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Who We Are

Board of Directors | Project Consultants | Advisors | Funders | Our Values | Our Principles

Updated February 2009

Board of Directors

Aliza Dichter
Aliza is an organizer, educator, researcher, group facilitator and agitator for systemic media change. She has conducted workshops and presentations for thousands of community members, students and organizational leaders, and is a trainer for the United Methodist Seminar Program on topics of media, peace and justice. She serves on the board of Women In Media and News (WIMN), a women's media-analysis, training and advocacy organization. Her work focuses on building power and strategies for shaping media policy and infrastructure to serve democracy, the public interest and community needs.

Aliza is the author of several reports for the field, including "Building Constituencies for Spectrum Policy Change - Wireless Broadband and Public Needs," (New America Foundation, 2006) and "Together, We Know More: Networks and Coalitions to Advance Media Democracy, Communication Rights and the Public Sphere 1990-2005," (Social Science Research Council, 2005) Her articles have been published by Alternet, Media File, The Indypendent and the Media Development journal. From 1999-2003, she helped found and run the nonprofit MediaChannel.org, serving as Senior Editor and Education Coordinator for a network of more than 1000 media and democracy groups worldwide. Aliza has helped with the planning and launch of many public media advocacy initiatives including the Action Coalition for Media Education, the Youth Free Expression Network and the international Communication Rights in the Information Society coalition. She served as a delegate to the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil and to the 2003 United Nations World Summit on the Information Society and the concurrent World Forum on Communication Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.

Honored as the 2005 "Visionary In Residence" at Dartmouth College's Center for Women and Gender, Aliza is a Fellow in the Rockwood Leadership Program's Fellowship in Media, Communications and Information Policy. She is currently helping to build civic partnerships and organize a new community radio station in her home area of rural Greene County, NY, where she sits on the board of the Catskill Community Center.

Seeta Peña Gangadharan
Seeta is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in communications policy at Stanford University focusing on democratic theory of media and political communication. Her dissertation, entitled "Public Matters in Communication Policy: The debate on media ownership in the United States," interrogates the idea and the history of public participation in communication policymaking at the Federal Communications Commission. She holds a master's degree in Communication and Media from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Seeta has served as a consultant to the Active Voice/Television Race Initiative, a community engagement media project. Previously she was a communications policy researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London. Seeta has contributed to several publications and books, including "We the Media: A Citizen's Guide to Media Democracy", "SPIN Works!" and "Communications, Revolution and Reform." She helped found the nonprofit, online syndication service Wiretap (Independent Media Institute) and has also worked with the SPIN Project to educate political advocates on proactive uses of media and communications. Seeta was a participant in the 2002 Highlander Media Justice Gathering, a trainer at the Ruckus TechTools Action Camp, and a civil society delegate to the 2003 ICANN General Meeting in Shanghai, China and to the World Summit on the Information Society and the World Forum on Communication Rights in Geneva, 2003.

Nolan Bowie
Nolan Bowie is a Fellow Emeritus and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where he is affiliated with The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, the Harvard Information Infrastructure Policy Project (HIIP) and the Center for Business and Government. From 1986-98, Nolan was an Associate Professor of Communications in the Department of Broadcasting, Mass Media and Telecommunications (BTMM), School of Communications and Theater (SCAT) at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is also a Fellow Emeritus at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where he works on projects related to the Internet in developing countries.

Professor Bowie is a former staff Attorney and Executive Director of Citizens Communications Center, a public interest law firm and education institution [currently a Project of the Institute for Public Representation (IPR) of the Georgetown University Law Center], 1974-81. He has served both as an Assistant Special Prosecutor with the Watergate Special Prosecution Force and Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Bureau, New York State Department of Law. He has been active on a number of advisory panels and boards for a variety of organizations. These include the U. S. Congress' Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), The National Academies (regarding digital divide and digital democracy issues), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA), and the Aspen institute. Nolan is currently a Board member of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting (CIPB) and an Advisor to the Center for Media Education (CME), the Advertising Council, Inc., and the National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL). He is also a member of the Steering Committee of The Boston Foundation’s Initiative on the New Economy and How Technology Can Empower Individuals and Communities.

Nolan is also an artist who has displayed his paintings and drawings in group and one-person exhibits in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Morristown, New Jersey and Cambridge. In the fall of 1998, he was named in a nationally syndicated column as one of the "High-Tech Heroes Who Work for the Public Good." He was recently presented the Manuel Carballo award for excellence in teaching at the Kennedy School of Government by the graduating class of 2001.

PROJECT CONSULTANTS (past and current)

Catherine Borgman-Arboleda, Evaluation Consultant

Rachel Kulick, Research Consultant

Elsa E'der, Web Editor

Marianna Trofimova, Graphic Designer/Illustrator

Elinor Nauen, Editorial Consultant

Rajendra Serber, Web Programmer

Joshua Breitbart, Research Consultant

Carol Garza, Manager

Brenton Cheng, Web Developer and Programmer

Free Range Graphics, Graphic Design Firm

Tori Holmes, Project Consultant/Translator

Lorraine Landau, Administrative Vounteer

Aimee Scala, Research Assistant

Jennifer Valdez, Administrative Assistant

ADVISORS (past and current)

Nolan Bowie, Harvard University
Lisa Nutter, Philadelphia Academies
Dr. Robert Zuber, Global Action to Prevent War
Karen Banks, Association for Progressive Communications (UK)
Melissa Bradley, New Capitalist
Dr. Sandra Braman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Joshua Breitbart, Allied Media Projects
Malkia Cyril, Center for Media Justice
Dharma Dailey, Prometheus Radio Project
Leda Dederich, ScoutSeven
Deedee Halleck, Deep Dish TV
Evan Henshaw-Plath, Indymedia (US/Uruguay)
Myriam Horngren, CRIS Campaign (UK)
Dorothy Kidd, University of San Francisco
Art McGee, Media Justice Network
Tracey Naughton, Nyaka (South Africa)
Marc Osten, Summit Collaborative
Jeff Perlstein, Media Alliance
Nan Rubin, Community Media Services
Hil Sherman, Mirella Media
Pete TriDish, Prometheus Radio Project
Martha Wallner

OUR FUNDERS

CIMA's work is funded through fee-for-service contracts and collaborative fundraising, as well as direct philanthropic grants. We are grateful to all of our donors and supporters who have made our work possible over the years:

• The Ford Foundation, Electronic Media Policy Program
• The Phoebe Haas Charitable Trust
• The List Foundation
• EPIC: The Public Voice Fund
• CM Foundation
• and in-kind donations of technology, legal and design services.

Center for International Media Action, inc. is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation registered in the State of New York.