Presenter Bios

Alicia Stewart senior editor/producer, Engage
PANEL: "MEDIA ACCESS WORKSHOP"
Stewart is the Sr. Editor/Producer of Engage, the arm of CNN charged with identifying niche/under-reported news stories. She edits, produces, and writes digital content for Soledad O'Brien's "In America" documentary unit, as well as leads and maintains its social media presence.

Ann Mullen, executive producer, special projects, Channel 7/WXYZ (Detroit)
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM IV: FROM PRINT TO BROADCAST"
Mullen oversees all investigative reports. She started at WXYZ in 2004 as an investigative producer. Before that she was an investigative reporter with the Metro Times, an alternative weekly newspaper. She got her start in journalism as a freelance writer for the Metro Times, and as an intern with the local public radio station WDET. She is passionate about her work and deeply believes in the profound impact journalism can have on our communities and the world.

Arthur Horwitz, publisher, Detroit Jewish News
PANEL: "COVERING RELIGION IN DIVERSE COMMUNITIES"
Horwitz is the founder and president of Renaissance Media the parent company of the Detroit Jewish News. Horwitz created Renaissance Media in 2000 with noted philanthropist Michael H. Steinhardt and hast been responsible for publishing the Detroit Jewish News since 1986. Under his leadership, the Detroit Jewish News has become one of the most respected Jewish communal publications in America an an influential voice on local, state, and national issues. The Michigan Press Association has regularly recognized the Detroit Jewish News as one of the state's best weekly publications.

Asma Khalid, production assistant, Morning Edition/National Public Radio
PANEL: "NPR'S THE AUDIO CUT"
As a producer, Khalid has worked on a range of stories from local issues of race in her own backyard—including a story on why DC's historically Chocolate City is turning more vanilla—to issues of international politics, like the opening of the Arab world's first modern art museum. Most recently, Khalid returned from a trip to Pakistan to explore that country's fight against extremism in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's capture.

Athima Chansanchai founder/president, Tima Media
PANEL: "ELP SUMMIT"
Chansanchai (AAJA National Secretary) was a reporter for almost 10 years at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Baltimore Sun. She is a regular contributor to MSNBC.com, writing for Technolog, TODAY Digital Life, Gadgetbox and In-Game; and editing/producing for the Tech-Sci department. She has also been a columnist for MSNBC.com: "DigiGirl." She began her career in journalism more than 15 years ago at Florida Trend magazine, before receiving her master's degree in Communications/Journalism at Stanford University. She is also a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association.

Birgit Rieck assistant director, Knight-Wallace Fellows
PANEL: "RETOOL, RETHINK, RECHARGE WITH A JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP"
Rieck has been with the Knight-Wallace Fellows program since May 2004 and, as assistant director, manages the daily activities, seminars and news tours. Until 2004 she administered the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. Birgit received a Master's Degree in Cultural Anthropology and Education from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, after finishing fieldwork in Uganda and Rome. She also completed a two-year management training with InterContinental Hotels Group in London. Before coming to the United States she was a reporter and program host for "Stadtradio Karlsruhe," one of the first privately owned radio stations in Germany.

Bo Hee Kim, community manager, Storify
PANEL: "HOW CROWDSOURCING CAN HELP JOURNALISTS"
Kim handles user relations for Storify, a Web start-up that enables users to tell stories by pulling together elements from social networks. She is also a master's student at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. In 2009, she was a California Health Journalism Fellow, reporting on Korean Americans with cancer in the California Bay Area. She worked as an online editor at Newzwag, a subsidiary of Agence France-Presse, and has interned at washingtonpost.com and New America Media. This year, she was awarded the Randy Shilts Memorial Award for Exceptional Reporting and the AAJA (SF Bay Area) Ken Wong Memorial Scholarship.

Brian Kaufman video journalist, Detroit Free Press
PANEL: "VISUAL STORYTELLING III"
Kaufman is a three-time national Emmy award-winning video journalist with the Detroit Free Press. His style of visual storytelling blends cinematography with traditional still photography. Kaufman's work spans a broad frange, from quick-turn daily assignments to long-term projects on social and environmental issues. The Society of Professional Journalists in Detroit named him the 2009 Young Journalist of the Year and his work as a photographer and editor has been recognized by a number of other organizations.

Brian Wong, news editor, ESPN
PANEL: "THE DAILY GRIND"
Wong has been News Editor at ESPN for the past 8 years. He works on all studio shows, including SportsCenter. Prior to ESPN, Wong was the Assistant Sports Editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune. He has also worked at the Los Angeles Daily News, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Salem Statesman-Journal, Redding Record-Searchlight and San Jose Mercury News.

Bryan Monroe, editor, CNNPolitics.com
PANEL: "ELECTION 2012"
Monroe leads the editorial planning and content strategy for CNN's online and mobile political coverage from the network's DC Bureau. Most recently, Monroe was a visiting professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and is a former president of NABJ, the National Association of Black Journalists. Prior to his professorship at Northwestern, Monroe served as Vice President and Editorial Director at Ebony and Jet magazines in Chicago. At the magazines, he led the coverage of the 2008 presidential elections and conducted the first interview with then President-elect Barack Obama following his November victory; and also had the last major interview with pop star Michael Jackson before his death in 2007. As asst. Vice President/News at Knight Ridder, he helped lead the team at the Biloxi (Ms.) Sun Herald that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Carol Rothman, secretary-treasurer of The Newspaper Guild Sector of the Communications Workers of America
PANEL: "ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: UNIONS"
Rothman is with The Newspaper Guild Sector of the Communications Workers of America, which represents 25,000 media workers in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. In these trying times for the media industry, Rothman is part of the Contracts Committee that approves collective bargaining agreements for the Guild's local unions at represented media outlets. The Guild is constantly updating its Collective Bargaining Program which is the union's baseline in these negotiations. One constant tenet throughout the years has been promoting diversity and working against all forms of discrimination through bargaining.

Carolyn Hong, coordinating producer, ESPN's Enterprise Unit
PANEL: "BEYOND THE SCORECARD"
Hong oversees production of long-form stories for the award-winning "Outside the Lines" show. She has 20 years experience as a broadcast journalist and has won seven Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow award for her work as an investigative producer in several top local news markets.

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Author, A Tiger in the Kitchen
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: HOW TO WRITE/PUBLISH YOUR FIRST BOOK"
Tan is a New York-based writer who has written a memoir about discovering her Singaporean family by learning to cook with them. A Tiger In The Kitchen will be published by Hyperion February 8, 2011. She was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, In Style magazine and the Baltimore Sun. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Marie Claire, Every Day With Rachael Ray, Family Circle, Bloomberg Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, The (Portland) Oregonian, The (Topeka) Capital-Journal, The (Singapore) Straits Times and Elle.com. She is also a regular contributor to The Atlantic Food Channel.

Ching-Ching Ni, Staff Writer, The Los Angeles Times, Nieman Fellow at Harvard University
PANEL: "RETOOL, RETHINK, RECHARGE WITH A JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP"
Ching-Ching Ni is the former Beijing correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. She is currently a staff writer focusing on immigrant communities for the paper. As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, she studied the intersection among religion, politics and immigration, with a focus on the changing spiritual landscape of America.

Chris Gautz, business reporter
PANEL: "BEYOND POVERTY PORN"
Gautz is a business reporter and his responsibilities include Consumers Energy, manufacturing, the local economy, banking, and technology. Gautz is a native of Adrian, MI, and graduated from Central Michigan University in 2004, where he was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, Central Michigan Life, his senior year. Gautz began his career in journalism working for The Daily Telegram while in high school. He was an intern at the Cit Pay in the winter and summer of 2003. He joined the Citizen Patriot from the South Bend Tribune in October 2006. He has won Associated Press awards for investigative reporting, featuring writing and coverage of city hall politics.

Christine Choy, director, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?"
PANEL: "WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN"
Choy, a.k.a. Chai Ming Huie, was trained as an architect; she received her Master of Science degree from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University and Directing Certificate from the American Film Institute. Choy is a full-time professor at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Served as a Chair of Graduate Film/TV Program from 1994 to 1997, again from 2002 to 2005. Her works have been broadcast on HBO, PBS, Sundance Channel, Life Time, NHK, and many other stations. She has also been featured at film festival around the world including Berlin, Cannes, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Hong Kong, Pusan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.

Christina Xu, chancellor, Institute on Higher Awesome Studies
PANEL: "INSPIRATION BY INNOVATION"
Xu is the Chancellor of the Institute on Higher Awesome Studies, an organization dedicated to nurturing small awesome ideas around the world; she also serves as a trustee on the Boston chapter of the Awesome Foundation. By day, she works at Breadpig, an uncorporation trying to make the world suck less by harnessing the goodwill of geeks worldwide; previously, she served as the outreach coordinator for MIT's Center for Civic Media. She is one of the co-founders of ROFLCon, the world's first conference/convention about internet culture.

Chuck Alawan, interfaith leader, Islamic Center of America
PANEL: "COVERING RELIGION IN DIVERSE COMMUNITIES"
Alawan is a founder, board member emeritus and interfaith leader at the Islamic Center of America, the biggest mosque in metro Detroit. He is a veteran who attended American University of Beirut, Lebanon and Wayne State University in East Lansing, MI.

Cindi Del Rosario Tapan, freelance writer/editor
PANEL: "ELP SUMMIT"
Tapan is a freelance writer and editor. Previously, she was editorial manager at RecycleBank, an incentives program that encourages people to take positive green actions. Cindy has served as the managing editor for National Geographic's Green Guide online, Parenting.com and the eco-conscious website Blue Egg. She began career at In Style and Oprah magazines, before being named program director for the launch of Martha Stewart Living Radio. She is the former president of the NY chapter of AAJA, and a 2005 graduate of the Executive Leadership Program.

