About the Speakers

Geeta Anand

Dean and Professor, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism 

Geeta Anand is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who serves as dean and professor at Berkeley Journalism. Her stories on corporate corruption won the Wall Street Journal a Pulitzer Prize in 2002, and she was lead reporter in a series on healthcare that was a finalist in 2003. She wrote the non-fiction book, The Cure, about a dad’s fight to save his kids by starting a biotech company to make a medicine for their untreatable illness, which was made into the Harrison Ford movie Extraordinary Measures in 2010. She worked as a journalist for 27 years, most recently as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in India. She began her career at a free weekly newspaper, Cape Cod News, and then covered local government and courts at the Rutland Herald in Vermont. At her next job at the Boston Globe, she served as City Hall bureau chief and then covered the Massachusetts State House. She spent the next 17 years as a reporter and senior writer for the Wall Street Journal, where she covered the biotech beat and focused on investigative reporting. She spent nearly a decade in India, the country where she was born and raised, first as a foreign correspondent for the Journal and then The New York Times. She met her husband, Gregory Kroitzsh, in college. During her time as a foreign correspondent in India, he started Mumbai’s first microbrewery. They have two daughters who are in college in the U.S. She began teaching at Berkeley Journalism in 2018.

photo credit: Wesaam Al-Badry

Madeleine Bair

founder, El Tímpano

Madeleine Bair is the founder of El Tímpano, an award-winning civic media organization that has been described by peers as an “outstanding innovation model” for its work to produce journalism with and for the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrant communities.

Madeleine has been carrying a microphone in her backpack since she belonged to the Oakland bureau of Children’s Express. She has taught radio production to young adults, worked on a morning show at Chicago Public Radio, produced multimedia for Human Rights Watch, and collaborated with media activists from around the world. Her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Colorlines, and Orion, and broadcast on PRI’s The World and Independent Lens.

Marisol Bello

Executive Director, Housing Narrative Lab

Marisol Bello (she/her/ella) has spent a career championing the stories and voices of people with lived experience, so they lead in creating the solutions that help every family thrive. First as a career journalist – most recently at USA TODAY – telling the stories of families working to make ends meet, and then in the nonprofit world, where she led narrative strategies to change hearts and minds about those living on the brink and move people to action. A first generation American from a Caribbean family full of colorful storytellers, Marisol is originally from the Bronx. She’s still on the East Coast, where she lives with her family and a pandemic puppy named Chloe.

Paulette Brown-Hinds

founder, Voice Media Ventures; publisher, Black Voice News; Stanford University Sr JSK Journalism Fellow

Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds is founder of Voice Media Ventures, publisher of Black Voice News, and a Stanford University Sr JSK Journalism Fellow.

As second generation publisher of Black Voice News (BVN), Paulette is transforming the half century old weekly print outlet into a solutions-oriented data journalism and justice-focused community news organization.

As past president of the California News Publishers Association and current board member of the California Press Foundation, she works to strengthen the state’s information ecosystem as an essential part of the civic and community infrastructure. In 2019 she co-founded Media in Color, a philanthropically funded initiative designed to assist legacy media outlets serving communities of color with digital transformation. She also led the effort to create a guidebook for California-based community foundations, community media, and philanthropy to financially support local journalism.

Paulette has been awarded Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge funding, was a Knight Digital Media Fellow, Salzburg Seminar in American Studies Fellow, and as a Sr JSK Journalism Fellow she is working on a project to expand philanthropic support for California’s news organizations serving communities of color.

She is also a member of the American Press Institute, James Irvine Foundation, and Inland Empire Community Foundation boards of directors.

