 Jane
McDonnell, a former managing editor at Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services (now McClatchy-Tribune), directs the team for PAJ’s nationally
syndicated newspaper series and public education initiatives.
She is an award-winning journalist with 20 years of reporting,
editing and writing experience. At KRT, she created the Special
Sections department, which delivers ready-to-publish newspaper
pages online to 200 domestic and foreign subscribers. These popular
“OnePages” include That’s Racin’, a NASCAR feature, Golf, and
KidNews and Yak’s Corner, for young readers. She assigned and
edited foreign, national, sports and feature stories, working
with editors at more than 100 newspapers across the country. Jane
also received Knight Ridder’s highest accolade, the Excellence
Award, for her work as president of Partners in Journalism, a
volunteer group that helped Washington D.C. public high schools
produce newspapers. As a reporter and editor at three New Jersey
dailies, she focused on state and community news. She and her
husband, Larry, live in Maryland, and have a son, Max, and daughter,
Rachael.
For contact info, please click here.
Sherri Roff
coordinates grantee and community outreach, online presence and
project evaluation. Sherri has been with PAJ since its inception
and has been Project Coordinator for each of series it has
produced. She is the Clinical Director for The Next Step,
a substance abuse recovery program for women in Albany, NY. She received her MSW and PhD from the School of Social Welfare at the University at Albany
and is an adjunct professor in
the Schools of Communication and Education at the College of St.
Rose. Sherri lives in New York with her partner of 17 years,
Beth, along with their cat and dog.
For contact info, please click here.
 Melanie
P. Merriman is
Director of Touchstone Consulting, an outcomes management and
program evaluation company in North Bay Village, Fla. Recent
clients include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Hospice
Foundation of America, The Center for Advanced Illness
Coordinated Care and The National Mental Health Association.
Melanie also is the project director for the EDELE (Epidemiology
of Death and End of Life Experience), a federally funded
imitative to provide accessible data to healthcare providers and
policy-makers. She was director of Quality and Compliance for
VITAS Healthcare Corporation, the nation’s largest provider of
hospice care. She is also a co-author of the Missoula-VITAS
Quality of Life Index. She received her Ph.D. in Biology from
Brandeis University in 1979, did postdoctoral training at
Harvard Medical School, and served as tenured associate
professor at the University of Miami School of Medicine for 10
years. She earned an MBA in Health Care Administration from the
University of Miami School of Business in 1992. She lives in
North Bay Village, Fla., with her husband, Klein. For contact info, please
click here.
Ray Silverio
is Director of
Information Technology at On The Scene Productions, Inc. in
Los Angeles, Calif., one of Internet’s biggest providers in
rich audio/video content. Ray manages a unique team of network
engineers, web developers, and interactive media managers to stream numerous live events/concerts
and on-demand video content in the entertainment and consumer industry over the
web and WAP-enabled devices. He designed, managed and supports a robust and secured
network/systems infrastructure and VoIP environment for the Los Angeles, Chicago,
Atlanta. and New York offices, and also elevated
the company’s technology to Internet broadcasting. He worked
with the company’s top executive and technology team in establishing
partnerships and operations with Yahoo!, MSNBC, MSN, Brightcove, Estee-Lauder, Jive Records, Sony Entertainment, GoTV (Sprint's
On-Demand Provider), and
other major players in the entertainment, healthcare, consumer and
publishing industry. Ray formerly managed IT at California-based iXL, Digital Planet and
is Chief Engineer at LA-based IT firm, Iworks Solutions, Inc.. He lives in Rancho
Palos Verdes, Calif.,
with his beautiful wife, Gwen, and
their two
beautiful children, Skyler and Kaeli, along with their Maltese,
Bella.
For contact info, please
click here.
Journalists
William Celis teaches journalism at the USC
Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles. He was the
national education correspondent for The New York Times and a
reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He now
writes about social issues through the lens of public education
and is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. He is the
author of "Battle Rock: The Struggle Over a One-Room School in
America's Vanishing West" (2003). He lives in Los Angeles.
Jodi Mailander Farrell has distinguished herself as an
education reporter for eight years at The Miami Herald and for
four years at The Palm Beach Post, having covered two of the
nation’s largest school districts in Miami-Dade and Broward
counties. She won the “best overall coverage” School Bell award
from the American Federation of Teachers/Florida for six years in
a row, as well as numerous national awards. Her reporting has led
to several systemic changes, including the way special education
is funded statewide and the inclusion of “biracial” as an ethnic
category for student registration in Florida public schools. She
is currently a part-time travel editor and columnist for The
Herald and a People magazine correspondent. She lives in Miami
with her daughters, Annie and Lucy, and her husband, Patrick, a
photographer for the Herald.
