Speaker Biographies
KNIGHT COMMUNITY INFORMATION CHALLENGE BOOT CAMP
October 27-30, 2013
presented by the
Knight Digital Media Center
USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
in partnership with
John S. and James L Knight Foundation
SPEAKERS & PRESENTERS
Amy Gahran
Independent Journalist and Media Consultant
Amy Gahran is a journalist, editor, trainer, entrepreneur, strategist, and media consultant based in Boulder, Colorado. In addition to writing articles and doing educational programming for KDMC at the University of Southern California, she also covers mobile technology for CNN.com and Entrepreneur.com. She was a cofounder of the hyperlocal news site OaklandLocal.com. In 2006 she won a Knight News Challenge award for the Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project. Her blog is Contentious.com.
Iris Gardner
Manager of Events and Outreach, CODE2040
Iris Gardner is the manager of events and outreach at CODE2040. She has a background in higher education and tech and is dedicated to creating an equal playing field for under-represented communities in each space. Gardner joined CODE2040 from the Student Outreach team at Google where she managed the Freshmen Engineering Practicum internship program, which is geared towards underrepresented students in CS. She also worked in the admissions office of her alma mater, Pomona College, ushering in a new generation of Sagehens! In her second year at Pomona, she dove into the career development space and helped launch the inaugural year of Pomona’s $10 million campaign for paid summer internships. Now in its third year, the program funds 85% more students than it did in its first summer.
Evan Mackinder
Digital Engagement Manager, Sunlight Foundation
Evan Mackinder is the Sunlight Foundation's digital engagement manager. He oversees the organization's online outreach and social media strategy, cultivating communities of and connecting them to Sunlight's content, tools and policy work.
Prior to joining Sunlight, Mackinder spent three years with the Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org), where he lead on- and off-line engagement and worked with journalists reporting on money-and-politics issues. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and hails from the Great Lakes state.
Denise Malan
INN/IRE Director of Data Services
Denise Malan has been a journalist for more than 10 years, covering government, education, politics, the environment and enterprise stories on a variety of subjects and winning numerous awards for reporting from the Arkansas and Texas APME organizations. She was data/investigative editor at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in Texas for three years, and in June 2013 she became data director for the Investigative News Network and IRE, coordinating data projects among nonprofit newsrooms across the country. She also is an avid marathon runner and her first book on running, about the best races in the country, is set for release in April 2014.
Michele McLellan
Senior Consultant, Knight Digital Media Center, and Knight Community Information Challenge Circuit Rider
Michele McLellan is a consultant who helps news organizations, online news startups and news entrepreneurs adapt to a dynamic emerging local media environment. She is senior programming consultant with Knight Digital Media Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and is a contributor to the KDMC Community News Leadership 3.0 blog. McLellan also works as a circuit rider for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, advising foundation-funded news and information projects around the United States. She has created and currently manages Michele's List, a searchable database of promising independent online news start-ups.
From 2003-07, she directed Tomorrow's Workforce, a $2.5-million Knight Foundation project that demonstrated the link between strategic newsroom training, newsroom culture and a news organization's ability to adapt and innovate. She is a journalist who worked for more than 25 years as an editor and manager in newspapers, most recently at The Oregonian in Portland. A Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2001-02, she has taught journalism and journalism ethics nationally and internationally, developed online courses for News University, and is an author of two books, The Newspaper Credibility Handbook and, with Tim Porter, News, Improved: How America's Newsrooms Are Learning to Change.
Susan Mernit
Oakland Local founder and Knight Community Info Challenge Circuit Rider
Susan Mernit is editor and publisher of Oakland Local a news community hub for Oakland, CA focused on social justice issues that combines reported stories with community media and diverse voices and training to bridge the digital divide. A former vice president at AOL and Netscape, and a former Yahoo senior director, Mernit was consulting program manager for the Knight News Challenge, 2008-09 and is a 2012 Stanford Carlos McClatchy Fellow. She has consulted with many non-profit organizations on strategy, product development and social media/engagement, including Salon.com, TechSoup Global, Public Radio International and the Institute for Policy Studies/Economic Hardship Reporting Project, led by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Mernit is a circuit rider for the Knight Community Information Challenge, a former senior fellow for the Reporting on Health project at USC and has been a facilitator for The Knight Digital Media Center at the Annenberg School of Journalism, USC. In 2011, she launched Code for Oakland, a one-day tech event focused on building apps to serve Oakland community. She was at TechStars in 2008 with a start-up that failed, an invaluable experience.