Eric Dhan

Community Manager, PRX Podcast Garage, KQED

Eric Dhan is the community manager at the PRX Podcast Garage at KQED. In this role, Eric organizes events and workshops related to audio storytelling, with the goal of creating a welcoming space that is accessible to people who want to mingle with other audio makers, hone their skills in audio, and tell their own stories. Previously, Eric was a project manager on the PRX’s podcast training team, where he organized and facilitated events and workshops that brought together audio creators in the United States and abroad, including for the Google Podcasts creator program. Eric also managed PRX’s Gateway Cities Audio Project, a community outreach and research initiative focusing on bringing podcasting resources to under-served communities in Massachusetts based on their interests and needs. Eric is a Bay Area native who can be found biking or walking around the Mission District, searching for good donuts and dumplings.

Anayansi Diaz-Cortes

Senior reporter and producer, Reveal, Center for Investigative Reporting

Anayansi Diaz-Cortes is a senior reporter and producer at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Most recently she created After Ayotzinapa, a series on the harrowing story of 43 Mexican college students that disappeared in 2014. Her award-winning covers a range of issues – from wage-theft and predatory online gaming, to the criminal justice system in Mississippi and high school life under COVID lockdown. Her work has been recognized by the Overseas Press Club, The Gracies, Edward R. Murrow Award and Third Coast International Audio Award, to name a few. Before Reveal, she led KCRW’s Sonic Trace, and produced for Radio Diaries. Anayansi’s passion is figuring out how to tell Latin American stories for a US audience.

Deepti Doshi

Co-Director, New_Public

Deepti is the Co-Director of New_ Public. Her work has focused on the intersection of social media, community organizing and leadership development over the last two decades. Prior to New_ Public, she set up Meta’s New Product Experimentation team and established Meta’s Community Partnerships team to build products (namely, Groups), programs, and partnerships that support community leaders. 

Deepti is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School and the Wharton Business School and holds a bachelors degree in Psychology. She is a TED Fellow, an Aspen Institute First Movers Fellow and Ideas Scholar, and her work has been featured in multiple publications.

Sahar Driver

Co-Director, Color Congress

Sahar is a founding Co-Director of Color Congress, an ecosystem-builder 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 Sonya Childress. She is a veteran documentary impact strategist, field builder, and researcher. Her career has focused on social and cultural transformation through nonfiction storytelling. She has led impact campaigns and strategy for over two-dozen documentaries, independently and with Active Voice. She has designed and led impact trainings and grantmaking programs to support impact producers and filmmakers of color with Firelight Media. She worked with Doc Society to update the second edition of their Impact Field Guide and wrote the 2019 Impact Hi5 case studies. She is on the Picture Motion Advisory Board, was a 2022 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow, and a 2021 Rockwood/JustFilms Fellow. In 2020 she authored the Ford Foundation commissioned report, Beyond Inclusion: The Critical Role of People of Color in the U.S. Documentary Ecosystem. Sahar is a second generation, Iranian American living in Oakland, CA on unceded Muwekma and Ohlone land.

Meg Garlinghouse

Vice President, Social Impact, LinkedIn

Meg Garlinghouse leads the Social Impact programs at LinkedIn. In this role, she is responsible for identifying partnerships and programs that leverage the LinkedIn platform to create positive social impact for the world.

Garlinghouse has more than twenty-five years of experience working in the technology and philanthropy sector. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Garlinghouse spent almost 10 years building and leading Yahoo!’s global community relations function.

She also has a background in international development, working for the Asia Foundation, World Bank and serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa. Garlinghouse received her Bachelor’s degree in public policy studies from Duke University and a Master’s in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She currently serves on the Boards of VolunteerMatch and KQED.org.

In her free time, she loves to hike, perfect the strawberry rhubarb pie, and be humbled while learning piano with her daughter.

Lindsay Green-Barber

Founder, Impact Architects

Lindsay earned her PhD in political science from the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is based in San Francisco, California.