Deanne Borshay Liem, producer, director, and writer, Mu Films
PANEL: "BORN ACROSS BORDERS"
Liem has over twenty years experience working in development, production and distribution of independent documentaries. She is Producer, Director, and Writer for the Emmy Award-nominated documentary, First Person Plural (Sundance, 2000), and Executive Producer for Spencer Nakasako's Kelly Loves Tony (PBS, 1998) and AKA Don Bonus (PBS, 1996, Emmy Award). She served as Co-Producer for Special Circumstances (PBS, 2009) which follows Chilean exile, Hector Salgado, as he attempts to reconcile with former interrogators and torturers in Chile. Deann is the Director, Producer and Writer of the new feature-length documentary, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee.

Debra Adams Simmons, newsroom editor, The Plain Dealer
PANEL: "HERE'S TO THE NEXT STEP...MANAGEMENT"
Simmons was named editor of The Plain Dealer in October 2010. She arrived at The Plain Dealer as managing editor in 2007 following four years as vice president and editor of the Akron Beacon Journal. Prior to that, she was the Beacon Journal's managing editor. She previously worked at The Detroit Free Press, The Virginian-Pilot, The Hartford Courant and the Syracuse Herald-Journal in a variety of roles. A native of Hartford, Connecticut, Debra received her bachelor's degree from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications and the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a graduate of the Northwestern University Media Management Center's Advanced Executive Program in its Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Debra was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 2004 and 2005.

Dewnya Bakri-Bazzi, contributor, I Speak For Myself: American Women on Being Muslim
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: AMERICAN WOMEN ON BEING MUSLIM"
Bakri-Bazzi recently graduated from Thomas Cooley Law School in Michigan. She received a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Criminal Justice from the University of Michigan, Dearborn, where she also played basketball. Dewnya was born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan however, she remains very attached to her roots in Jnoub, South Lebanon.

Dinah Eng, contributor, former director, Executive Leadership Program
PANEL: "ELP SUMMIT"
Eng headed the establishment of ELP during her tenure as president of the Asian American Journalists Association from 1994-96. Eng, a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a freelancer based in Los Angeles, has been an assignment editor in various capacities for Gannett including Editor of the USA TODAY/Apple College Information Network, formerly the college wire service arm of GNS. Eng, a past president of UNITY '99, was the recipient of the 2006 National Association of Minority Media Executives Lawrence Young Breakthrough Award, and winner of the 1997 Columbia University Distinguished Service to Journalism Award, in recognition of her efforts to help diversify the news media industry. She has received numerous writing awards, including being named one of the semi-finalists for the Journalist-in-Space program.

Doug Mitchell, co-project director, "The New U" Entrepreneur Fellowship Program/UNITY: Journalists of Color
PANEL: "THE NEW U"
Mitchell is a nationally recognized trainer and coach for young people and early career professionals in multimedia. He is a former Knight International Press fellow and Fulbright scholar to Chile. He also spent 21-1/2 years as a producer and director at National Public Radio. While at NPR he founded and lead a program called "Next Generation Radio," a series of public radio training project held around the country where competitively selected college students were paired with a mentor and reported stories for public radio.

Ed Fernandez, VP, general manager, Channel 7/WXYZ
PANEL: "WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN"
Fernandez, is a Michigan native who rose through the ranks at stations in Grand Rapids and, most recently, served as president and general manager of WSNS Telemundo in Chicago. Fernandez, 47, has worked as a local sales manager, general sales manager, station manager and vice president/general manager. Earlier in his career, he served as an account executive for WSB-TV in Atlanta, WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, and WOOD-TV, also in Grand Rapids. His stations have won numerous local Emmys. Originally from West Michigan, he earned a bachelor's degree in broadcast and cinematic arts from Central Michigan University. He was the Robert R. McCormick/Tribune Foundation Fellowship Recipient through National Association of Broadcasters. His professional involvement includes membership of the Michigan Association Broadcasters and the Illinois Broadcasters Association Board.

Elle Destree, media business manager, Marketwire
PANEL: "CREATING A BUSINESS CALLED--YOU"
Destree is the Media Business Manager for Marketwire in Chicago and creates and manages partnerships between Marketwire and media outlets. She is responsible for providing media outlets with breaking news from Marketwire and helping online news sites to expand their content. She previously was a Community Development Specialist for Wolfram|Alpha and was responsible for creating Wolfram|Alpha's user community, as well as maintaining social media and blogs for the company. She has a degree in Media Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Emil Guillermo, award-winning journalist and TV/radio host/commentator
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: IN CONVERSATION WITH GRACE LEE BOGGS"
For nearly 15 years, Guillermo wrote the most widely read opinion column on Asian America in the U.S. An award-winning veteran broadcast and print journalist, talk host and commentator, Guillermo was the first Asian American to regularly host a national news radio program on NPR's "All Things Considered" from 1989-1991. Later, he was executive producer and host of "New California Media," described as the "Meet the Press" of ethnic journalism and shown throughout the state. His book, "Amok: Essays from an Asian American perspectives," won an American Book Award in 2000. His latest "Amok: columns are now at www.aaldef.org/blog. His personal blog is at www.amok.com.

Eric Seals, photo and video journalist, Detroit Free Press
PANEL: "VISUAL STORYTELLING IV"
A photojournalist at the Free Press since 1999, Seals, in May of 2008, transitioned into doing video storytelling and has been recognized with multiple Michigan Emmys and a Webby award for his work. Seals researches and finds interesting character driven stories using strong visuals, good editing and more importantly a story that hooks you from the start which is so key in keeping our viewers attention. Seals loves to mentor and teach others about the wonderful and challenging world of video storytelling.

Emilia Askari, journalist
PANEL: "ELP SUMMIT"
Askari completed a master's degree at the University of Michigan School of Information, where she studied human-computer interaction, social computing, video games and other topics related to the future of news. This past May, she was a fellow at a News Entrepreneurs Boot Camp sponsored by the Knight Digital Media at the University of Southern California. Before that, Askari spent about two decades as a reporter at the Detroit Free Press and the Miami Herald. During the 2010-2011 school year, Askari co-directed one of AAJA's ELP demonstration projects, called The Living Textbook. The project helped a class of Arab American seventh graders in Dearborn, Michigan develop journalism skills.

Frank Blethen, publisher, The Seattle Times/seattletimes.com
PANEL: "HERE'S TO THE NEXT STEP...MANAGEMENT"
Blethen is publisher of The Seattle Times/seattletimes.com, the second largest newspaper/website on the West Coast. The Times is known for its strong local coverage and its aggressive investigative reporting. The Times has won eight Pulitzer Prizes and has been a Pulitzer finalist fifteen other times since 1990. The Times was just awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. The Times is one of America's last independent and locally owned newspapers. It is a values-based journalism/community service family business in its 114th year of Blethen family stewardship.

Gautham Nagesh, staff writer, The Hill
PANEL: "BEYOND POVERTY PORN"
Nagesh is a journalist and writer originally from Jackson, MI and is currently based in Washington D.C. He covers technology and telecom policy for The Hill newspaper as a staff writer and edits the boxing outlet Stiff Jab. His reporting has been referenced by The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, and the Washington Post among others and he has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, and numerous other radio and TV outlets to discuss cybersecurity, social media and other Interent policy issues. Gautham's writing on politics, finance, sports, design, art, South Asian Americans, and the decline of the industrial Midwest has been featured by The Atlantic, National Journal and many other publications. He lives in Columbia Heights with his dog Jub Jub where he hopes to finish that screenplay eventually.

George Kiriyama, news reporter, NBC Bay Area News
PANEL: "SURVIVING SMALL MARKETS"
Kiriyama (National Vice President for Broadcast), a California native,began his broadcasting career in Midland /Odessa, Texas. From there, his career took him north to Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo, Michigan. During his four years in Michigan, he was honored by the Michigan Associated Press for his individual reporting and received an honorable mention for his series "Surviving the Economic Slowdown," by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. He spent four years as a general assignment reporter in Kansas City, Missouri before coming back to California to join NBC Bay Area. Kiriyama was nominated for an EMMY in 2008 for his role in the NBC Bay Area Documentary "Dreams To Dust: Americans Interned". He interviewed members of his family who are former survivors of the internment camps during World War II.

Geri Zeldes, associate professor, Michigan State University School of Journalism
Zeldes received six best paper awards from the Association for Journalism and Mass Communication, Broadcast Education Association and the International Communication Association. Her scholarly work has been published in Electronic News, the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Mass Communication & Society, Newspaper Research Journal and Journal of Intergroup Relations. She's also received recognition as a teacher and documentary filmmaker. In February 2010, she received MSU's Excellence in Diversity Award for "Advancing Global Competency." Her documentary film "Arabs, Jews & the News" (2009) has aired more than 100 times on PBS stations throughout the country and won several awards.

Gil Asakawa, Manager of Student Media, University of Colorado, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
PANEL: "THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM: GOING MOBILE"
Asakawa has worked in online media since 1996, managing content for AOL and a succession of startups and news companies. Most recently he served as Manager of Audience Development for MediaNews Group, the parent company of The Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News and over 70 other newspapers. He's an expert on Social Media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and emerging technologies for online content, and loves talking about augmented reality, e-readers and tablets, mobile platforms and in general, the future of media.

Harry Lin, executive-in-residence, IdeaLab
PANELS: "THE NEW U"; THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM: GOING MOBILE"
Before joining Idealab in 2011, Lin was CEO of three different venture capital-backed technology startups in southern California. Prior to those roles, Lin was the SVP-GM of Evite. Before that, he was the Vice President of ABC.com at The Walt Disney Company. Lin joined Disney via its acquisition of the search engine Infoseek, where he was a content producer in Silicon Valley. Lin's "first life" was as a reporter and anchor at KQED-FM in San Francisco. He made the leap from radio news to the Internet by joining Asian-American web startup ChannelA.com in the mid-nineties.

