Board of Directors 2010

Karen Kring - President*
Karen is an independent photojournalist, photo editor and online content producer. She is a partner in Kring Lerner Group, an agency specializing in photography, journalism and other media projects. Previous positions include Asst. Director of Media Relations for Illinois Institute of Technology and New Media Manager at the Community Media Workshop. She co-founded PICTURE THIS Projects, a philanthropic group of photographers, journalists and community members creating and supporting photo projects that encourage creative expression, self-esteem and bridging the gap between people of different backgrounds. One of her interests is improving the connections between word-journalists and photojournalists for the purpose of richer stories and better working relationships. She's worked for the Chicago Tribune, STNG newspapers, Catalyst, the AP, Rockford Register Star and other news outlets and publishers. She lives in Skokie with her husband photojournalist Joel Lerner. Karen can be reached at karen@kringlernergroup.com and 847-869-3344.

Suzanne Hanney - Vice President for Print
Suzanne is editor of StreetWise. Suzanne's first job after graduating from Northwestern University's journalism school was editing a weekly newspaper in Marseilles, Ill. She bought the paper to keep it going, published it briefly and sold it to a shopper, for whom she continued to serve as editor. Her next move was Dixon, Ill., where she began as lifestyle editor of the daily Dixon Evening Telegraph. As "Reagan editor," she interviewed the president's grade school and high school friends, covered the president's first inauguration and compiled a 92-page special edition that won a first place from the National Federation of Press Women. National and international media also consulted her regarding the significance of the president's roots. She later served as Ogle County beat reporter, assistant news editor and editor of the Valley Sun, a new weekly paper the company started in a neighboring city. After working a year as a copy editor at the daily Quad-City Times, she returned to Chicago, where she has written for The American Banker and United Press International. She is president of the Illinois Woman's Press Association. Suzanne can be reached at suzannestreetwise@yahoo.com or at StreetWise offices at 312.829.2526. Her cell phone is 312.823.4697.

Cheryl Corley - Vice President for Broadcast*
Cheryl is a reporter for National Public Radio and works out of the downtown Chicago Bureau located in the city's Loop. As a general assignment reporter, she travels throughout the Midwest--from Ohio to South Dakota-- covering trials, politics and other issues.  Housing is a particular focus of her beat and Cheryl has reported on the ups and downs of the housing market, on efforts to revamp public housing and she's produced a number of housing features. One report about extraordinarily tiny homes on wheels--some as small as 70 square feet--was one of NPR's top emailed stories. Cheryl is among the group of NPR reporters who covered Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as they tore through the Gulf Coast and she continues to report on the rebuilding process in New Orleans and surrounding neighborhoods. In addition to reporting, Cheryl also serves as a fill-in host for a number of NPR shows including Morning Edition, Weekend All Things Considered and two of NPR's newest shows---Tell Me More and News and Notes. Prior to joining NPR in late 1995, Cheryl was the news director at Chicago's public radio station, WBEZ, where she supervised an award-winning team of reporters. She also has been a frequent panelist on television news-affairs programs in Chicago. Cheryl has received awards for her work from a number of organizations including the Associated Press, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Public Radio News Directors Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists. She also has received the Studs Terkel Award for excellence in reporting on Chicago's diverse communities and a Herman Kogan Award for reporting on immigration issues. A Chicago native, Cheryl graduated cum laude from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Arts degree and is now a Bradley University trustee. While in Peoria, she worked as a reporter and news director for public radio station WCBU and as a television director for the NBC affiliate, WEEK-TV. Cheryl can be
reached at ccorley@npr.org or 312-948-4779 (w).

Maura Wall Hernandez - Vice President for New Media/Technology
Maura is an independent journalist and photographer, and teaches journalism as an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago. Her work has appeared in a number of publications and on the web, including Advertising Age, Crain's Chicago Business, the Chicago Tribune's RedEye, Café Magazine, Hispanic Tips and others. In 2005, as managing editor, Maura helped launch Columbia College's Reservoir Online Magazine, which won a 2006 gold medal for top internal audience publication from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Higher Education. In 2009, Maura co-founded TweetCamp Chicago, an educational open-spaces style conference on the professional uses for Twitter, and Give Back Chicago, a professional skill-based volunteering program benefiting local nonprofits. Maura chairs AWJ's web/communications committee and serves on the program committee. She is also a member of the Society for News Design. She holds a B.A. in English from Miami University and an M.A. in Public Affairs Journalism from Columbia College Chicago. Maura lives in Chicago with her husband, José. She authors The Other Side of The Tortilla, a blog about traditional Mexican cooking and culture, and you can find her tweeting about journalism, photography, cooking and more @MauraHernandez.