Devon Gray

President, EPIC

Meklit Hadero

Ethio-American vocalist, composer and cultural strategist

Meklit Hadero is an award winning Ethio-American vocalist, composer and cultural strategist, known for her electric stage presence, and deeply personal Ethio-Jazz songs. Meklit is co-founder and host of Movement, a new radio series, podcast and live show exploring the intersection of global migration and music. Grounded in her experience as a refugee in her youth, Movement aims to inspire narrative change and shift public imagination around immigration and migration. Movement airs regularly as a special feature of PRX’s The World. Meklit’s performances have taken her across four continents, and her work been covered by the New York Times, NPR, BBC, and many more. TED Senior Fellow. She has collaborated with folks like Kronos Quartet, Andrew Bird, and the late musical legend Pee Wee Ellis. She has been commissioned to create new work by Lincoln Center, Stanford Live, UCLA, Meany Center @ the University of Washington, MAP Fund and many more. She is the co-Founder of the Nile Project, and a featured voice in UN Women’s theme song.

photo credit: Camille Seaman

Marc Hand

CEO, founder & board member, Public Media Venture Group

Marc Hand is the CEO, founder and board member of the Public Media Venture Group, a consortium of 32 public broadcasters that operate 115 public television stations reaching over 250 million people. PMVG is focused on business and technology developments built on the NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 as well as other technology platforms. PMVG is focused on strengthening and extending the role that public stations play in their local communities. Hand is also a co-founder and board chair of the National Trust for Local News, a national nonprofit focused on assembling a capital pool combined with national scale operating expertise to acquire newspapers, with a goal of preserving and sustaining local news institutions.

In 2001, Hand co-founded and was the CEO of the Public Media Company (formerly Public Radio Capital), a national non-profit that fosters public media growth. As CEO, Marc built strategic public media alliances, established relationships with financial institutions for public media investments, and provided expertise in developing and closing public media transactions. Since its founding, the Public Media Company completed transactions valued at over $400 million, working with over 300 public media entities. Prior to co-founding Public Media Company Marc worked for five years at the Station Resource Group, helping public radio stations expand services via acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships, leading to the founding of Public Radio Capital in 2001. Marc was also a commercial radio station owner and broker/financial advisor with media brokerage and investment firms focused on commercial media transactions.

Mark Horvath

Founder & CEO, Invisible People

Mark has more than 40 years of leadership and marketing experience and a vast knowledge of homelessness, including lived experience. As an award-winning television and multimedia producer, Mark’s original expertise was in response television. Today, Mark is known for his work in transmedia storytelling and public interest communications. Mark is the founder of Invisible People, an innovative nonprofit media and news publisher that uses video, social media, and journalism reaching millions of people every month to change the story of homelessness.

Jacob Kornbluth

Emmy-winning director of  TV, film, and theater

Jacob has directed 5 feature films. 3 of his feature films premiered at the Sundance Film Festival – HAIKU TUNNEL (Sony Pictures Classics), THE BEST THEIF IN THE WORLD (Showtime Independent), and INEQUALITY FOR ALL (Radius / Weinstein).  Of his other two feature films, SAVING CAPITALISM was a Netflix original film, and LOVE & TAXES has a 100% “fresh” rotten tomatoes score.

He directed and produced stories for 4 episodes (including the pilot) of the Showtime series about climate change, YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY.  That show was executive produced by James Cameron, Arnold Swartzenegger, and Jerry Weintraub.  His work on that show won a primetime Emmy for Best Nonfiction Series.

Jacob founded Inequality Media with Robert Reich in 2014 in the wake of his film, INEQUALITY FOR ALL, which featured the work of Robert Reich.  This work is often sited as a “lighthouse brand” that has played a crucial role in framing the economic case for policies in a way everyone can understand.  Facebook has recognized Jacob’s videos as having among the highest engagement rates for any influencer page on Facebook. When Jacob started making INEQUALITY FOR ALL in 2011, Robert Reich had a Facebook following of 80,000.  By the end of 2018, Robert Reich’s Facebook page had 2.8 million followers on Facebook alone — a staggering 35x increase in 7 years — and 4.7 million followers across all the social media platforms.