Harvey Ovshinsky, writer, producer, director, story consultant, The Detroit News
PANEL: "VISUAL STORYTELLING III"
The Detroit News has described Ovshinsky as "one of this country's finest storytellers." Ovshinsky's production company, HKO Media, has been awarded broadcasting's highest honors. While director of production at Detroit Public Television, he helped supervise the production of the Oscar-nominated, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" Above all, Ovshinsky is a teacher. His popular seminars and workshops include "How to Produce a Career in Film and Video Production" and "If You Can Write It, You Can Shoot It--A Beginner's Guide to Video Storytelling" target to print and journalists making the transition to convergent and transmedia storytelling.

Helen Zia, author, activist and former Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine
PANEL: "WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN"
Zia began her journalism career in Detroit in the late 70s after losing her job as a Chrysler large press operator in that depression. While an associate editor at Metropolitan Detroit magazine, she was press secretary and, later, president of the Vincent Chin justice campaign. She has won awards for investigative reporting; her first book, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, was the first recipient of the AAJA Suzanne Ahn Journalism and Civil Rights award. She is a Fulbright Scholar; visiting journalism lecturer to Shantou University in China; visiting scholar at University of British Columbia; is a trustee of the Women's Media Center; and was a witness for the plaintiffs in Perry V. Schwarzenegger, the federal case against the ban on same-sex marriage. PHOTO CREDIT: JASON JEM

Hoon-Yung Hopgood, state representative, Michigan House of Representatives
PANEL: "BORN ACROSS BORDERS"
Senator Hoon-Yung Hopgood has been a resident of Taylor since 1976 when he was adopted by Diane (Chris) and the late Rollie Hopgood - where he currently lives with his wife, Sunhwa, and their two children. He was elected to his first term in the Michigan Senate for the 8th District on November 2, 2010 after serving six years in the Michigan House of Representatives. Senator Hopgood represents the Downriver cities of Allen Park, Ecorse, Lincoln Park, Melvindale, Riverview, Romulus, Southgate, Taylor, Wayne and Wyandotte. Senator Hopgood has the distinction as serving as the first Korean-American to hold state office in Michigan. Senator Hopgood was born in Inchon, South Korea on December 8, 1974.

Howard Chen, sports director, FOX Toledo
Chen has been a part of the FOX Toledo Hardcore Sports team since July of 2005. During this time, he was the sports anchor for two Emmy-winning newscasts for WUPW-TV. He also helped to win medium-market Ohio AP awards for "Best Regularly Scheduled Sportscast" and "Extraordinary Coverage of a Special Event." Before coming to Toledo, Chen spent 2 1/2 years in Zanesville, Ohio at WHIZ-TV NBC, where he was named the "Best Sportscaster" among small markets around the state by the AP. Above all, however, Howard is a passionate AAJA member. He's the Vice President of AAJA Michigan, a co-advisor to the Asian American Small Market Broadcast Journalists (AASMBJ), and was a part of the AAJA Men of Broadcast Calendar Committee.

Jam Sardar, news director, WLNS-TV
PANEL: "SURVIVING SMALL MARKETS"
The only thing Jam Sardar has ever wanted to do was be a journalist. He got his start at his high school paper and radio station. He got degrees in journalism from the University of Wisconsin and Northwestern. Over the course of multiple internships and more than a decade as a TV reporter, Sardar moved from the mountains of Montana to Purdue and Philadelphia and covered stories from City Hall in Chicago to the Capitol in Washington D.C. He made the move to management and has spent the last two years as News Director at WLNS-TV in Lansing, Michigan. In his free time...wait--he's a news director. What's free time?

James Ho, former solicitor general of Texas
PANEL: "FIGHTING TO PROTECT IMMIGRANT RIGHTS"
Ho is a partner in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He has over a decade of government experience, most recently as Solicitor General of Texas. The first Asian American to serve as the State's chief appellate and Supreme Court litigator, Mr. Ho represented and counseled government officials and agencies in the State's most difficult legal disputes. He has also served in all three branches of the federal government. On Capitol Hill, he served as chief counsel to Senator John Cornyn and to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration. At the Justice Department, he was the second highest political appointee at the Civil Rights Division.

James Thomas, partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (Dallas)
PANEL: "RETOOL, RETHINK, RECHARGE WITH A JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP"
Thomas has worked on Freep.com, the online edition of the Detroit Free Press, since 1999. He has done everything there is to do in the site's production cycle, including updating the site with breaking news reports, helping move the whole site to a new set of servers and designing and coding pages from scratch. He's part of a team that won a national Emmy in 2009 in the New Approaches to News category. As a Knight-Wallace Fellow at Michigan, he developed a language-skills app and studied ways to make it easier for news gatherers to transfer their material into their sites' content management systems.

Janet Mason, president and general manager, WZZM 13
PANELS:"STORIES OF SUCCESS"; "HERE'S TO THE NEXT STEP...MANAGEMENT"; "IS JOURNALISM A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL?"
Mason was named President & General Manager in January 1997. She previously served as Vice President / News Executive for Gannett Broadcasting. She worked with Gannett television station General Managers and News Directors to help them improve their news products. Prior to corporate, Mason was Vice President / News for eight of her 17 years at KARE 11, Gannett's NBC affiliate in Minneapolis / St. Paul. Other positions she held: News Director, Assistant News Director, Managing Editor, St. Paul Bureau Chief, local update anchor for the "Today Show", and general assignment reporter.

Jaweed Kaleem, national religion reporter, The Huffington Post
PANELS: "COVERING RELIGION IN DIVERSE COMMUNITIES"
Before joining The Huffington Post, Kaleem was the religion reporter for The Miami Herald, where he had worked since 2007 and wrote about religion as part of a team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for its coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. He has produced radio reports for Miami's WLRN 91.3 FM and PRI's The World and has also written for the San Jose Mercury News, Detroit Free Press, Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky) and McClatchy Washington Bureau.

Jeff Karoub, reporter, Associated Press
PANEL: "10TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11"
Karoub is a Detroit-based reporter for The Associated Press. He joined the AP in January 2007, after serving as a reporter and editor at several Michigan media outlets. His primary beat is international diversity, with an emphasis on Michigan's large Arab and Islamic communities. He has broken news on Iraqi refugee resettlement and written numerous international stories about successes and struggles among US Muslims in the post-9/11 era. The Dearborn resident graduated from Michigan State University in 1992 with a degree in journalism.

Jeff Taylor, senior managing editor, Detroit Free Press
PANEL: "WATCHDOG JOURNALISM"
Taylor is senior managing editor at the Detroit Free Press, where he oversees all newsroom operations. He previously held roles as managing editor/news & features, deputy managing editor, assistant managing editor/investigations and metro editor. Before he became an editor, Taylor spent his career as a reporter and received a variety of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1992, the George Polk Award for national reporting in 1991, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for non-deadline reporting in 1993 and 1994, and the Gerald Loeb Award for best business writing in 2000. In 2004, he won a Knight Ridder Excellence Award recognizing his editing accomplishments at the Free Press.

Jeff Yang, columnist, Asian Pop
PANELS: "BORN ACROSS BORDERS"; "TECH TRENDS"; "ELP SUMMIT"
Yang writes a biweekly column on Asian and Asian American culture, identity and politics for the San Francisco Chronicle. He was the founder of aMagazine: Inside Asian America, which grew into Asian America's largest and most influential English-language media institution, with a readership of over 200,000 in North America, and of aOnline.com, one of the first Asian American content and community sites on the web. His writing can also be found in publications such as Vibe, Spin, Salon and the Washington Post, and he serves as a frequent contributor to radio programs like NPR's "Tell Me More" and PRI's "The Takeaway."

Jen Pascua, weekend AM anchor/multimedia journalist, WZZM/Grand Rapids, MI
PANEL: "GALA BANQUET"
Pascua has been with WZZM since October 2005. Prior to arriving in West Michigan, she worked as a reporter/anchor at television stations in Davenport, IA, Moline, IL and Rockford, IL. She's a proud Huskie graduate from Northern Illinois University (1998). While working toward her degree, she was a morning drive weekend announcer on WNIJ, an NPR affiliate.

Jennifer Chung, broadcast communications manager, Toyota Video Production Center
PANEL: "WHAT'S NEXT FOR JOURNALISTS AFTER THE NEWSROOM?"
Chung oversees Toyota's broadcasts and webcasts, including distribution over a private dealership TV network. She has worked at Toyota for more than 20 years and held positions in publications and media relations. Before coming to Toyota, Chung worked for CBS, Inc., KNX Newsradio, KTLA-TV and as a correspondent for International Community Radio Taipei in Los Angeles. Before graduating from Arizona State University in broadcast journalism, she worked at KPNX-TV, then became a reporter/anchor at KJAXX-FM (NPR) in Phoenix, AZ. In 1990, she served as the AAJA convention co-chair.

Jesse Reisdorf, video journalist, cameraman, filmmaker
PANEL: "BEYOND POVERTY PORN"
Reisdorf's work has been featured by a number of productions including NBC local news in Las Vegas, Cops, and Las Vegas Jailhouse. He is a native of Jackson, MI and currently lives in Las Vegas.

Jim Schaefer, investigative reporter, Detroit Free Press
PANEL: "WATCHDOG JOURNALISM"
Schaefer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at the Detroit Free Press. His work has included sexual abuse among clergy, criminal justice issues, sports investigations and projects focusing on former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. In 2010, Schaefer discovered that thousands of crime victims in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, were owed millions of dollars in restitution that the government had never bothered to send them. The investigation earned second place in the national 2010 John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Journalism.

