Moustapha Abdul
Senior Director, Station and System Analysis
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Moustapha is Senior Director, Station and System Analysis at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). He has an MBA and a BA in Finance, both from the University of Arkansas. He was also awarded the Wall Street Journal Award for outstanding achievement in 2008. Before joining CPB, Moustapha worked as a Financial Analyst at Corporate Financial Outsourcing, LLC in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he effectively served as the CFO for a number of small companies and nonprofits.

Katherine Arno
Vice President, Community Service Grants and Station Initiatives
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Kate is Vice President, Community Service Grants and Station Initiatives, at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). She oversees the development and implementation of policy for the Community Service Grant (CSG) program, which annually distributes more than $300 million to support public television and radio stations throughout the country. She also oversees initiatives to help stations improve their ability to provide strong public service to their communities. Previously, Kate served for seven years as CPB’s Director of Television CSG Policy and Review. Her public television experience includes 10 years at Maine Public where she was Vice President of Television. Kate has a Master of Public Policy and Management degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Maine system.

Deb Ashmore
Strategic Analyst
CDP

Deb has more than 25 years of experience in the non-profit sector and in public broadcasting fundraising. Before joining CDP, she served as the principal data consultant at Blackbaud helping clients understand their fundraising data, trends and inform strategies for long-term file health and growth. Prior to Blackbaud, she was the director of individual giving for WXPN and served as the VP of communications for McPherson Associates, leading the Public Television Online Fundraising Co-op. She is a popular speaker, presenting at major national conferences, including delivering the annual State of the System at the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference. She has led benchmarking groups and training classes including a class on fundraising at New York University. She has co-authored several fundraising studies and coordinated projects aimed at advancing fundraising techniques, particularly new media applications and sustainer programs. Deb volunteers in the library of her local public school, sharing her love of literature and storytelling with our youngest scholars.

Katherine Arno
Vice President, Community Service Grants and Station Initiatives
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Kate is Vice President, Community Service Grants and Station Initiatives, at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). She oversees the development and implementation of policy for the Community Service Grant (CSG) program, which annually distributes more than $300 million to support public television and radio stations throughout the country. She also oversees initiatives to help stations improve their ability to provide strong public service to their communities. Previously, Kate served for seven years as CPB’s Director of Television CSG Policy and Review. Her public television experience includes 10 years at Maine Public where she was Vice President of Television. Kate has a Master of Public Policy and Management degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Maine system.

Tim Bawcombe
Director of TV CSG Policy and Review
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Tim joined CPB as the Director, Television CSG Policy and Review in 2020. In this role, he works with the CSG Services team to administer CPB’s Community Service Grants, managing policy standards and metrics for the 158 television CSG recipients and supervising the annual desk reviews of over 550 annual financial reports submitted to CPB by radio and television grantees. Previously, Tim worked at PBS from 2005-2020, serving as an audience researcher and then the Director of Business Intelligence, Data Strategy & Nielsen Operations. Tim earned a BA from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in Television, Radio, and Film at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He has expertise in research, complex data analysis, and project leadership.

Beth Carter      
Vice President of Partner Support
CARS

Beth Carter is the VP of Partner Support at CARS (Charitable Adult Rides and Services). She has worked with public media stations for over three decades. She got her start with VisABILITY of Colorado which introduced her to the world of public media. After moving to Oklahoma, Beth transitioned into the vehicle donation space where she has been helping stations raise funds since 2007. Beth and her family live in rural Oklahoma where they currently have five miniature horses and a few hundred thousand honeybees.

Andrew Charnik
Director, Radio CSG Policy & Administration
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Andrew Charnik is the Director of Radio Community Service Grants Policy & Administration at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), where he oversees policy and administration for nearly 400 radio stations. Andrew joined CPB in 2011 and has held positions in Station Grants Administration, Radio, and the Office of the COO.  Andrew earned a BA with Distinction from the University of Delaware and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Monica Cruz  
Chief Human Resources Officer
WLRN

Monica Cruz serves as Director of HR & Administration for WLRN Public Media. In her current role, Monica is responsible for leading WLRN’s overall human resources strategy, talent acquisition, leadership development, diversity and inclusion, organizational design and cultural development, employee education and development and employee relations, and benefits.

Monica has over 15 years of experience in Human Resources, Compliance and Legal Affairs.
Prior to joining WLRN, Ms. Cruz served as the Chief Human Resources Officer for Goodwill Industries where she was responsible for strategizing, developing, and implementing all culture, employee engagement and organizational development initiatives. She was also the Head of Human Resources and Compliance at St. Thomas University, overseeing all legal, human resources and risk management issues for the university.