Jacob’s work is now focused on the intersectional nature of economic issues, and how they are interconnected with racial justice, climate, gender, health care, and democracy.

Carrie Lozano

Director, Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film and Artist Programs

Carrie Lozano is the Director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film and Artist Programs. Prior to Sundance, she was director of the International Documentary Association’s Enterprise Documentary and Pare Lorentz funds, where she supported filmmakers working at the intersection of documentary and journalism, including Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, A Thousand Cuts, and Through the Night. Lozano was previously an executive at Al Jazeera America and a senior producer of the network’s investigative series Fault Lines, where her team garnered numerous awards including an Emmy, a Peabody, and several Headliner Awards. Among other work, she produced the Academy Award nominee The Weather Underground, the live cinema piece Utopia In Four Movements, and produced, directed, and edited the Teddy Award nominee Reporter Zero. Her recent film credits include The Ballad of Fred Hersch and Prognosis: Notes on Living. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and serves on the Peabody Awards’ board of jurors. She is also on the board of ProPublica and on the advisory boards of PBS Frontline and U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism where she is an alum.

photo credit: Miguel Mendoza

Alexis Madrigal

Co-Host, Forum at KQED

Alexis Madrigal is the co-host of Forum. He is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project. He’s the creator of the podcast, Containers, and has been a staff writer at Wired. He was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Information School, and is working on a book about Oakland and the Bay Area’s revolutionary ideas.

Elodie Mailliet Storm

CEO, CatchLight

Elodie Mailliet Storm is CEO of CatchLight. A recognized media and business leader in the visual storytelling space,  she was named one of the top 100 people in Photography by American Photo. In 2016, Elodie was also named a JSK fellow in media innovation at Stanford University. During her 11 years at Getty Image, she oversaw and helped build Getty Images’ content offering and helped lead its strategic development. Most recently she was Getty Images’ Senior Director of Strategic Development based in the Bay Area focusing on Getty Images’ relationships with platforms such as Google, Instagram and Pinterest. Previously, she managed content partnerships with over 300 large media companies globally such as Vice, Conde Nast, National Geographic, amongst others. Elodie co-founded Getty Images’ high-end portraiture and fashion division, Contour, which she led until 2014 representing the work of over 100 high-end portrait and fashion photographers. She also co-founded the Getty Images Instagram grant.

Eric Newton

Writer and Consultant

Eric Newton was Oakland Tribune managing editor under Bob and Nancy Maynard; co-created the original Newseum; made or managed more than $500 million in journalism grants at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and was innovation chief at Arizona State University’s Cronkite School. He’s shared in a Pulitzer, a Peabody, a Murrow and many other awards.

Newton is a distinguished alumnus of San Francisco State and was a Rotary Scholar at the University of Birmingham in England. His books include Searchlights and Sunglasses: Field Notes from the Digital Age of Journalism and Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs. After his partner of 40 years, Mary Ann Hogan, died in 2019, he finished her book, Circle Way, about her father, San Francisco Chronicle literary editor William Hogan. Newton lives in the Bay Area, near his two sons.

Pete Nicks

Emmy Award-winning cinematographer, producer and director

Peter Nicks is an Emmy Award-winning cinematographer/producer/director known for his trilogy of cinema vérité films set in Oakland, CA. His critically acclaimed feature documentary THE WAITING ROOM won an Independent Spirit Award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2012. THE FORCE – the second in the trilogy of timely, immersive documentaries exploring the interconnected narratives of health care, criminal justice and education – won the 2017 Sundance Directing Prize. HOMEROOM, the final film in the trilogy, won the inaugural Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. His most recent film, STEPHEN CURRY: UNDERRATED, about the rise of NBA superstar Stephen Curry, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Nicks co-founded Proximity Media with fellow Oakland-based filmmaker Ryan Coogler and oversees the Nonfiction Division. He is the recipient of the SFFS/KRF screenwriting grant as well as a United States Artists Fellow. He received his B.A. in English from Howard University and his masters in journalism from UC Berkeley. He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