Joe Grimm, visiting editor in residence at Michigan State University and an adjunct faculty member and columnist, the Freedom Forum's Diversity Institute
PANEL: "ELP SUMMIT"
In more than 20 years of recruiting for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder, Gannett, Patch and the Freedom Forum, Grimm has advised or reviewed thousands of journalists and their work. He posts career advice for journalists at www.jobspage.com and has published two books on news careers. He has been an AAJA member since 1990.

Joanne Gerstner, journalist/blogger
PANEL: "BEYOND THE SCORECARD"
Gerstner is an award-winning journalist and blogger, covering sports, health/medical, business, features and topics of the day for publications such as The New York Times, USA Today, Miami Herald, ESPNRise.com and Detroit News. She currently works as a daily sports blogger for the New York Times, as the News/Opinion editor for espnW.com. She is the author of two children's books, "The Detroit Tigers" and "The Toronto Blue Jays", available from ABDO Publishing, released January 2011. Gerstner is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and Oakland University. She has covered some of the biggest sporting events in the world, including the Olympics, World Cup, Super Bowl, NBA/NHL Finals, NCAA basketball finals, Ryder Cup, and U.S. Open tennis.

John Bracken, director of digital media, Knight Foundation
PANEL: "IS JOURNALISM A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL?"
Bracken directs the foundation's grantmaking in digital media. An expert in online innovation and social entrepreneurship, Bracken previously served as a program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where he managed investments in technology and innovation and global Internet freedom, and worked to strengthen nonprofit start-ups. He also has worked with the Ford Foundation as a program associate in media policy and technology, and analyzed the social and policy impact of the Internet for the Center for Media Education. Bracken has a master's from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

Jon Wolman, publisher and editor, The Detroit News; publisher, detnews.com
PANEL: "NEWS INDUSTRY LESSONS FROM DETROIT"
Wolman worked for 31 years with The Associated Press, where he served as senior vice president, executive editor and Washington bureau chief. He was editorial page editor of The Denver Post from 2004 to 2007. He served on a committee of five Washington editors which negotiated principles of combat coverage with the Pentagon following the 1991 Iraq war. He is a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and The Gridiron Club, an association of Washington journalists, and he served four times as a Pulitzer Prize juror.

Joyce Jenereaux, president, Detroit Media Partnership
PANEL: "NEWS INDUSTRY LESSONS FROM DETROIT"
Devereaux is president of Detroit Media Partnership, the top executive of the company. The company manages the business operations of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, Michigan's leading sources of news and information. Jenereaux has played a critical role in transforming Detroit Media Partnership from its newspaper heritage into a provider of news and information on a variety of electronic platforms. This has included building a new company culture that makes listening to customer's needs. Under her leadership, the company has taken bold steps to reduce manufacturing and distribution costs--allowing for reinvestment into the development of digital products. It has also transformed its advertising sales operations into an industry-leading team of multimedia sales executives. These strategic changes have been widely recognized as a model for how newspapers around the globe need to reassess their most fundamental practices to survive and thrive in a new information age.

Judy Chia Hui Hsu, journalist
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: HOW TO WRITE/PUBLISH YOUR FIRST BOOK"
Hsu is a Seattle-based journalist who has worked at The Seattle Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register, covering primarily arts and entertainment. Her articles have also appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune and Alaska Airlines Magazine. Hsu is a member of the Finance Committee for the Asian American Journalists Association. This year, she served as a lead judge for the Society of Professional Journalists' national Sigma Delta Chi Awards for professionals and for SPJ's national Mark of Excellence Awards for college students.

Karen Narasaki, president and executive director, Asian American Justice Center
PANEL: "FIGHTING TO PROTECT IMMIGRANT RIGHTS"
Heading one of the nation's premiere advocacy organizations, Narasaki is a nationally respected authority on immigrant, voting and civil rights and affirmative action. Under her guidance, AAJC works to advance the human and civil rights for Asian Americans, and build and promote a fair and equitable society for all. Narasaki, a renowned advocate for the Asian American community, holds a number of leadership positions in the civil and immigrant rights arenas, including vice chairwoman of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the nation's oldest and broadest civil rights coalition. Narasaki leads the Rights Working Group, a coalition of human, civil and immigrant rights groups working to address the erosion of civil liberties and basic immigrant rights since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. She also is the chair of the Family Immigration Coalition and serves on the Steering Committee of Reform Immigration For America.

Katherine Lewis, freelance writer
PANEL: "WHAT'S NEXT FOR JOURNALISTS AFTER THE NEWSROOM?"
Lewis is a Washington D.C.-based journalist specializing in finance, work and family for publications including Fortune.com, the Fiscal Times, MSN Money, the New York Times, Parade, Slate and the Washington Post Magazine. Previously, she worked as a national correspondent for Newhouse News Service and reported for Bloomberg News in Washington. She began her career in New York with the Bond Buyer, a municipal bond industry publication. Active in the Asian American Journalists Association since 1999, she serves as founding co-chair of the AAJA Digital Group.

Kathy Kieliszewski, deputy director of photo & video, Detroit Free Pres
PANEL: "VISUAL STORYTELLING III"
Kieliszewski is a four-time national Emmy Award winner. Her Emmy-winning work includes a five-part documentary on boys living in a foster care home on Detroit's west side; a retrospective on the 40th anniversary of Aretha Franklin's "Respect," a two-part series exploring pit-bull culture in southeast Michigan and a seven-month series that chronicled the deployment of 900 Michigan marines to Iraq and their family's lives on the home front. In 2009, Kathy received a Webby Award for the sports documentary, "Courtney Hawkins Comes Home." She has also won numerous awards for editing and photography, including Picture Editor of the Year, by the Michigan Press Photographers Association. She is a Michigan State University journalism graduate.

Katie Benner, writer, Fortune
PANEL: "BORN ACROSS BORDERS"
Prior to joining Fortune, Benner did short stints at theStreet.com and CNN/Money. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and Marketplace Radio to talk shop about Wall Street, the economy, markets, and investing. Benner's stories have also appeared in The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Not always a financial journalist, Benner grew up in Vermont, attended Bowdoin College, and thought she'd become a teacher. After graduating she lived in Beijing for three and a half years, worked as an unenthusiastic English tutor before getting copyediting and freelance work, and decided that she loved to write.

Krista Canfield, senior manager, corporate communications, LinkedIn
PANEL: "SOCIAL MEDIA II"
Canfield supports strategic and day-to-day management for internal and external communications (with a primary focus on the US, Brazilian and Canadian markets). As LinkedIn's Senior Manager, Corporate Communications (Consumer PR), Krista chats daily with professionals about how they can network globally online. She advises professionals about how they can land jobs at the hottest companies, get that next promotion, find experts, achieve career goals, revamp their resume, meet new clients, build their businesses, manage their brand online and receive career advice from LinkedIn's more than 100 million members.

Laura Varon Brown, director of communications & public relations, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Michigan
PANEL: "WHAT'S NEXT FOR JOURNALISTS AFTER THE NEWSROOM?"
Brown spent 19 years at the Detroit Free Press. Her roles spanned from Graphics Director, News Editor to Metro Editor. Her position when she left the Free Press as Audience Editor and columnist. Just prior to being named Audience Editor, she was the editor of the Sunday magazine, Twist. That all changed in May 2009 with the first wave of layoffs to hit leadership levels in the newsroom following the acquisition of the Free Press (and Knight Ridder) by Gannett. Brown will tell you this was the most difficult hurdle she has had to overcome. Not the worst, but the most difficult in many ways. Connections in the community, a desire to give back and speak for those who can't speak for themselves brought Brown to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Michigan where she is the Director of Communications and Public Relations for the statewide foundation. Getting there was a process and regaining her footing, she will tell you is a lifelong process. But one that can and should be rich and full of exploration. Brown, widowed at 29 with one daughter, remarried and now has two daughters a stepson and turned 50 this summer. Brown is a lifelong Michigan resident.

Ling Woo Liu, director, Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education
PANEL: "WHAT'S NEXT FOR JOURNALISTS AFTER THE NEWSROOM?"
Since Liu became the Institute's first director in 2010, California passed a bill designating every January 30 as Fred Korematsu Day, the first day in US history named after an Asian American. She spent five years living in Asia, including three years as a print reporter and video producer for TIME in Hong Kong, and two years as a television reporter in Beijing. She has reported for the Associated press and freelanced for a range of broadcast and print media in Asia and the US. Ling is the director of "Officer Tsukamoto, a documentary film about the unsolved murder of a Japanese American police officer in 1970. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Ling holds a masters' degree in Journalism and Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and a bachelor's degree in Anthropology from UC Berkeley.

Lloyd LaCuesta, South Bay bureau chief, KTVU TV (Oakland, CA)
PANEL:"STORIES OF SUCCESS"
Lloyd is a 40 year plus Emmy Award winning broadcast journalist. He can be seen every night reporting the news for KTVU TV in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lloyd started out as a high school correspondent for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and went on to news positions for the American Forces Korea Network, KMPC Radio, KNX-CBS News Radio, KABC Radio, KABC TV, KGO TV. Lloyd was the first elected national president of AAJA and the first president of Unity: Journalists of Color. He also has been an adjunct professor of journalism at San Jose State University and Menlo College in Atherton, CA. Lloyd is one of the few Filipino American male major market television broadcaster in the U.S.

Lorene Yue, online reporter, Crain's Chicago Business
PANEL: "THE DAILY GRIND"
Yue is the online reporter for Crain's Chicago Business and primarily responsible for covering breaking business news in Chicago. She has been a business reporter for the Chicago Tribune, covering retail and personal finance. In addition, Lorene has worked for the Detroit Free Press, the Kansas City Star and the (Hamilton, Ohio) Journal-News. She is a member of AAJA's governing board, a fan of Rock Band and Ultimate Frisbee.