Monica holds a Juris Doctorate from Whittier Law School and a Master’s in Human Resources from Lynn University. She also holds a Professional in Human Resources Certification and is a certified Title IX Coordinator and Investigator.

Fred Engel        
Chief Technology Officer
PBS North Carolina

Fred Engel, CPBE, ATSC3, Chief Technology Officer at PBS North Carolina (formerly known as UNC-TV), is a widely respected leader in the broadcast media industry. He and his team are nationally recognized for their work in developing creative applications for the new television broadcast technology developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) commonly referred to as ATSC 3.0/NEXT GEN TV. This includes Public Safety Communications efforts that won the 2017 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Pilot Innovation Grant Competition for “Digital Paging over Public Broadcasting”, an effort now funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. Work on the paging effort has led to additional recognition as the Best Paper, Television, awarded at the 2022 NAB Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference, Best Paper at the 2022 IEEE BTS BMSB Conference in Bilbao, Spain and the NAB 2023 Technology Innovation Award. In 2020 Fred was elected to, and now serves on, the ATSC Board of Directors, the first public broadcaster in that role in many years. He has been in the broadcast industry since graduating from Ferris State University in 1978. He spent 28 years at WTTW Chicago rising from an engineering maintenance technician to Vice President of Technology. He spent three years with a Systems Integration firm in Chicago as Vice President of Broadcasting, joined Kentucky Educational Television (KET) in 2010 as Senior Director of Technology and in 2016 took a similar role with UNC-TV in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Fred and his team in Chicago received a Midwest Emmy award for the design and construction of WTTW’s Digital Broadcast Operations Center. His team at KET designed and built one of the first street side studios in public broadcasting in downtown Louisville, KY. He is a regular contributor at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Technology Conference, PBS Annual Meetings, the America’s Public Television Stations Summit and the NAB convention. He is the current Chapter 93 chairperson of the Society of Broadcast Engineers in the Raleigh/Durham NC market and holds professional certifications with the Society including “Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer (CPBE)” and “ATSC3 Specialist”. He has served on the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council VII (CSRIC) working group focused on improving Broadcast Resiliency, had a six-year tenure with the PBS Enterprise Technology Advisory Committee (ETAC), participates in various PBS ETAC Working Groups, and serves with the Advanced Warning and Alert Response Network (AWARN) and the NextGen Video Information Systems Alliance (NVISA) groups focusing on emergency notifications to viewers. He also serves as television chair of the North Carolina State Emergency Coordination Committee. In 2023 he became the PBS Station Representative on the National Association of Broadcasters Television Engineering Committee and serves on the FCC/NAB “Future of Television” Initiative.

Damon Frazier
Senior Consultant
BI Solutions Group, LLC

Damon is a senior consultant with the Business Intelligence Solutions Group (BI Solutions) with nearly 25 years of experience in performance and cost management consulting services.  Prior to joining BI Solutions, he worked in a similar capacity with PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Consulting Services and IBM Business Consulting Services. He has supported the Public Media industry and served as the primary point of contact for the SAS/SABS initiatives during 19 reporting cycles. Damon has a B.A. from Ohio University and is a member of the Institute for Management Accountants.

Joseph Georges
Senior Vice-President
CARS

Ken Goulet
Senior Financial Review Specialist
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Ken joined CPB in May 2015 as a Senior Financial Review Specialist and is primarily responsible for conducting technical and financial reviews for over 550 Community Serve Grant recipients’ annual financial reports to CPB. Previously, he worked for 22 years at Grant Thornton LLP, a large independent audit, tax and advisory firm, as a Supervising Senior in the Audit Assurance Department and Manager in the Global Public Sector division. He has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting

Dr. Allan Hazlett
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
Washington University in St. Louis

Allan Hazlett works on testimony, skepticism, desire, the value of truth, reasons, and other topics in epistemology and metaethics. Hazlett studied philosophy at Brown University, earning his doctorate in 2006.  Since then, he has been a member of the philosophy departments at Texas Tech University, Fordham University, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of New Mexico.  He is the author of three books: A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief (Oxford University Press, 2013), A Critical Introduction to Skepticism (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014), and The Epistemology of Desire and the Problem of Nihilism (Oxford University Press, 2024).  His work has also appeared in Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, among other places.

Beth Karlin, PhD
Founder and CEO
See Change Institute

Dr. Beth Karlin, Ph.D. is a program evaluator, research psychologist, and CEO of See Change Institute, which studies and shapes the role of behavior in social change. She also founded the Transformational Media Lab at the University of California, Irvine and served as Research Director at the USC Norman Lear Center and Media Impact Project. Beth has been publishing research on media impact since 2011 and her work has been funded by the Gates, Knight, Hilton, Kellogg, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. In the public media space, Beth has led evaluations for KCRW, PBS NewsHour, ITVS, Frontline, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Before receiving her Ph.D. in Social Ecology, Beth spent a decade working in K-12 education, holding positions as a teacher, counselor, curriculum designer, and school administrator. She believes that the role of a researcher is not only to better understand the world but also to improve it and hopes that her work is able to serve both purposes.