photo credit: Luke Fontana

Grant Oliphant

CEO, Conrad Prebys Foundation

Grant Oliphant is CEO of the Conrad Prebys Foundation, a major independent foundation working to strengthen San Diego’s future through a focus on impact in the arts, medical research and care, youth development, and higher education. Previously, Grant was president of The Heinz Endowments in Pittsburgh, one of the nation’s largest regional philanthropies, where he focused the foundation’s giving on sustainability, creativity, and learning. He also launched major initiatives to support democracy, public media, and racial and social equity, and worked with his board to bring the foundation’s investments into alignment with its social and climate change priorities. Prior to joining Heinz, Grant was President & CEO of the Pittsburgh Foundation, one of the nation’s largest community foundations, where he doubled the foundation’s size while helping to reinvent the national model of community philanthropy through an emphasis on regional leadership and impact. An outspoken advocate for philanthropy that is both effective and clear, Grant launched and hosted a popular podcast, “We Can Be,” and writes and speaks frequently about philanthropic leadership. He is the immediate past chair of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a national organization working to promote better giving, and chaired the Communications Network, which promotes better use of communications by philanthropy. Devoted to community leadership at the intersection of business, non-profits and universities, Grant served on the boards of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the August Wilson African-American Cultural Center and the Pittsburgh Promise, along with Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania and Riverlife, both of which he chaired. Earlier in his career, which also included a brief stint in advertising, Grant launched a magazine in Washington D.C. on American politics and co-hosted a radio talk show before joining U.S. Senator John Heinz as his press secretary. He is also the author of a novel, “Ring of Years.” Grant and his wife Aradhna, who have four grown children, are delighted to be making their home in Mission Hills and are looking forward to being active members of the San Diego community.

Tim Olson

Senior Vice President Digital Strategic Partnerships, KQED

Tim oversees KQED’s strategic planning and 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 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.

John Palfry

President, MacArthur Foundation

John Palfrey is President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropies with assets of approximately $8 billion, and offices in Chicago, New Delhi, and Abuja, Nigeria.

Palfrey is a well-respected educator, author, legal scholar, and innovator with expertise in how new media is changing learning, education, and other institutions. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a commitment to rigorous thinking, disruption, and creative solutions often made possible by technology, accessibility of information, and diversity and inclusion. Palfrey has extensive experience in social change spanning the education, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Palfrey served as Head of School at Phillips Academy Andover, the only school of its kind to maintain need-blind admissions. During his tenure, the number of faculty members of color doubled, and the student body grew more diverse. He oversaw the creation of the Tang Institute at Andover, which seeks to reform and democratize excellent teaching and learning.

Palfrey was the Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School. In that role, he expanded the Library’s reach and services, finding innovative ways to use digital technologies to enhance the school’s scholarship and teaching.

From 2002 to 2008, Palfrey served as Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, which seeks to explore and understand cyberspace. He is founding board chair of the Digital Public Library of America, and is the former board chair of LRNG, a nonprofit launched and supported by MacArthur.

Palfrey has published extensively on how young people learn in a digital era, as well as the effects of new technologies on society at large. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education; Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age; and BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google.

Palfrey is the board chair of the United States Impact Investing Alliance and serves on the board of the Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and serves on the governance council. Palfrey previously served on the boards of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Boston Athenaeum, and MIT Press.

Palfrey holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an AB from Harvard College.

Nigel Poor

Co-founder, Ear Hustle; Professor of Photography, California State University, Sacramento

Nigel Poor is a visual artist whose work explores the various ways people make a mark and leave behind evidence of their existence. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and can be found in various museum collections including the SFMOMA, the M.H. deYoung Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. She is also a professor of photography at California State University, Sacramento. In 2011, Nigel got involved with San Quentin State Prison as a volunteer teacher for Mount Tamalpais College (formerly the Prison University Project). She is the co-creator and co-host of the Pulitzer Prize finalist prison-based podcast Ear Hustle and the co-author of This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life (Crown Publishing).

