About
New York Advisory Committee
Victoria Elenowitz
Victoria Elenowitz is a member of the New York City advisory board of Teach for America, which she has served on since 2002. She is also the immediate past chair and president of the Southampton Bath and Tennis Club and co-chair of the club’s charitable fund, which she co-founded in 2001. She chaired the U.S. Committee for Newnham College, Cambridge, from 2005 to 2009. She was previously marketing director for various financial software and technology consulting firms.
Yasmin Namini
New York Times
Yasmin Namini is senior vice president for marketing and circulation at the New York Times Media Group. She has held this position since June 2007. She is responsible for marketing the Times brand across print, web and mobile platforms, including The New York Times and NYTimes.com., and for the circulation of The New York Times. She served as vice president for Circulation Marketing at The Times since 1999 and the chief customer officer for the New England Media Group and as a senior vice president at the New England Newspaper Group and The Boston Globe since 2000.
Peter Osnos
PublicAffairs Books
Peter Osnos is editor-at-large at PublicAffairs, an independent publishing company specializing in books of journalism, history, biography and social criticism. He founded PublicAffairs in 1997 and served as publisher and CEO until 2005. He was previously vice president, associate publisher and senior editor at Random House. Between 1966 and 1984, he was a reporter, a foreign correspondent, the foreign editor and the national editor at The Washington Post. He is vice chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
David Moore
The David and Katherine Moore Family Foundation
David Moore and his wife head the the David and Katherine Moore Family Foundation. Based in Westchester County, N.Y., the foundation supports international education and economic development, national and regional social programs, and agencies working to strengthen democracy in the United States. It is a major support of the News Literacy Project as well. David is a member of the board of advisers at the World Security Institute and the nonprofit New York City Community Media Alliance and is a former board member of Pulitzer Inc. His grandfather was Joseph Pulitzer, whose will created the Pulitzer Prizes for outstanding journalism.
Chicago Advisory Committee
Sonya Anderson, Ed.D.
First Five Years Fund
Sonya Anderson is national director of the First Five Years Fund, which advocates federally for early education opportunities for at-risk children. Previously, she served as education program director for the Oprah Winfrey Foundations, overseeing development of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa and managing other domestic and international projects. She also worked as a senior associate for Creative Associates International, where she co-directed education development projects in West Africa and the Caribbean, and at the Ford Foundation as a program associate.
David Hiller (ex officio)
McCormick Foundation
David Hiller is the president and chief executive officer of the McCormick Foundation, the major funder of the News Literacy Project in Chicago. He joined the foundation in May 2009. David is the past publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times and, before that, the Chicago Tribune. He is a former partner in the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. Previously, he was a lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice and a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.
Andrew J. Mooney
LISC/Chicago
Andrew J. Mooney is executive director of the Chicago office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). Considered a national model, LISC is a not-for-profit that provides grants, loans, equity and technical assistance to community organizations to revitalize neighborhoods. Since joining LISC in 1996, Andy has raised about $100 million in grants and loans, leading to the development of 23,000 units of housing, 2.5 million square feet of commercial space and health care and day care centers, parks and recreational facilities. Previously, Andy was executive director and chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority.
Sheila Solomon
The Chicago Tribune
Sheila Solomon is the cross-media editor at the Chicago Tribune, where she helps to link editorial resources within the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Tribune Media Group. From 2002 until 2009 she was the senior editor for recruitment, overseeing the newsroom’s internship and training programs and serving as a resource and liaison for the newsroom and Chicago Tribune Media Group partners. She has also worked at Newsday, The Charlotte Observer and the Daily Press (Hampton Roads, Va.), and was an adjunct journalism instructor at Hampton University. She is a member of the advisory board of the journalism department at Columbia College Chicago.
Los Angeles Advisory Committee
Noemi B. Donoso
Noemi B. Donoso is the chief academic officer and founding principal of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy and president of Great Gains, an education consulting firm. A former principal of Harbor Science and Arts Academy in New York, she has also taught high school English and history and in 1992 was named a Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellow for Aspiring Teachers of Color.
Jim Newton
Jim Newton is editor-at-large of the Los Angeles Times. He serves as a member of the Times’ editorial board, advises on editorial matters and writes and edits for the editorial and op-ed pages. A 20-year veteran of the paper, he has served as editor of the editorial pages and been a reporter and bureau chief, covering the Los Angeles Police Department, Mayor Richard Riordan, federal law enforcement and state and local politics. He is also a senior fellow with UCLA’s School of Public Affairs and teaches journalistic ethics at the Communications Studies Department. He is the author of Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, a best-selling biography of the former chief justice and California governor, and is at work on a biography of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential years.