Luis Clemens, senior editor for diversity, NPR
PANEL: "MEDIA ACCESS WORKSHOP"
Clemens works across the newsroom to build a broad foundation of diverse experts and sources in order to enhance NPR's news coverage. In this position, Clemens is also part of NPR's Diversity team and is active partner in training initiatives at NPR and across public radio - helping to strengthen local coverage by expanding the range of content, sources, ideas and expertise. Before joining NPR in 2010, Clemens was a frequent guest on NPR's programs, often interviewed about Latino voters. Clemens began his career in journalism at the local Telemundo and NBC television stations in Miami. In 1993, he began working at CNN as an assignment editor. Three years later he was promoted to Buenos Aires bureau chief. Following CNN, he went on to be a spokesperson for the United Nations World Food Programme in Zimbabwe. Before re-starting a career in journalism and coming to NPR, Clemens owned and operated two laundromats in Xalapa, Mexico.

Luke Stangel, co-founder, Tackable
PANEL: "HOW CROWDSOURCING CAN HELP JOURNALISTS"
Stangel spent 7 years as a reporter and editor at two daily newspapers in the Bay Area, and a CNN-affiliated radio station before starting Silicon-based Tackable, a social photojournalism platform designed for reporters. Tackable launched earlier this year, in partnership with MediaNews.

Maggie Leung, supervising news editor, CNN Wire
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM III: SPEEDWRITING"
Leung started out as a 14-year-old sports stringer for her hometown paper in Guam. She's since worked as a reporter and editor for newspapers such as the Asian Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and San Jose Mercury News, and is now a supervising news editor at the CNN Wire in Atlanta. She assigns stories and supervises reporters in Atlanta, D.C., L.A., New York, Hong Kong and London. The CNN Wire serves all units of CNN -- TV, radio, dot-com international and domestic, mobile devices, airport channel and international sister networks -- as well as outside subscribers, with a total reach of 2 billion people worldwide.

Marcus Brauchli, executive editor, The Washington Post
PANEL: "IS JOURNALISM A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL?"
Brauchli oversees The Post's news operations, which serve not only the newspaper's home audience in the US capital but a growing national and international audience online and on mobile platforms. He reports to Katharine Weymouth, the Post's publisher and CEO of Washington Post Media. Before joining The Post, Brauchli was managing editor, the top news job, at The Wall Street Journal. He oversaw the paper's US international and digital editions and had editorial responsibility for MarketWatch, the financial news website. He also oversaw the development of the luxury lifestyle magazine, WSJ.

Maria Ebrahimji, co-editor, I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim, journalist and Executive Editorial Producer, CNN
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: AMERICAN WOMEN ON BEING MUSLIM"
Ebrahimji is responsible for guest coverage and story planning for CNN's special events and breaking news programming. She is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association, and serves on the boards of the Atlanta Press Club and Tau Chapter of Alpha Chi Omega. She holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from Brenau Women's College and a master's in International Affairs from Georgia State University. While born in Westminster, MD as the eldest daughter of East African immigrants, Maria was raised in Northeast Georgia and proudly embraces southern hospitality. Her spare time is spent travelling the world, hiking, running, and being an idealist. She currently lives in Atlanta, GA.

Maria Hechanova, morning reporter, WLNS-TV
PANEL: "SURVIVING SMALL MARKETS"
Hechanova worked her way up from producer/reporter and has worn many hats in her two year tenure, including administrative assistant! She's also the co-chair of AASMBJ (Asian American Small Market Broadcast Journalists), a group dedicated to supporting AAJA members who are just starting their careers. She joined AAJA her senior year of college. From there, she was selected for the AAJA/NBC Fellowship with the "Today" show and also for the "Voices"/Convention News Project in which she continues to participate.

Maribel Perez Wadsworth, digital executive, Gannett
PANEL: "NEWS INDUSTRY LESSONS FROM DETROIT"
Maribel Perez Wadsworth is digital news executive in the Gannett U.S. Community Publishing Division Corporate News Department. She works with Gannett Information Centers to help guide the continuing evolution of digital journalism and innovation in new technologies. Her role is to be a champion of quality journalism across all platforms. Wadsworth serves as liaison with Gannett's Digital Division, Broadcast Division and ContentOne on collaborative initiatives. She will also oversee and champion USCP Information Centers' commitment to diversity.

Mariel Myers, senior producer, ABC7's "7 Live"
PANEL: "THE NEW U"
Myers is the senior producer of ABC7's newly launched, Emmy-Award winning interactive news and talk show, 7Live. She has worked at CBS, Yahoo and ABC, and is using her 15 years of broadcast journalism experience to launch FastCast, a mobile video news start-up offering a personalized, video newscast straight to mobile. Myers was selected as a finalist in the 2011 We Media PitchIt Challenge and the 2010 Ford Foundation-Unity New U journalism entrepreneur competition. She serves as an advisor to Drop In Media, a mobile news alert service. She participated in the Knight Digital Media Center's Multimedia Journalism Workshop at UC Berkeley. She also co-owns a media production company with clients such as Stanford Hospital and Clinics, St. Mary's College and Gap.

Mark Hinojosa, director of interactive media, The Detroit News
PANELS: "THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM: GOING MOBILE"; "STUDENT PHOTO CRITIQUES"; "VISUAL STORYTELLING IV"
Hinojosa leads efforts to enhance the digital delivery of news and information. He has presided over the integration of the print and web news teams, as well as developing the news operations social media strategy. Previously, he was the Associate Managing Editor for Multimedia and the Associate Managing Editor for Photography for the Chicago Tribune. He was the first person at the Tribune to have held both A.M.E. positions. He holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.

Mark Smith, web editor & technology columnist, Detroit Free Press
PANELS: "TECH TRENDS"
Smith has worked for the Detroit Free Press since 2007. He writes mostly about the intersection of the Web and consumer technology for the Free Press and also helps maintain the news organization's social media platforms. He teaches a social media journalism course at Central Michigan University. in 2010, Smith was honored as the Young Journalist of the Year by the Central Michigan University Journalism Hall of Fame.

Matt Stiles, database reporting coordinator, National Public Radio
PANEL: "DATA VISUALIZATION"
Stiles is a database reporting coordinator for NPR's StateImpact project based in Washington, D.C. He most recently worked as a reporter and data applications editor at The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit public media organization in Austin. he has also covered government, politics, and law enforcement at both The Dallas Morning News and The House Chronicle. Stiles has a bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Maxine Park, video journalist, USA TODAY
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM I: CHOOSING THE BEST PLATFORM FOR YOUR STORY"
Park reports, shoots and edits all of her own video stories for USATODAY.com. She has covered a wide range of stories from the shootings in Tucson with Congresswoman Giffords to the devastating aftermath of the tornadoes in Alabama, to the excitement of the World Series. Before joining USA TODAY, Maxine worked for ABC News as a digital journalist out of Phoenix, where she produced stories that aired on ABC NewsNow and the World News Webcast. She also blogged and wrote articles for ABCNews.com. Maxine is a graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University where she holds a bachelors in broadcast journalism and a minor in English literature.

Mei-Ling Hopgood, author, Lucky Girl & How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm
PANELS: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: HOW TO WRITE/PUBLISH YOUR FIRST BOOK"; "BORN ACROSS BORDERS"
Hopgood is a freelance journalist and author of the memoir Lucky Girl (Algonquin 2009) and the non-fiction book How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm (Algonquin Oct. 2011). She has worked as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and as a Washington correspondent in the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau. Mei-Ling has been the recipient of several national and international awards including the National Headliner Best in Show.

Mei-Mei Chan, president and publisher, The News-Press Media Group
PANEL: "STORIES OF SUCCESS"; "HERE'S TO THE NEXT STEP...MANAGEMENT"
Chan went to Florida from The Seattle Times Company, where she had been the Vice President of Advertising and, before that, the Vice President of Circulation and Consumer Marketing. In 2003, Mei-Mei was recognized for innovation as Sales Executive of the Year by the Newspaper Association of America. Mei-Mei has held editor and reporter positions at the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Weekend magazine, USA Today and the Commercial News in Danville, IL. During her time as executive editor at the Post Register in Idaho Falls, ID, she was the only Asian American editor in the country.

Minal Hajrawatla, author, Leaving India: My Family's Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: HOW TO WRITE/PUBLISH YOUR FIRST BOOK"
Hajratwala is the author of Leaving India: My Family's Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), which has been called "incomparable" by Alice Walker and "searingly honest" by the Washington Post. The book won a Pen USA Award, an Asian American Writers Workshop Award, a Lambda Literary Award, a California Book Award (Silver, Nonfiction), and was shortlisted for the Saroyan International Writing Prize.

Monte Reel, author, The Last of the Tribe
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: HOW TO WRITE/PUBLISH YOUR FIRST BOOK"
Reel is a freelance journalist and author of the book The Last of the Tribe (Scribner 2010). He has worked in St. Louis, Cairo, Kuwait, and Washington D.C. From 2004-2008, Reel was the Washington Post's bureau chief in South America. Doubleday will publish his next narrative non-fiction book in 2012.

Nancy Andrews, managing editor of digital media, Detroit Free Press
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM I: CHOOSING THE BEST PLATFORM FOR YOUR STORY"
Andrews led the newspaper's photography department into video. Under her guidance, the Free Press won four national Emmy Awards, more national Emmys than any newspaper-based Web site. Previously, Nancy was a staff photographer for The Washington Post and was recognized as White House Photographer of the Year and Newspaper Photographer of the Year. She has published two monographs, Family: A Portrait of Gay and Lesbian America and Partial View: An Alzheimer's Diary. Nancy has also held several solo-exhibitions including one at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Niala Boodhoo, Changing Gears reporter, WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM IV: FROM PRINT TO BROADCAST"
As the Chicago-based reporter for the Changing Gears project, Niala is part of a multi-station public radio team reporting on the economic transformation of the industrial Midwest. She also speaks and holds workshops about social media and multimedia journalism, for colleges, universities and professional associations. A proud member of AAJA, Boodhoo has also been a business journalist since 2000 for Reuters, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Miami Herald.