Tasneem Raja

Editor-in-Chief, The Oaklandside

Tasneem Raja is the Editor-in-Chief of The Oaklandside and a co-founder of Cityside Journalism Initiative. A pioneer in data journalism and local nonprofit news startups, she co-founded The Tyler Loop, a nationally recognized community news platform in East Texas. She was a senior editor at NPR’s Code Switch and at Mother Jones, where the team she led helped build the first-ever database of mass shootings in America. She is a graduate of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and started her career as a features reporter at The Chicago Reader and The Philadelphia Weekly. She lives in Oakland with her husband, daughter, and two imperious terriers.

Josué Rojas

Practicing visual artist, muralist and educator

Rojas has worked in the Bay Area for over 25 years in San Francisco, particularly creating public art. Rojas’ work is characterized by conversations with community and engagement and turning those values, concerns and stories into aesthetic expression. The intention behind the work is to bring critical consciousness and bring beauty to the same conversation, while delivering beauty, subtlety and mastery of the craft of painting –– paying respects to decades of muralists that have come before.

Rojas holds a BFA in Painting/Drawing and an MFA in Painting/Drawing from Boston University. Rojas lives and works in Northern California, primarily San Francisco where he lives.

photo credit: Gabriela Hasbun photography

Erica Rosenthal

Director of Research, Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California

Erica Rosenthal is the Director of Research at the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California. She is a firm believer that stories matter. Her passion is for understanding HOW and WHY stories –particularly in media and entertainment — are so effective at challenging preconceptions, moving people to action, and generating lasting culture change. At the Lear Center, she oversees a portfolio of research focused on the content, audiences, and impact of media narratives addressing a wide range of health and social issues, including health equity, economic mobility, reproductive rights, immigration, misinformation, climate change, mental health, and more. Her work has been funded by federal and state governments, philanthropies, nonprofit advocacy organizations, and media corporations. She has more than 20 years of experience evaluating the impact of programs and initiatives on a variety of health and public interest issues and a PhD in applied social psychology from Claremont Graduate University.

Katherine Ann Rowlands

CEO, Bay City News Foundation

Katherine Ann Rowlands runs Bay City News Foundation, a nonprofit that publishes journalism for the greater SF Bay Area at LocalNewsMatters.org. She is also owner and publisher of Bay CIty News, an affiliated newswire that provides original reporting 24/7 to most media in the region. As a 2017 JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, she focused on how to overcome gender disparities in newsroom leadership roles and ended up creating a leadership position for herself by buying Bay City News — where she began her career as a college intern three decades earlier. She studied at Macalester College, London School of Economics and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is President of the board of First Amendment Coalition, a past president of Journalism and Women Symposium, and co-founder of WomenDoNews.org, which works to get better representation of women journalists in Wikipedia.

Jasmine Sudarkasa

Founding Executive Director, Curve Foundation

Jasmine Sudarkasa is the Founding Executive Director of the Curve Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to lesbian and queer joy, visibility and media.

Prior to joining Curve, Jasmine served as the Program Fellow for the Effective Philanthropy Group at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In this role, she supported the foundation’s five-pillared approach to effective philanthropy, consulting with program staff on equitable grantmaking strategy, evaluation, and organizational effectiveness. In 2020, she designed and led a $15 million anti-racist participatory grantmaking effort, a personal and career highlight.

Jasmine has been a capacity builder, development officer, trainer and cheesemonger – sometimes all at once. Before philanthropy, she led the training and technical assistance team at Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS), subject agency of the film Very Young Girls. In that role, Jasmine led a curricular program on best practices for identifying and serving CSE and sex-trafficked youth. Notable participants include the Icahn Medical School, Dallas County Juvenile Department and the Miami State Attorney’s Office.