Dan O’Neil
Executive Director, Smart Chicago Collaborative
Daniel O’Neil is the executive director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative, a civic organization devoted to making lives better in Chicago through technology. Prior to the Smart Chicago, O’Neil was a co-founder of and People Person for EveryBlock, a neighborhood news and discussion site serving 16 cities. He was responsible for uncovering new data sets through online research and working with local governments. In August 2009 EveryBlock was purchased by msnbc.com. After acquisition, O’Neil ran business development for EveryBlock, working on advertising, content partnerships, and integration with the core msnbc.com site. During this time period, O’Neil participated in the open data/open government movement, advising governments and candidates on policy.
Vikki Porter
Director, Knight Digital Media Center
Vikki Porter is director of the Knight Digital Media Center and supervises professional development programs for news entrepreneurs and community foundations engaged in news and information projects at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. In addition, she works with news organizations on strategies for digital transformation. She was the founding director of the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the USC Annenberg School. During her 30-year journalism career, Porter worked in five western states, started a newspaper, served as top editor for three community newspapers, and shared a 1986 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal as part of a five-person team while city editor of The Denver Post. Most recently, she was executive editor of The Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs, CA.
Porter was a Knight Professional-in-Residence at the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas in 1987-88 and a Knight Journalism Fellow in Studies of Law at Yale Law School in 1988-89, where she earned her Master in Studies of Law. She is active in the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Online News Association, and has been invited to participate in conferences hosted by Poynter Institute, ONA, the Freedom Forum, Harwood and Associates and the American Press Institute.
Bahia Ramos
Director, Community Foundations
Bahia Ramos joined Knight Foundation in September 2009 as a National Urban Fellow and was later hired as director, community foundations. She directs donor-advised grants to community foundations around the country.
Prior to her selection as a National Urban Fellow, Ramos spent two years living in London, where she consulted with Man Group Plc, the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund, in the corporate responsibility department. Before leaving for London, she worked in the cultural nonprofit sector, where she served as the director of government and community affairs at Brooklyn Botanic Garden and as government affairs director for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, where she successfully completed public funding for the museum’s $52 million expansion project and generated community participation in the museum’s programming. Prior to that, Ramos' interest in innovative education techniques led her to Learn Now, an educational management organization, where she oversaw a charter start-up in St. Paul, Minneapolis, a community-based initiative for which she garnered public and private support.
Lisa Williams
Director of Digital Engagement, Investigative News Network, and Knight Community Info Challenge Circuit Rider
Lisa William, an award-winning digital journalism entrepreneur, joined the Investigative News Network as director of digital engagement in August. In her new role, Williams will work with INN members to create effective strategies for engaging their audience, help them find a path to new funding and revenue, and use leading-edge technologies to create high-impact journalism. Williams founded Placeblogger.com, the world's largest searchable index of local weblogs. Placeblogger was a winner of the Knight 21st Century News Challenge, which gives out $5 million annually to innovators with projects that aim to define the future of journalism. Williams is also a fellow at the MIT Media Lab's Center for Future Civic Media, which is one of the most well-known university-based technology and innovation centers in the world. The newly formed Center for Future Civic Media focuses on meeting the information needs of humanity over the next 100 years.
Prior to creating Placeblogger, Williams founded H2Otown, an online community and news site by and for the residents of her hometown of Watertown, MA. H2Otown became a nationally recognized model for citizen journalism. Williams has also worked with the Boston Globe, the Center for Citizen Media, and countless startups and media organizations. She graduated from Emerson College in 1992.