Nick Ut, photographer, Associated Press
PANEL: "SPECIAL PHOTO PRESENTATION: NICK UT"
Profession known as Nick Ut, Huỳnh Công Út, is a photographer for the Associated Press (AP) who works out of Los Angeles. His best known photo is the Pulitzer Prize-winning picture of Phan Thị Kim Phúc; Kim Phúc, who was photographed as a naked 9-year-old girl running toward the camera to flee a South Vietnamese napalm attack on the Trảng Bàng village during the Vietnam War. Born in Long An, French Indochina, Ut began to take photographs for the Associated Press when he was 16, just after his older brother Huynh Thanh My, another AP photographer, was killed in Vietnam. Ut himself was wounded three times in the war. Ut has since worked for the Associated Press in Tokyo, South Korea, and Hanoi and still maintains contact with Kim Phuc, who now resides in Canada.

Niraj Warikoo, religion reporter, Detroit Free Press
PANELS: "COVERING RELIGION IN DIVERSE COMMUNITIES"; "FIGHTING TO PROTECT IMMIGRANT RIGHTS"; "MEDIA ACCESS WORKSHOP"; COVERING ARAB AMERICA IN A DIGITAL WORLD
Over the past decade, Warikoo has written extensively about how the war on terrorism has impacted metro Detroit's Arab American, Muslim, and South Asian communities. He has also written investigative stories that exposed corporate negligence and secret deals in the details of six workers at the Ford Rouge plant, the environmental destruction of Michigan's wetlands in a special report based on government data he obtained, and the use of child labor in bidi cigarette production in India that led to the ban of bidi sales in a Detroit suburb. His exclusive coverage last year of the FBI shooting death of a Muslim leader revealed the use of undercover informants and new details about the FBI's handling of the case; the work garnered this year a first place SPJ/Detroit award and he's a National Association of Black Journalists finalist for its Investigative Reporting Award.

Oralandar Brand-Williams, religion reporter, The Detroit News
PANEL: "MEDIA ACCESS WORKSHOP"
Brand-Williams covers faith and religion issues for The Detroit News. Her beats also include diversity and race relations. A veteran of broadcast and print media, Brand-Williams has worked at the Oakland Press, Kansas City Star-Times, Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a reporter/writer. She also has worked as an assignment/producer at WWJ Newsradio in addition to an assignment editor/producer at WDIV-TV. A native of Greenwood, Mississippi, Brand-Williams grew up in Detroit. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan where she received a B.A. in Journalism. She is the vice-president of print for the National Association of Black Journalists chapter in Detroit.

Osama Siblani, editor & publisher, The Arab American News
PANEL: "10TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11"
Siblani founded the Dearborn-based Arab American News 25 years ago to give voice to Arab Americans. Born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1955, he came to the United States in 1976 to pursue his education. He completed his B.S.S. in electrical engineering in 1979 at the University of Detroit. In 1980 he assumed the position of Vice President at Energy International Inc., an import-export firm dealing with the Middle East. He held this position until he began The Arab American News in 1984. He said his primary motivation for beginning the newspaper was the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and what he found to be biased. He is also chairman of The Congress of Arab American Organizations, a 43-member Arab consortium, and chairman of the Arab American Political Action Committee.

Owen Lei, reporter, KING-TV
PANEL: "SOCIAL MEDIA I"
Lei is a reporter with KING-TV, the NBC affiliate in Seattle, Wash. He covers a variety of topics, but his emphasis is on the technology beat. He routinely uses social media for story ideas, to find sources, and post breaking stories.

P. Kim Bui, social media & community editor, Southern California Public Radio
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM IV: FROM PRINT TO BROADCAST"
Bui is a digital journalist and self-professed nerd. She manages Southern California Public Radio/89.3 KPCC's ongoing commitment to social media and engagement on and off the Web, including OnCentral.org, a collaborative reporting site covering South Los Angeles. Her experience in web journalism includes major newspapers as well as news start-ups. She co-founded #wjchat, a weekly Twitter chat for web journalists and was named one of Poynter's 35 people in social media. She is originally from Des Moines, Iowa and graduated with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Iowa State University.

Paul Anger, editor/publisher, Detroit Free Press
PANEL: "NEWS INDUSTRY LESSONS FROM DETROIT"
Anger has been with The Detroit Free Press since August 2005, when he was named Vice President and Editor. He became Editor and Publisher in May 2009. Under Anger, who won the 2009 National Press Foundation Ben Bradlee Editor of the Year award, the Free Press has been recognized for wide-ranging journalism excellence, enhanced its watchdog and investigative reporting, become an industry leader in video production and video quality and shown record growth on its Web site, Freep.com. Anger also helped develop the Free Press' ground-breaking publishing model, which emphasizes digital and multi-media news and newspaper delivery to homes on three of the seven days of publication with operational expense savings that have helped preserve newsroom resources. The Free Press won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting--its ninth Pulitzer Prize--for a year-long investigation of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the text-message scandal that engulfed him.

Paul Cheung, global interactive editor, Associated Press
PANEL: "ELP SUMMIT"
Cheung is AP's Global Interactive Editor for its New York City headquarters. The interactive editor manages a global team of visual journalists who produce multimedia and information graphics for all formats, including print, online and mobile. Cheung is also an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Journalism School teaching visual journalism. Prior to joining the AP, Cheung was The Miami Herald's Deputy Multimedia Presentation Editor. In 2009, he managed MiamiHerald.com site redesign in 2009 and was responsible for the conceptualization, creative direction and visual look of MiamiHerald.com. He was The Miami Herald's graphics editor from 2004 to mid-2007.

Paul Niwa, professor of journalism, Emerson College
PANEL: "THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM: GOING MOBILE"
Niwa instructs students in broadcast, online and financial journalism. He has won national awards for his innovative teaching, research and professional works. Niwa founded the US-Japan Journalism Fellowship and created bostonchinatown.org, GenkiNotes.org, The New Normal Project, and the iPad app EC Journalism. His documentaries have been shown on PBS, NPR and at film festivals nationwide. As a professional journalist, he launched two international television networks, six newscasts and one of the world's first online newscasts.

Phuong Ly, journalist/entrepreneur
PANEL: "RETOOL, RETHINK, RECHARGE WITH A JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP"; "CREATING A BUSINESS CALLED--YOU"
Ly is founder of Gateway California, a nonprofit that helps journalists connect with immigrants. The project was developed during her recent year as a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University. Before the fellowship, she was a writer, teacher and consultant based in Chicago. Previously, she was a reporter at the Washington Post, writing about immigrant communities. A portfolio of her stories about immigrants won the American Society of News Editors/Freedom Forum Award for Outstanding Writing about Diversity and was included in the book "Best Newspaper Writing 2006-2007." She has won fellowship grants from the Institute for Journalism and Justice, the International Reporting Project and Wesleyan University.

Rachanee Srisavasdi, communications director, Asian Pacific American Legal Center
PANEL: "FIGHTING TO PROTECT IMMIGRANT RIGHTS"
Srisavasdi is the Communications Director for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, which is a member of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice. Srisavasdi joined APALC this year after a 13-year career as a journalist at The Orange County Register. She primarily covered courts, law enforcement and criminal justice. Srisavasdi is a former AAJA-LA co-president and has served on AAJA's national advisory board.

Rashida Tlaib, contributor, I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: AMERICAN WOMEN ON BEING MUSLIM"
Tlaib was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives for the 12th House District (Detroit) in 2008. She was raised in Southwest Detroit, the eldest of 14 children and child of Palestinian immigrants. Rashida made history by becoming the first Muslim woman elected to the Michigan Legislature. Prior to being elected, Representative Tlaib worked at a number of nonprofit organizations, including the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) and the International Institute of Metro Detroit where she advocated for better access to human services, education, and civil rights. In 2009, Rashida was a recipient of the Role Model award by Alternatives for Girls.

Ray Bradford, national director of equal employment opportunities, AFTRA
PANEL: "ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: UNIONS"
Bradford challenges discrimination, promotes diversity and enforces EEO provisions in all AFTRA contracts. He is an AAJA member, and Lifetime Member of NAHJ and NLGJA. Hispanic Business Magazine named Mr. Bradford one of the 100 influential Hispanics in America, and he is listed in the Who's Who Among Hispanic Americans. For his leadership as President of the Media Image Coalition, a program of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, he was honored with a 2009 LA County Volunteer of the Year citation.

Rebecca Moreno, managing editor, Yahoo!
PANEL: "VISUAL STORYTELLING I: DEVELOPING ORIGINAL ONLINE VIDEO SHOWS"
At Yahoo!, Moreno oversees daily programming on the homepage, balancing a consistent editorial voice with serving personalized content experiences for 180 million unique users every month. She has special responsibility for video and search-editorial content, and previously managed editorial for Yahoo!'s telco-partner portals, the Canada and Quebec homepages, and the RSS-based My Yahoo! product. Moreno has had a hand in Yahoo! homepage content since the internet giant first launched the flagship "Today" module in 2006.

Rene Astudillo, executive director, Lupus Foundation of Northern California
PANEL: "FIGHTING TO PROTECT IMMIGRANT RIGHTS"
Astudillo (AAJA National Treasurer) was AAJA's Executive Director from 1999 to 2008. Prior to AAJA, he served as executive director of the Filipino Task Force on AIDS in San Francisco, Program Coordinator for the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum and Director of Education at the Life Foundation, Hawai'i's AIDS Foundation on the island of O'ahu. In the early 1990's, he was a contributing editor and writer for several Bay Area community publications. In January of 2011, he became a naturalized citizen, after a 22-year path navigating the legal system of U.S. immigration.

