Advisory Board Members
The NMWE Advisory Board is made up of journalists with deep expertise on the issues of women in the news industry. The are journalists, researchers, historians, thinkers and doers who are interested in seeing how the news business could benefit from the creativity of news women.
Vivian Vahlberg
Journalism Educator
Vivian E. Vahlberg is the managing director of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University. She is also in charge of all educational programs, research projects and publications for news media executives regarding digital media. Prior to joining the Center in 2006, she was president of Vahlberg & Associates, a consulting firm advising media companies, universities and non-profits on strategy and innovation. During her 13 years at the McCormick Foundation, she managed investment of more than $70 million in journalism grants and programs in the U.S. and Latin America, including supporting MMC’s research and training for and about women news executives. Vahlberg has also been executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists, an adjunct professor of journalism at the Medill School of Journalism; and assistant Washington bureau chief for The Daily Oklahoman, the largest newspaper in the state of Oklahoma. She was the first woman president of the world-renowned National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Chhayal Parikh
Multimedia Journalist
Chhayal Parikh is a mobile journalist for U.S. News & World Report, where the tools of her trade are wielded in an overstuffed backpack, complete with portable gear to shoot, report, write, edit, and produce on the fly. Parikh worked previously at The Associated Press in the multimedia department, where she oversaw the political Web site, produced interviews, monitored the 2006 midterm elections and created interactive packages. She is a writer for abcdlady.com, an online magazine for American-born South Asians. She received her bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Houston in 2000 and a master’s in interactive journalism from American University in 2006.
Cynthia Miller
Journalism Leadership Trainer
Cynthia Miller is regional vice president for WrightWay Consulting, Inc., a national firm specializing in leadership development. Miller has provided leadership training at many newspapers around the country and with Stockholm University in Sweden. As a managing partner of the Newsroom Leadership Group, she directed leadership workshops for women journalists. She is an outspoken authority on the subject of how newspapers can win back female readers and retain women on the newsroom staff. She is currently writing a book on the history of Clark Atlanta University, a historically black university. A former metro editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Miller has a master’s degree in business administration.
Sara Melillo
Journalism Program Officer
Sara Melillo is a program officer for the McCormick Foundation’s Journalism Program, where she evaluates programs, develops new strategic initiatives and guides grant making in youth media, digital journalism and journalism training. Melillo graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She earned a master’s degree in international public health from Tulane University, where she was named the first ever Brush Foundation Fellow in International Reproductive Health Policy. Melillo was on the research staff of the Media Management Center/Readership Institute and the CDC’s Global AIDS Program. She has worked extensively in Africa on journalism and public health projects during the past several years.
Lee Becker
Journalism Researcher
Lee B. Becker, Ph.D., is director of the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research and a professor at the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. He is also the director of the Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates, administered by the Cox Center. Prior to moving to Georgia in 1997, Becker was on the faculty of the School of Journalism at the Ohio State University for 20 years and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University for three. Before graduate school, Becker worked as a journalist at The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Wichita Eagle, The Lexington Herald, and The (Covington) Kentucky Post.
Maurine Beasley
Journalism Historian
Maurine H. Beasley, Ph.D., is a professor of journalism at the Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, where she teaches classes in women and the media and journalism history. A widely published scholar, her most recent book is First Ladies and the Press (Northwestern University, 2005). Her coauthored/edited book, Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism, received a 2003 award for excellence from the Text and Academic Authors Association. A former president of the American Journalism Historians Association, she is the recipient of its Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History. Beasley is a former education editor of the Kansas City (Mo.) Star and former staff writer for The Washington Post.
Jan Schaffer
J-Lab Director
Jan Schaffer directs J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which administers the New Media Women Entrepreneurs project as well as the national Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism and the New Voices initiative, which is funding start-up hyper-local community news projects and the Knight Citizen News Network and J-Learning portals. She is the former executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, a $14 million, 10-year journalism reform initiative that helped to fund more than 120 journalism pilot projects that sought to involve people better in public life. A Pulitzer Prize winner for The Philadelphia Inquirer, she brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to her work, including assignments as business editor and as an editor and reporter for the city desk, national desk and business news departments. She is a former journalism fellow at Stanford University. She has been a regular discussion leader at the American Press Institute. In addition to funding demonstration projects, rewarding innovations and spotlighting best practices, she is involved in teaching, public speaking, writing, and sharing the lessons learned from the centers’ projects.
 Photo courtesy of soc.american.edu |
Larry Kirkman
American University
School of Communication Dean
Larry Kirkman is the dean of the American University School of Communication, where he directs and develops academic and professional programs in Journalism, Film and Media Arts and Public Communication with a cross-cutting focus on public affairs and public service. Dean Kirkman came to AU in 2001 from the Benton Foundation. As director of Benton, from 1989 to 2001, he created programs in strategic communications for nonprofit organizations, public media, and communications policy. Under his direction, Benton became a leading nonprofit Internet publisher, producing online knowledge networks that served as test-beds for journalism, education and social action. He launched the U.S. Center for www.oneworld.net, and he served as Chair of the One World International Foundation from ‘02-’06. He serves on the Public Issues Advisory Committee of The Advertising Council. He served in various roles for the Council on Foundations and its affinity groups, including: chair of the Communication Committee; chair of the Film and Video Festival; and chair of the Communications Committee for the Funders for Citizen Participation. Prior to his work at the Benton Foundation, Dean Kirkman was the founding director of the Labor Institute of Public Affairs, where he worked from 1982 to 1989, and he worked at the American Film Institute from 1979 to 1982. As an AU professor in the 1970s, he helped bring the School of Communication into the video age while serving as editor of TeleVisions magazine.