Gwen Potiker
Gwen Potiker is a former television literary and packaging agent for Creative Artists Agency. Previously, she was director of development for television movies at NBC and a creative executive in television development at New Line Cinema. She currently is active raising funds for Birthright Israel, New Visions Foundation, the Los Angeles Library Foundation and the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.
Advisory Council
Dana Perino
Fox News
Dana is a commentator for Fox News and is president of Dana Perino and Company, which provides strategic communications advice to the private sector. From 2007 to 2009 she was White House press secretary to President George W. Bush—the first Republican woman to hold that position. She previously served as deputy White House press secretary and director of communications for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Before joining the White House, she was the Justice Department’s spokeswoman. President Obama has nominated her to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees all U.S. civilian international broadcasting. Dana is also the founder of Minute Mentoring, an organization that provides professional guidance to young women starting their careers.
Lynn Sherr
Formerly of ABC News
Lynn spent more than 30 years as a reporter at ABC News, including more than two decades with the news magazine “20/20.” She specialized in women’s issues and social change as well as investigative reports. She was also a national correspondent and part of the network’s political team in every election cycle from 1978 to 2000. Before joining ABC News, she worked at WNET in New York, WETA in Washington, WCBS in New York, Associated Press and Condé Nast Publications. Her numerous honors include an Emmy, two American Women in Radio and Television Commendation Awards and a George Foster Peabody Award. She is the best-selling author of six books, including Outside the Box: A Memoir, published in September 2006, and she co-edited Peter Jennings: A Reporter’s Life, published in 2007. Currently, she writes for various magazines and online for The Daily Beast (www.thedailybeast.com), and she also appears on PBS.
Ellen Weiss
NPR
Ellen Weiss is senior vice president for news at National Public Radio, overseeing more than 400 staff members in 19 domestic and 17 foreign bureaus. She joined NPR in 1982 and was a director, a field producer, an editor and a senior producer before becoming executive producer of the daily newsmagazine “All Things Considered,” a job she held for 12 years. From 2001 to 2006 she was senior editor of NPR News’ National Desk. She has been part of NPR News teams that have won numerous awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the Overseas Press Club Award. She was named to NPR’s top news management position in 2007.
Education Committee
Frank W. Baker
Media Literacy Clearinghouse
Frank W. Baker, national media literacy consultant; maintains the Media Literacy Clearinghouse website (www.frankwbaker.com); former president, National Association for Media Literacy Education; author of two books on media literacy; worked in television broadcasting in South Carolina, Maryland and Florida and in the Orange County (Fla.) schools.
Howard Gardner
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Howard Gardner, John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; author of over 20 books translated into 27 languages; best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there is a single human intelligence to be assessed by standard psychometric instruments; has received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer Award in Education and honorary degrees from 22 colleges and universities.
Eric Schwarz
Citizen Schools
Eric Schwarz, CEO and co-founder of Citizen Schools, a national education initiative that helps improve student achievement by offering after-school programs that blend real world learning projects and rigorous academics; was a public service fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; former executive director, City Year Boston, and vice president, City Year.
Technology Committee
Arthur Bushkin
Stargazer Foundation
Arthur Bushkin is chairman and CEO of the Stargazer Foundation, founded in 1999 to “harness the power of the Web and related technologies for social good.” Among its projects is Stargazer Learning, which focuses on the quality and the equality of the educational system in a technologically evolving society. He is a founding investor in Venture Philanthropy Partners, which supports organizations that improve the lives of children and youth in the Washington, D.C., area. Early in his career, working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Art was involved in the establishment of what eventually became the Internet. He also served as president of Bell Atlantic Video Services (now Verizon), where he led the creation of video-on-demand.
Craig Newmark
Craigslist
Craig Newmark is the founder of craigslist.org, a community-moderated website that offers classified ads and discussion forums for basic day-to-day necessities, such as finding a job and a place to live, and for diversions such as personals and events listings. Begun in 1995 as an occasional e-mail to friends of fun things to do in San Francisco, Craigslist now has local sites for more than 700 cities in 70 countries. Craig is on the National Advisory Council of Donorschoose.org, which enables individuals to fund classroom projects in schools throughout the United States. He also serves on the boards of Consumers Union (the publisher of Consumer Reports) and the Sunlight Foundation, which fosters greater openness and accountability in government.