Suzanne Cosgrove - Treasurer
Suzanne was the Sunday real estate editor for the Chicago Tribune until April 2009, a post she assumed in July 2007. She was also a back-up editor of the Tribune’s online daily business page and daily e-mail service, BizWrap. She joined the Tribune in August 2000 as a business copy editor/assistant financial editor, and later was the assistant editor for the Tribune’s Sunday personal finance section, Your Money. Previously, she worked as a wire service reporter for Knight-Ridder Financial News for more than a dozen years, where she covered the Chicago financial markets, banking and regional economics. From there, she opened the Chicago bureau for Market News International, and served as their bureau chief for several years before moving to the Tribune.  She finds her experience as a wire service reporter has been very relevant to today’s Web news reporting and posting initiatives and strives to keep current with the challenges of New Media. For Web historians, it is worth noting that she was one of the early editors of Keycom, a Chicago Sun-Times-owned 24-hour teletext news operation broadcast on cable television in the 1980s – which is considered an early forerunner of online newspapers. Suzanne also has taught journalism at several colleges locally: first at Mundelein/Loyola, then at Columbia College, and more recently as an adjunct professor in the Medill School of Journalism’s undergraduate program at Northwestern University. She is a Medill alumna, having received her MSJ from the school in 1981. Her undergraduate degree is from Mundelein/Loyola, Chicago. A Chicago native, she lives in Evanston with husband, Tom, a special-education teacher, and her children, Christopher and Kevin, who are college students. Her oldest son, Brendan, is a crisis therapist with the social-service agency Pillars. Suzanne can be reached at  sriordancosgrove@gmail.com.

Amy Bernstein - Co-Secretary
Amy Bernstein is a senior editor at a healthcare custom publishing company, functioning as editor-in-chief of a number of consumer health publications. She also pursues freelance travel/arts/lifestyle writing. Prior to her move to healthcare, she was editor-in-chief and features editor for regional travel and lifestyle magazines covering the Southwest and Southeast. Amy chairs AWJ's program committee and also volunteers as a mentor in the Young Critics Circle program. Amy can be reached at amywb50@hotmail.com.






Tina Sfondeles - Co-Secretary
Tina is a full-time reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times Media Wire, but her work also appears in print for the Sun-Times. She is a former newswriter at WBBM-AM, where she brushed up on her breaking news skills in preparation for the work she's now doing at the Sun-Times. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, David Sedaris-style, about her family and fairly ethnic upbringing. She got sucked into journalism in the sixth grade and continued that passion into college, where she was the features editor of her college paper. She holds a B.A. in Communication and International Studies from Loyola University Chicago and an M.A. in Public Affairs Journalism from Columbia College Chicago. She is also an avid Twitter and social media fan and has way too much knowledge of which Chicago Police District to call when bad things happen. Not only does she work closely with Amy Bernstein as co-secretary, but Tina also serves as the program committee vice-chair.

Adriene Hill - Member-at-Large*
As WBEZ's business reporter, Adriene is responsible for the station's business and economic coverage. Adriene joined Chicago Public Radio in July 2003 as an intern, later becoming a producer and associate editor for Eight Forty-Eight, Chicago Public Radio's weekday morning newsmagazine.  From 2006-2009 she worked as the senior news and business desk editor.  In that position, Adriene managed the production and editing of content for daily newscasts on Chicago Public Radio. Prior to joining Chicago Public Radio, Adriene worked at the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles and as a research assistant for the American Bar Foundation. Adriene has an M.A. in Political Science from Northwestern University and a B.A. in Political
Science and Economics from Amherst College. Originally from Burnsville, North Carolina, Adriene resides in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago with her husband, Michael. Adriene can be reached at 312-948-4706 and ahill@chicagopublicradio.org.

Kim Mance - Member-at-Large
Kim is a travel writer, editor and new media broadcast personality based in Chicago. Kim hosts the lively web travel series Galavanting, is editor-in-chief of the online women's travel magazine, GoGalavanting.com, and writes about travel for outlets like Marie Claire's Travel Diaries, Indie Travel Podcast magazine and the Huffington Post. She is currently writing the first Insiders' Guide to Chicago for Globe Pequot Press. Her writing has also been featured in other places including AlterNet, Babble and the Women's Policy Journal of Harvard. She has appeared as a panelist on PBS' The McLaughlin Group and is founder of TBEX, a worldwide community of travel bloggers, journalists, writers and travel professionals who meet annually. Kim serves on the AWJ-TV steering committee.