Jasmine received her bachelor’s degree in political science and comparative ethnic studies from Columbia University, but confesses to have learnt just as much from Chani Nicholas.

Stephanie Teleki

Director, Learning and Impact, California Healthcare Foundation

Stephanie Teleki is CHCF’s director of Learning and Impact. She partners with the foundation’s program teams to optimize impact by supporting organizational and field learning and evaluation. Stephanie also leads the foundation’s portfolio in maternity care as part of CHCF’s focus on people-centered care. This portfolio currently includes work to improve maternal mental health care and to promote birth equity for Black mothers / birthing people.* She also led CHCF’s statewide effort, now concluded, to reduce unnecessary cesarean sections.

Previously, Stephanie led CHCF’s transparency-focused effort to develop metrics for quality improvement and accountability in the fields of maternity care, cancer, and orthopedics. Prior to joining CHCF, Stephanie was a policy analyst in the health unit of RAND Corporation, where she conducted health policy research and evaluations for such clients as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and health plans. She has also held research and management positions at Kaiser Permanente, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Stephanie received a bachelor’s degree in English and history from Amherst College, a master’s of public health in health services research and policy from the University of Texas at Houston, and a doctorate of philosophy in health services research and policy from the University of California, Los Angeles.

*We use the term “birthing people” to recognize that not all people who become pregnant and give birth identify as a woman or a mother.

Earlonne Woods

Co-founder, Ear Hustle

Earlonne Woods was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. In 1997, he was sentenced to 31-years-to-life in prison. While incarcerated, he received his GED, attended Coastline Community College, and completed many vocational trade programs. He also founded CHOOSE1, which aims to repeal the California Three Strikes Law, the statute under which he was sentenced. In November 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown commuted Earlonne’s sentence after 21 years of incarceration. He is the co-creator and co-host of the Pulitzer Prize finalist prison-based podcast Ear Hustle and the co-author of This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life (Crown Publishing).

Michael Yamashita

Publisher, Bay Area Reporter

Born in Hawaii, Michael Yamashita graduated from Santa Clara University and soon relocated to San Francisco. First hired as a copy editor for the Bay Area Reporter in 1989, Yamashita was named general manager in 1995 under founding publisher Bob Ross. He served under Ross’ successor, publisher Thomas Horn, until being named publisher in 2013. He acquired all shares held by investor partners in 2017 and became the first gay Asian-Pacific Islander owner-publisher of an LGBTQ newspaper in the United States. Yamashita currently serves as an associate board member of the California News Publisher Association. The Bay Area Reporter is a founding member of news media collaboratives like National LGBT Media Association, Bay Area Media Agency, and News Is Out, a national LGBTQ+ news site and newsletter.

Chi-hui Yang

Senior Program Officer, Ford Foundation’s JustFilms Initiative

Chi-hui Yang is a Senior Program Officer for Ford Foundation’s JustFilms initiative, and makes grants globally in documentary film, new media, and visual storytelling. He manages a portfolio of grants that support artist-led, socially engaged filmmaking, advance a more equitable and inclusive documentary sector, and build the power of organizations and individuals grounded in communities of color and the Global South.

Before joining the foundation in 2015, Chi-hui worked extensively as a film curator, including as a selection committee member for MoMA’s Doc Fortnight and consulting series producer for PBS’s POV. Among his independently curated programs are the 2008 Flaherty Film Seminar “The Age of Migration” and the film series and symposium “Lines and Modes: Media, Infrastructure, and Aesthetics.” From 2000 to 2010, he was director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, the largest event of its kind in the nation.

Chi-hui has served as an adjunct professor in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Hunter College Asian American Studies Program and has been an instructor at the UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art.

Chi-hui earned a master’s degree in film studies from San Francisco State University and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford University. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.