advance economic, social, civic, and physical development. Based in Minneapolis, he consults with cities, foundations, and nonprofits across the U.S. His work integrates the arts, economic development, urban planning and design, civic engagement, and animation of public space. Borrup has written many articles for publications in the arts, city planning and philanthropy.
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"Alexa Bradley has worked as an organizer, trainer and organizational leader for over 24 years. Currently an Associate Director at the Grassroots Policy Project, she works with progressive organizations to build their resilience, vision and power and link them to broader social movement strategies. She is also an Associate of On The Commons, a national network dedicated to linking and fostering the emergence of commons-based practices and solutions - approaches rooted in principles of collaboration, community, stewardship, equitable access and shared abundance.
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"Joshua Breitbart is the Policy Director for People's Production House and an adjunct Policy Analyst with the Open Technology Initiative of New America Foundation. He is on the board of Allied Media Projects, which hosts the annual Allied Media Conference in Detroit, Michigan."