Ruhan Memishi - Member-at-Large
Ruhan is a journalist with more than 20 years of experience as a reporter and editor. Ruhan is associate director of university communications at DePaul University, where she writes and edits alumni publications for six different colleges within DePaul. She started her career here in Chicago, working as a staff reporter for the Daily Southtown for several years after graduating from Illinois Wesleyan University with a B.A. in English. Ruhan moved to Washington, D.C., in 1990 to accept a position with Business Publishers where she reported on environmental issues and later became managing editor of all of the company's environmental publications. In 1995, she moved to Akron, Ohio, to become managing editor of Waste News, Crain Communications' newest publication at the time. After covering environmental issues for more than a decade, Ruhan decided to move back home to Chicago and started reporting on the then-booming e-commerce field–first as managing editor of Electronic Commerce World magazine and then as senior editor for Internet World, a 250,000-circulation semi-monthly magazine published by Penton Media. When she's not writing, reading or tweeting, she's probably knitting. She also enjoys blogging, photography and travel. Ruhan serves on AWJ's website/communications and membership outreach committees.

Dawn Raftery - Member-at-Large
Dawn is a freelance editor, writer and blogger. She previously worked for a division of the Sun-Times News Group as Group Editor in the Hinsdale office, where she directed coverage for multiple print and web publications, launched a Twitter outreach campaign with reporters, let the Editorial Board, supervised up to 13 newsroom employees and wrote a shopping/fashion blog. Her first job after college was as a reporter and page designer for Press-Republican Newspapers, a small chain of weekly newspapers in the West Chicago/St. Charles area. During her career, Dawn has received many first-place awards on a regional, state and national level for a variety of initiatives, including editorials, reviews, features and in-depth news packages. With professional development as a priority, she has attended a number of conferences and training programs, such as the International Women's Media Foundation's Leadership Institute for Women Managers in 2007 and the National Conference of Editorial Writers in 2004. Dawn graduated with a bachelor's degree in English and a minor in Women's Studies from Northern Illinois University. She belongs to the Asian American Journalists Associations and Chicago Women in Publishing, and she's a firm believer in the words of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: "Well-behaved women seldom make history." In her leisure time, Dawn enjoys watching her latest Netflix rental or old "Xena" episodes, writing poetry and fiction, analyzing pop culture and playing with her Blackberry. Dawn serves on AWJ's website/communications committee.

*These board members' terms continue through the end of 2010.
The other board members' terms continue through the end of 2011.
AWJ-Chicago's board members are elected to two-year terms.

------------------------------------
Program Committee

Chair: Amy Bernstein (see above)
Tina Sfondeles (see above)
Maura Wall Hernandez (see above)
Mindy Arbaugh
Randi Belisomo Hernandez - CLTV
Marla Donato (see below)
Judie Garcia, WGN-TV
Jen Halperin, Columbia College
Heather Harrigan, Loyola
Adriene Hill (see above)
Mary Ann Lopez, independent journalist
Natalie Moore (see below)
Meg Tebo (see below)

------------------------------------
Key Volunteers

Keidra Chaney
Keidra is Emerging Media Specialist at DePaul University. After a brief stint in trade magazine publishing at Midwest Real Estate News and Fire Chief magazines, she moved into independent and online media and hasn't looked back. She was an editor at award-winning Clamor, which ceased publication in 2006 and is a former columnist and editor at Chicago-based progressive publication Third Coast Press, which was reborn as web-based publication Chicago 6 Corners in 2007, Her music, film and book reviews frequently appear in ALARM Magazine and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, among other publications. She has spoken about issues of blogging, social networking, user-generated content and fan culture at MIT and University of Michigan and for Publicity Club of Chicago, Girl Scouts of Chicago and other organizations. She is the co-moderator of the AWJ listserv and the moderatior of the AWJ's Facebook group. www.thelearnedfangirl.com is but one of her online homes. When she's not writing, she's playing bass guitar. She can be reached at keidra@gmail.com.