Imad Khalid
Senior Financial Review Specialist
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Imad first joined CPB as a financial analyst in 2020 and recently took a new role as a Senior Financial Review Specialist on the Community Service Grants team, where he reviews and approves grantees’ annual financial reports. He joined CPB from N Street Village, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit organization where he was a corporate Data Manager responsible for data mapping, interpretation, and visualization. Imad previously served as Data Analyst for Miracle Systems, supporting the FAA Secure Flight Program through monitoring and tracking performance of airline submissions and consulting with government clients based on metrics and analytics for performance analysis. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA with Bachelor of Science in Business Economics.

Jane Lastinger, CPA
Director
James Moore & Co.

Jane is a CPA with over ten years of experience providing accounting and auditing services. As a Director with James Moore & Co., Jane leads the firm’s Public Broadcasting Services Team and is skilled in developing audit techniques and reporting best practices under CPB Financial Reporting Guidelines. Jane monitors auditing and accounting projects and client engagements and is responsible for all phases of projects including fieldwork supervision, risk assessment evaluation, and engagement approach development. She has performed auditing services for a variety of clients such as private companies, governments, nonprofits (including public broadcasting stations, direct support organizations and private foundations), and university-affiliated organizations. Jane also has experience auditing alternative investments and has worked on several Lean Six Sigma and operational excellence engagements.

Chris Norris
Strategic Advisor to the CEO
StoryCorps

Christopher “Flood the Drummer” Norris is a two-time, Emmy-nominated broadcast journalist, professional drummer and entrepreneur. Currently, Chris serves as the Strategic Advisor to the CEO of StoryCorps, and oversees the organization’s flagship program, One Small Step, which pairs strangers across the political divide for 50-minute conversations – not to debate politics but to get to know each other as humans.

Eric Nuzum     
Co-Founder
Magnificent Noise

Eric Nuzum is the cofounder of Magnificent Noise and lead consultant to the Millennial Listener Insight Study (MLIS). Over the past 14 years, he has made podcasts that routinely top the charts, appear in yearly “best of” lists, win awards, and generate hundreds of millions of downloads. He started NPR’s podcasting efforts in 2005 and was the chief creative and strategic force for the following decade, leading NPR to become the largest distributor of podcasts in the world. In 2019, he co-founded Magnificent Noise, a podcast production and creative consulting company based in New York City. Eric is the author of Giving Up the Ghost: A Story About Friendship, 80s Music, A Lost Scrap of Paper, and What It Means to be Haunted (2012), The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula (2007) and Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America (2001). His latest is entitled Make Noise: A Creator’s Guide to Podcasting and Great Audio Storytelling and it was released by Workman Publishing in 2019.

Kathy Merritt
Senior Vice President, Radio, Journalism, and CSG Services
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Kathy is Senior Vice President for Radio, Journalism, and CSG Services at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She is responsible for leading CPB’s efforts to distribute more than $300 million annually in Community Service Grants to qualified public radio and television stations and for advancing public media’s journalism and radio efforts, locally, regionally, and nationally.

Prior to her current position, Kathy was Vice President for Content Strategy and Development at Public Radio International. Before that, she was CPB’s Senior Director of Program Investments in Radio, where she was one of the architects of numerous ground-breaking public media projects including the creation of seven Local Journalism Collaborations, which laid a foundation for other public media journalism collaborations, and the Public Radio Talent Quest, which launched “Snap Judgment” host Glynn Washington and “Reveal” host Al Letson. Prior to her work at CPB, Kathy was the interim general manager at KBPS in Portland, Ore.; station manager and news director at WAMU in Washington, D.C.; and news director at WFAE in Charlotte, N.C. She has worked in production, editing, hosting and reporting and filed stories for many news programs, including NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” “Marketplace” and “The Osgood File” on CBS.

She attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for her BA in English and the University of Maryland for a Graduate Certificate in Multimedia Journalism. She was named a distinguished alumna of UNC Charlotte in 2023.