Rick Quan, Rick Quan Productions
PANEL: "CREATING A BUSINESS CALLED--YOU"
In 1983, Quan was named Hawai'i's Sportscaster of the Year. He was the first Chinese American television sports anchor in the United States and one of the first Asian men to be a full-time anchor in the San Francisco bay area. During his career in San Francisco, he won two local Emmys, along with being honored by RTNDA, Associated Press and the Penninsula Press Club. Quan was named Best Local TV Anchor four times by readers of the Alameda Newspaper Group. After 30 years as a television anchor/reporter Quan decided to embark on a new career in April of 2008. That month marked the birth of Rick Quan Productions.

Richard Lui, anchor, MSNBC
PANELS: "IS JOURNALISM A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL?"; "WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN"
Prior to joining MSNBC, Lui was anchor for Morning Express on CNN Headline News. He led the network's morning political coverage, reporting daily on the Robin Meade show. Lui covered breaking stories such as the Virginia Tech Massacre, 2006 Hezbollah-Israel War, Mumbai train terrorist bombings, Mumbai Hotels Siege, and Enron verdicts. Lui is the first Chinese and only Asian-American male anchoring a daily national newscast.

Ritu Sehgal, deputy managing editor/news & features, Detroit Free Press
PANEL: "10TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11"
Sehgal previously worked as an editor at The Indianapoli Star, The Miami Herald and The Detroit News. Her roles have ranged from projects editor to assistant managing editor for Sundays.

Robert Hernandez, assistant professor of professional practice, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM I: CHOOSING THE BEST PLATFORM FOR YOUR STORY"
Hernandez has been working in Web journalism for more than a decade. Prior to joining USC, he worked at The Seattle Times from 2002 until 2009, where he was promoted from news producer to senior news producer to director of development. He helped shape and execute the vision and strategy for the Web site and company, leading a team of engineers and designers in research and development focusing on creating innovative tools and applications for both staff and readers, among many other duties. His previous experience includes: Web designer and consultant for El Salvador's largest daily newspaper site, La Prensa Grafica, Web producer for San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate.com and online editor of Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner.

Roland Hwang, vice president, American Citizens for Justice
PANEL: "WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN"
Hwang is the immediate past president of American Citizens for Justice, serving as president in 1993-95, and 2009-10. He served as the first Treasurer of ACJ. He works as an attorney for the State of Michigan. Hwang has served as a Hearing Referee for the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. He has served on and chaired the Michigan State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He also teaches Asian Pacific American History and the Law at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Dearborn.

Rolando Arrieta, senior production trainer, National Public Radio News
PANEL: "NPR'S THE AUDIO CUT"
He designs and provides digital audio production instruction to NPR's News Division and member station staff. In addition to being a tech-guy, he is also a seasoned producer of more than 15 years. His most recent work includes producing a three-part series with Correspondent Jacki Lyden on the cycle of prostitution in Nashville, TN.

Ron Brown, founder and president, Banks Brown
PANEL: "NEWS INDUSTRY LESSONS FROM DETROIT"
Dr. Ronald B. Brown is a leading expert in the fields of leadership development and organizational change. He is the founder and President of Banks Brown, a San Francisco-based management consulting firm which specializes in providing leading-edge skills to optimize the performance of leaders and organizations. As a consultant, he assists executives, senior managers, and planning groups in developing strategies to manage changing organizational cultures.

Ron Recinto, detroit editor, Yahoo!
PANEL: "IS HYPERLOCAL THE FUTURE OR JUST LOCAL HYPE?"
Recinto manages the local content that appears on the Yahoo! homepage for the metro Detroit area. Prior to coming to Yahoo! when at the inception of the local initiative in January 2010, Recinto was an assistant digital news editor for freep.com, the website of the Detroit Free Press. Recinto has more than 20 years of experience in journalism working in reporting, editing and leadership roles at the Detroit Free Press, Charlotte Observer, The State (Columbia, S.C.), Post-Tribune (Gary, Ind.) and the Cape Cod Times. He was also a staff writer for Red Herring magazine.

Roop Raj, weekend anchor/reporter, FOX2 News/Detroit
EVENT: "SILENT AUCTION"
Raj spent the last seven years in New Orleans as morning anchor/reporter at one of the TV stations there. He was there for three years before Hurricane Katrina and spent the last four years covering that city's recovery. Before that he worked as a reporter, anchor and weatherman at the NBC station in Flint, Michigan for four years. Raj began his TV career at the age of 14 when he created, produced and hosted a public-affairs talk show on the government access station. One year later, he was deemed one of the nation's youngest TV personalities when he appeared on The Phil Donahue Show. While attending Michigan State University, he worked at the Lansing CBS and ABC affiliates.

Sanjay Bhatt, reporter, The Seattle Times
PANEL: "DATA VISUALIZATION"
Bhatt covers banking and the economy for The Seattle Times and plays with data visualization, both as a reporting and storytelling tool. His work with ProPublica analyzing foreclosure data in three distinct housing markets has won regional and national awards. He's used widely available software to visualize data on numerous beats, including education, local government, business and public safety. He's also president of the AAJA Seattle chapter.

Scott Tong, reporter, Marketplace
PANEL: "WORKING ABROAD IN ASIA OR MIDDLE EAST"
Tong covers energy, markets, resources and the environment for the public radio's daily business show, Marketplace. Tong has reported from more than a dozen countries. He previously served as Marketplace's China bureau chief in Shanghai, investigating why so many Chinese move to cities, work for a dollar a day and drive Buicks. He has reported special features on slave labor, baby-selling and international adoption, and the economics of one child. He was a regular guest lecturer at Shanghai's Fudan University and NYU's Stern School of Business in Shanghai. Tong joined Marketplace full-time in 2004. Prior to that he worked as a reporter and producer for the PBS NewsHour. And a very long time ago, he graduated from Georgetown University.

Sha Hwang, data visualization, Stamen
PANEL: "DATA VISUALIZATION"
Hwang studied architecture at the University of California at Berkeley and worked in San Francisco and New York before diving headfirst into data visualization at Stamen Design in San Francisco. At Stamen, Hwang worked on projects for clients like CNN, MTV, Adobe, and Flickr. Last year, Hwang co-founded a start-up called Movity and focused on visualization and cities. Movity was recently acquired by the real estate company, Trulia, to bring their work to a national audience.

Sharon Pian Chan, technology reporter, The Seattle Times
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM III: SPEEDWRITING"

Chan is is a technology reporter for The Seattle Times who is slated to become a digital producer for the paper this summer. She has been with the publication for 12 years where her former beats have included city hall and education. She has investigated Internet companies, covered the mayor of Seattle, uncovered Medicare fraud at the University of Washington and interviewed Christina Aguilera. Chan is currently serving as vice president for the nonprofit alliance UNITY: Journalists of Color and previously served as 2009-2010 national president of the Asian American Journalists Association. You can check out her technology coverage at The Seattle Times Microsoft Pri0 blog.

Smita Kalokhe, reporter, Channel 7/WXYZ-TV
EVENT: "SILENT AUCTION"
Prior to joining the Action News Team, Kalokhe worked for the WXMI-TV in Grand Rapids, where she was a general assignment reporter and fill-in anchor. She graduated from the University of Michigan and has a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

Sora Newman, senior trainer, National Public Radio (Washington D.C.)
PANEL: "NPR'S THE AUDIO CUT"
Newman works with radio journalists at NPR as well local reporters at NPR member stations throughout the United States. She teaches seminars in writing for radio, on-air delivery, editing., and audio storytelling. She also runs a mentoring program within the newsroom. She has conducted seminars for various journalism conferences, including the Asian American Journalists Association. She also conducted a series of reporter workshops for international journalists at Radio Free Europe in the Czech Republic. She has taught seminars on public radio in China. As an editor, she has won a DuPont-Columbia Award and a Peabody Award.

Stanton Tang, news and information director, WZZM 13
PANEL: "STORIES OF SUCCESS"; "HERE'S TO THE NEXT STEP...MANAGEMENT"
Tang works at WZZM 13, the Gannett owned ABC affiliate in Grand Rapids / Kalamazoo / Battle Creek, Michigan market. He came to WZZM in 2005 as an executive producer and was promoted to News & Information Director in 2009. Tang's career in television news began at KPNX, the Gannett owned NBC affiliate in Phoenix, Arizona where he began as an intern, was hired through the Gannett Minority Producer Training Program, and left the station as a producer.

Stefanie Murray, director of digital audience development, Detroit Free Press
PANEL: "HOW CROWDSOURCING CAN HELP JOURNALISTS"
Murray co-leads Freep.com, the Detroit Free Press' website, and works to grow the newspaper's online reach using social media and interactive tools. She also oversees and works to promote the online growth of Metromix Detroit and MomLikeMe.com in Detroit. Prior to working for the Free Press, Murray was the Real-time Engagement Officer and Community Director for AnnArbor.com, an online media company with a twice-a-week print product in Ann Arbor, MI. Prior to AnnArbor.com, Murray worked as a business reporter and editor for The Ann Arbor News and as a business reporter for the Lansing State Journal. Murray holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and broadcasting from Central Michigan University and a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism At Northwestern University.

Stephanie Wang-Breal, director and producer, "Wo Ai Ni Mommy"
PANEL: "BORN ACROSS BORDERS
Stephanie Wang-Breal directed and produced the 2010 award-winning feature documentary, Wo Ai Ni Mommy (I Love You, Mommy). The film garnered three Grand Jury Awards from the AFI/ Silverdocs Film Festival, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and the Asia Cinevest Film Festival, as well as a 2011 Cine Special Jury Award. She was the recipient of a Jerome Foundation, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Center for Asian American Media, POV Diverse Voices and NYSCA Individual Artist grant. Wang-Breal is a fluent Mandarin and French speaker, and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two-year old son.