Richard Scheinin writes about jazz and classical music for
the San Jose Mercury News. For 11 years, he was an award-winning
religion and ethics writer at the Mercury News, and, before that,
a national cover stories writer for USA Today. He is the author of
"Field of Screams: The Dark Underside of America's National
Pastime'' (W.W. Norton) and has published freelance articles in GQ
and the Washington Post. A former journalism instructor at the
University of California in Santa Cruz's Extension Division, he
holds a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate
School of Journalism. He lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., with his
wife, journalist Sara Solovitch. They have three sons. Sara
Solovitch is an award-winning magazine writer whose stories
have appeared in Esquire, Wired and Outside. She has been a
staff reporter at several newspapers, including the Philadelphia
Inquirer, and for six years wrote a weekly column on Kids'
Health for the San Jose Mercury News. She teaches journalism to
graduate students in the Science Communication program at the
University of California Santa Cruz, where she lives with her
husband, Richard Scheinin, and their three sons, Benjamin, Max
and Jesse.
Lauralee Ortiz has worked as a print journalist for more
than 20 years in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan,
covering everything from crime and education to government and
human interest. As a reporter in Palm Springs, Calif., she
followed the political career of Sonny Bono, the fall of
evangelist Jim Bakker and the death of Liberace. She now
specializes in medical and fitness issues for the Detroit Free
Press and serves as a correspondent for the Credit Union Journal,
a national financial trade publication. She lives in Michigan with
her husband, Max, a photographer for the Detroit News, and two
children, Dakota and Madison.
Patrick May is a staff writer on the Enterprise Team at the
San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News. He travels throughout the West,
writing breaking news stories and longer pieces that examine how
larger events or trends shape communities or subcultures. He has
won numerous national and regional awards during his 21 years as a
writer, 17 of them at the Miami Herald. After two years at the
University of California at Davis, Patrick left school to travel
the world, which he did for eight years, teaching English in Paris
as well as in Iran and Turkey. He received his bachelor's degree
in journalism from San Francisco State University in 1981. Patrick
and his wife, Susan, have three children — Caitlin, Zoe and Cody. top
Advisory board members
Scott Bosley
Executive Director
American Society of Newspaper Editors
11690B Sunrise Valley Drive
Reston VA 20191-1409
sbosley@asne.org
In a newspaper career spanning more than 30 years, Scott Bosley
has reported on sports, government and politics, held a variety of
editing positions, managed a news service and served as a
publisher. In March of 1999 he joined the American Society of
Newspaper Editors as executive director. He is a graduate of West
Virginia University in his native state. In 1965, he joined the
Akron Beacon Journal as a sports writer, covered city hall and
politics and held a number of management positions, including city
editor and managing editor, before moving the Detroit Free Press
in 1980. In Detroit, he was Sunday editor, assistant managing
editor and managing editor before departing in late 1987 to become
editor and vice president of Knight Ridder/Tribune Information
Services. In 1991, he became editor and vice president of The
Journal of Commerce in New York City, leaving to become publisher
and president of the Post-Tribune in Gary (Ind.) from 1995 through
early 1998. When the newspaper was sold, he joined Knight Ridder's
corporate staff in a new product development role.
Victoria D. Weisfeld
vsk8s@hotmail.com
Vicki Weisfeld has worked thirty-five years in health care
communications, with for-profit, nonprofit and philanthropic
organizations, creating award-winning advocacy campaigns and
print and broadcast materials. Most recently, she served as
Senior Communications Officer at The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, where she was employed for 20 years. She served
three terms on the Communications Committee of the Council on
Foundations and is past president of the Communications Network
in Philanthropy. She currently serves on the boards of New
Jersey Health Decisions, Family & Children's Services of Central
New Jersey, and Channel G. Weisfeld was a senior associate with
the Institute of Medicine, Division of Health Promotion and
Disease Prevention, at the National Academy of Sciences in
Washington, D.C. She has authored numerous articles on health
care and has edited a quarterly health services research
newsletter for RWJF. Weisfeld received her master's degree in
public health from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor
of arts degree in journalism from the University of Michigan.
top |