Kate Midgett   
VP & Chief Organizational Excellence Officer
Nine PBS

Kate Midgett is Vice President and Chief Organizational Excellence Officer at Nine PBS. She leads the human resource, organizational development, and change-management efforts to build an engaged, inclusive, and human-centered culture for the organization. Her goal is to ensure that every team member has the support they need to thrive in their position, thereby increasing Nine PBS’s impact across our region. Her work also focuses on the continuous quality improvement of programs and activities through survey data and action. She currently serves as the co-chair of the MMG – HR group. Midgett came to Nine PBS in 2019 from the Gateway Region YMCA where she served as the Association Director of Quality and Impact for over five years. Prior to that, she worked as a consultant to nonprofits for 12 years, including Vice President of a consulting firm for six years. Midgett has a Master’s degree in Human Resource Development from Webster University and a Master’s degree in Sociology, with an emphasis in qualitative research, race and ethnic relations, and structural inequality from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Kate loves to travel and enjoys spending time with her husband James, their blended family of four children, and three dogs.

Sonja Pasquantonio
VP | Human Resources, Training and Development
Connecticut Public Broadcasting, Inc

Sonja Pasquantonio is the VP of Human Resources, Training, and Development at Connecticut Public. She has over 30-years of experience in various Human Resources roles spanning government, contractor, non-profit, and quasi-public agencies. Sonja consults for GRC Educators and offers training courses in Human Resources, Business Writing and Effective Communication and is a contributor to Uversity. She is a member of the PMBA Board of Directors, co-chairs the Marketing PTMMG groups and is a former co-chair for the Human Resources PTMMG group. She has dual master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and English.

Angie Rosas
Chief of Staff
Wisconsin Public Media

Shawn Richardson
Director, Business & Administration, Innovation and System Strategies
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Shawn currently serves as Director, Business & Administration in the Innovation and System Strategies department at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). He oversees the department’s strategic initiatives, special projects and budget across the system strategies and digital innovation teams. For nine years, Shawn has worked at CPB in various capacities.  In his previous role as Project Manager, Shawn developed and oversaw project operations and grant programs aimed to strengthen the system in support of public media. Shawn holds a Master’s in Public Communications from American University and a Bachelor’s in Public Relations from Hampton University.

Fred Schulze
HR Manager
Wisconsin Public Media

Fred Schulze is a Human Resources Manager with 10 years of experience, including 1 year at Wisconsin Public Media. Fred has expertise in compensation and workplace investigations, with skills in developing and implementing compensation strategies, conducting workplace investigations, and resolving employee relations issues.

Laurie  Silva
Chief People Officer
CDP

Laurie Silva is the Chief People Officer at CDP, focusing on shaping innovative talent strategies to deliver business impact. In partnership with CDP leadership, Laurie implements strategic recruiting, retention, development, and DE&I initiatives to foster an innovative and inclusive culture. Laurie has over 15 years of Strategic HR experience across the Digital Marketing, Business Transformation, and Insurance industries. She has extensive experience with HR process optimization, change management, recruiting, and building strong, diverse, and resilient team cultures in a remote environment. Laurie has a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Trinity in CT and a Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Springfield College in MA.

Beth Walsh
VP System Strategies
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

As Vice President, System Strategies, Beth oversees the management of system-wide technology and strategic planning initiatives focused on the future of public media and preservation of local service, including TV and Radio Interconnection, the Next Generation Warning System grant program from FEMA, collaboration grants, and station data. Prior to CPB, Beth was the Director of Client Insights at the cross-platform measurement and analytics company, Comscore, providing digital insights to clients in the wireless, cable TV, and technology space. Beth has a long career in public media, beginning at WGBH-Boston managing the TV Viewing Lab, and later, serving as Senior Director of Research at PBS where she implemented many firsts for PBS – the Public Trust survey, the full-time national Nielsen service, the online Viewer Panel, and the cross-platform measurement service combining TV and digital audience metrics. Beth holds an M.S. in Broadcast Administration from Boston University.

Susannah Winslow
Sr. Directory Innovation & Partner Services
CDP

Susannah Winslow is a mission-driven non-profit leader with over 15 years of experience in public media. She believes in continuous improvement and empowering innovation to inspire teams and achieve success. Before joining CDP, Susannah served as Vice President of Communications and Development at Austin PBS. Having held a number of positions in fundraising at the station before assuming this role, she led Austin PBS’s fundraising and marketing efforts through a period of significant growth and transformation through her commitment to testing innovative fundraising ideas while maintaining the strength of traditional direct marketing campaigns and proven philanthropic best practices. Susannah’s passion for public media and its mission to educate, inform and inspire local communities has fueled her professional desire to help create a sustainable future for all stations across the country. To that end, she has served on several PBS leadership councils, including the Development Advisory Council (DAC), the Digital Media Advisory Council (DMAC) and as co-chair of the Passport Station User Group (SUG). Susannah is a graduate of Southern Methodist University and resides in Austin, TX with her husband and son.