Stephen Clark, anchor, Channel 7/WXYZ
PANEL: "10TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11"
Clark anchors Action News at 7 and 11 with Carolyn Clifford and Action News at 6 with Diana Lewis. Clark started out as a newspaper photographer in Colorado. Since then, his career has taken him from radio reporter and DJ to TV photographer, reporter, and finally the anchor's chair. Clark covered momentous events including the conflict in Bosnia, the Los Angeles Riots, California wildfires and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Steve Dorsey, vice president/R+D, Detroit Media Partnership and 2011 president, Society for News Design
PANES: "TECH TRENDS"
Dorsey is the 2011 president of the Society for News Design, and a design consultant. Steve joined the DMP after working for 11 years at the Detroit Free Press, most recently as the deputy managing editor/presentation + innovation. Dorsey has been a speaker at conferences internationally, a recurring visiting faculty member at The Poynter Institute, a visiting professor at Syracuse University and a frequent speaker and coach in many newsrooms. He is a news and culture junkie. When he's not working, he enjoys playing golf, poker and Xbox--although any success is purely accidental.

Susan Rosiek, publisher/executive editor, The Observer & Eccentric and Hometown Newspapers
PANEL: "IS HYPERLOCAL THE FUTURE OR JUST LOCAL HYPE?"
Rosiek is publisher and executive editor of the Observer & Eccentric and Hometown Newspapers, a group of 13 community newspapers and website -- hometownlife.com -- owned by Gannett and managed by the Detroit Media Partnership. The coverage area for print and online editions are suburban Detroit, communities in western Wayne and Oakland counties. In addition to weekly print and Web editions, the group publishes more than 65 special sections annually. Rosiek is responsible for the financial operation as well as setting editorial policy for the media group.

Susie Ellwood, CEO, Detroit Media Partnership
PANEL: "NEWS INDUSTRY LESSONS FROM DETROIT"
Prior to being named CEO she had been executive vice president and general manager, following a two-year stint as corporate vice president/market development for Gannett's Newspaper Division in McLean, Va. She also served as vice president, market development for Detroit Newspapers from 1991 to 2004. She also held the position of vice president/director of marketing for the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock. She is an Arkansas native and a graduate of Arkansas State University with a B.S.E. in business.

Teresa Mask, regional editor, Patch.com
PANEL: "MEDIA ACCESS WORKSHOP"
After a 17-year career in print journalism, Mask took the leap online. Last November she became a regional editor overseeing several websites in Michigan for Patch.com, an online news and information source, focusing on community journalism. Prior to joining Patch, Teresa worked as a reporter and editor at the Detroit Free Press and the suburban Chicago Daily Herald. She is a graduate of Butler University in Indianapolis.

Thanh Truong news correspondent, NBC
PANEL: "VISUAL STORYTELLING III"
Truong is an NBC News Correspondent based in Atlanta. Since joining KUSA in 2006, Truong has reported on a variety of breaking news stories including the 2008 Democratic National Convention. From 2004-2006, Truong was a general assignment reporter with WWL in New Orleans. He covered the initial impact and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and was part of the WWL team to earn a Peabody and Alfred I. duPont award for their Hurricane Katrina coverage. Truong also worked as a reporter for WMAZ in Macon, Georgia and WWNY in Watertown, New York. Truong was born in Can Tho in southern Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. His family escaped the communist country on a boat to a refugee camp in Thailand. After months of waiting in poor conditions, a small church in upstate New York agreed to sponsor the family of seven. Truong grew up in Binghamton where his family later opened a Vietnamese restaurant. His daily conversations with patrons about politics and world issues started him down the path of communications.

Thomas Fladung, managing editor, The Plain Dealer
PANEL: "MULTIPLATFORM III: SPEEDWRITING"
Fladung became managing editor of The Plain Dealer in February 2011. Prior to that, Fladung had been editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota since September 2005. Fladung also has been a managing editor at the Detroit Free Press, from 2002 to 2005, and at the Akron Beacon Journal, from 2000 to 2002. From 1994 to 2000, he held a variety of editing positions at the Free Press, including news editor and metro editor.

Thomas Huang, Sunday & enterprise editor, The Dallas Morning News
PANEL: "MEDIA ACCESS WORKSHOP"
Huang is Adjunct Faculty member of The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla. In 2008, as a Poynter Fellow, he taught seminar sessions in ethics, diversity and leadership issues. He was co-editor of Poynter's Best Newspaper Writing book for 2008-2009. He has worked at The Dallas Morning News since 1993, first as a feature writer, then as features editor, and now as the Sunday Page One editor. During Huang's time as features editor, the newspaper's features coverage was named one of the nation's best by the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards and by the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors.

Ti-Hua Chang, general assignment reporter, WNYW FOX 5/New York
PANEL: "WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN"; "GALA BANQUET"
Chang is an award-winning Chinese American broadcast journalist based in New York who joined WNYW/Fox 5 in 2009 as a general assignment reporter from sister station WWOR/My9, where he served as a general assignment and investigative reporter since 2008. Chang is the recipient of 5 Emmmy awards as well as a Peabody, Murrow, Michigan AP and UPI awards. In 1983, he worked in Detroit for five years and participated in a Vincent Chin activist group shortly after Chin's murder.

Tomoko Hosaka, reporter, Associated Press
PANEL: "WORKING ABROAD IN ASIA OR MIDDLE EAST"
Hosaka is a Tokyo-based reporter for The Associated Press, covering business, economics and social issues. She serves on the national board of AAJA and is a former member of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan board of directors. Raised in California, her love of newspapers led her to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and then to a political reporting job at The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon. Hosaka landed in Japan nine years ago. She holds a master's degree in international relations from Waseda University and previously worked for Dow Jones Newswires.

Torey Malatia, president & ceo, Chicago Public Media
PANEL: "IS JOURNALISM A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL?" Malatia is the Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Media and serves as the President of the Board of Directors of Chicago Public Media, Incorporated. He is the leader of the institution responsible for the fulfillment of its stated public mission, its editorial integrity, its fiscal health, and the vitality of its role in civic and cultural life. Malatia joined the staff of Chicago Public Media in July 1993 as Vice President of Programming, and was soon appointed station manager in 1995. In 1996, he became President and General Manager. In 1995, he co-founded, with Ira Glass, This American Life, a weekly radio series for which Glass and Malatia jointly received a George Foster Peabody Award in 1996. In 2001, he was inducted into the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame as the first not-for-profit representative to receive this honor.

Vadim Lavrusik, journalist program manager, Facebook
PANELS: "SOCIAL MEDIA II""
Lavrusik works to improve and expand journalism on the platform. He is also an Adjunct Professor teaching social media at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Prior to Facebook, he worked as the Community Manager and Social Media Strategist at Mashable.com. He has also worked on social media at The New York Times and received a Master of Science degree in Digital Media from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. Prior to Columbia, he studied at the University of Minnesota where he received a B.A. in Journalism, summa cum laude, in 2009. He has written for PBS NewsHour, Nieman Journalism Lab, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, the Star Tribune, Poynter.org and more.

Victoria Lim, multiplatform reporter, Bright House Sports Network
PANELS: "MULTIPLATFORM II"; "BEYOND THE SCORECARD"
"Nicknamed the "Queen of Convergence," Lim became an award-winning multi-platform, multimedia reporter before anyone even knew what that was... or would become. For more than a decade, Victoria has been reporting for broadcast, print and online. Prior to joining Bright House Sports Network, Lim served as the senior consumer reporter for WFLA-TV, the Tampa Tribune and tbo.com, earning more than two dozen honors including an Emmy, an Associated Press Individual Achievement award and being named Florida "Journalist of the Year" by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Vivian Lin, president and founder, MobiMatrix, Inc.
PANEL: "CREATING A BUSINESS CALLED--YOU"
Lin's company MobiMatrix Inc., creates original entertainment media series, educational instructional design and content for distribution over wireless applications and broadband platforms. Their clients include the University of California, San Diego Birch Aquarium and the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park. MobiMatrix also developed original mobile media series such as CRTV Live! (featuring live performances and interviews with artists and musicians) and Faith TV (faith-based daily devotions).

Walter Middlebrook, assistant managing editor, The Detroit News
PANEL: "MEDIA ACCESS WORKSHOP"
was named assistant managing editor in February 2009, after serving two years as director of recruiting and community affairs for The Detroit News. Middlebrook is serving his second stint at The News, having spent two years at the paper in the late 1980s as an assistant features editor. Before returning to Detroit, Middlebrook worked in New York, spending 15 years at Newsday/New York Newsday in a variety of editing roles. He also spent two years at The New York Times as an assistant features editor.

Xuan Thai, producer, CNN
PANEL: "ELECTION 2012"
Thai is a producer for CNN's congressional unit, responsible for covering the activities of both the US House and Senate. Before joining the Capitol Hill team, Thai covered the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue as a CNN White House producer, where she covered the George W. Bush administration, the war in Iraq, the financial meltdown and the first two years of President Barack Obama's term. As a member of the "Best Political Team on Television"during the 2006 midterm election, Thai helped cover the Democratic Party takeover of both legislative houses. She also covered the 2008 presidential elections, traveling across the United States and Puerto Rico. During her time at CNN, Thai has filed reports from across the country and the world, including the Middle East and Asia.

Zahra Nasiruddin Jamal, contributor, I Speak For Myself: American Women on Being Muslim
PANEL: "AUTHORS' SHOWCASE: AMERICAN WOMEN ON BEING MUSLIM"
Jamal is a passionate community leader. Appointed by His Highness the Aga Khan to two boards, she oversees social welfare and religious education initiatives in the United States. She has consulted on conflict resolution and women's rights projects for the United Nations and other organizations.She designed the Aspen Institute's Muslim Philanthropy Project. Zahra is Assistant Professor and Program Director of Central Asia and International Development at Michigan State University. She researches gender, transnationalism, and civic engagement among Muslims in North America, South and Central Asia.

(Last updated 8/1/11)