Dr. Barbara K. Iverson
Barbara has been blogging since 1999. She teaches, writes and speaks about blogging, digital technology, and online media publication at Columbia College Chicago and around the world. In addition to AWJ, Barbara belongs to the Media Bloggers Association (MBA,) the Online News Association (ONA,) investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and is an advisor to Student Satellite Chapter of Chicago Headline Club and member of CHC and SPJ. Iverson has written for magazines and been a reporter for Ohmynews.com. Iverson's innovative use of electronic technology in teaching has been recognized by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS,) the Lilly Endowment, Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) and J-Lab & John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. She and Suzanne McBride currently have a J-Lab grant to develop an online community around citizen journalism in Chicago. Barbara returned recently from teaching at DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology) in Ireland where she was part of an academic exchange program. Before arriving in Journalism, Iverson produced the first webcast from an American museum in 1998, featuring an interactive exhibit at the MCA by Miroslaw Rogala and an interactive CD-ROM about the Tuskegee Airmen in 1994. In her formative years, Barb was a teacher for the Chicago Public Schools and subsequently elected to serve as a community member of the John Palmer LSC. She received her B.Ed. in English, M.Ed. in Evaluation Research and Program Design and Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from University of Illinois-Chicago. She can be reached at biverson@colum.edu.

Meg Tebo
Margaret Graham Tebo (“Meg”) teaches media ethics and law and other journalism courses at Columbia College Chicago. She is also a practicing attorney and freelance journalist. Until August 2007 she was a senior writer at the ABA Journal, the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association. She has written for the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Parade magazine, among other publications. She is a past president of the Chicago Headline Club and an advisor to the Columbia student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She is currently under contract for a book on understanding the legal system for journalists, which will be published by Marion Street Press. She can be reached at MegTeboEsq@gmail.com.

Rene Edde
Rene is an award-winning photojournalist currently shooting for The Doings, a weekly newspaper chain owned by the Sun-Times News Group. Rene found photojournalism when studying commercial photography at the Art Institute of Atlanta. Her desire for a more elaborate education in photojournalism led her to Columbia College Chicago where she followed a self-designed course of study that allowed her to especially concentrate on the journalism part of photojournalism. She has worked on stories when in India and Nepal and looks forward to getting back. Rene was named one of the 2006 AWJ-Chicago Scholars. She recently joined PICTURE THIS Projects to explore using the power of photography to promote social change and understanding. She is also working on finding new ways to use audio, video and the web to present strong community-focused stories. Rene can be reached at 312-844-0259 or rene@reddephotography.com.

Mary Galligan - Scholars Program
Mary is a freelance writer and editor. She also works part-time as a journalism instructor in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She is a former editorial writer for the Chicago Sun-Times and a former reporter for U.S. News & World Report magazine. Mary worked in public relations for state government and the University of Illinois. Mary is one of the founding members of AWJ-Chicago. She has a master's degree from Sangamon State University (now the University of Illinois at Springfield) in public affairs reporting. She can be reached at mgalligan@mindspring.com or at 773-929-6655 (h) or 773-213-9343 (c)






Natalie Y. Moore
Natalie is a reporter for Chicago Public Radio’s south-side bureau. Prior to joining the Chicago Public Radio staff in May 2007, Natalie was a city hall reporter for the Detroit News. She has also been an education reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a reporter for the Associated Press in Jerusalem. She is an adjunct instructor at Columbia College. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Reporter, Bitch, HOUR Detroit, Black Enterprise, npr.org and In These Times. She is a graduate of Howard University and has a master’s from Northwestern University ’s Medill School of Journalism. She is co-author of "Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation." She can
be reached at nymoore@hotmail.com.

Anitra Rowe
Anitra is a staff writer at Chicago Public Schools. She works with the local and national media to get the news of CPS out to the public. As a staff writer, Anitra also organizes press conferences, writes speeches and contributes to the CPS Web site. She previously was a reporter for The Booster, a Pioneer Press weekly newspaper that covers the Chicago neighborhoods of Wicker Park, Bucktown and Ukrainian Village. For The Booster, Anitra covered politics, crime, local schools and parks, architectural preservation, new business openings and neighborhood trends. She also worked for the Arlington Heights Post, another Pioneer Press publication. As a reporter for The Kansas City Star, Anitra received first place awards for feature and profile writing in 2004 and 2005 from Kansas City's Society of Professional Journalists chapter. Anitra is a native of Bethany, Ill., a Downstate farming community. She graduated magna cum laude from the Journalism School of the University of Missouri - Columbia in 2002, with a bachelor's degree in magazine journalism. She can be reached at anitrarowe@yahoo.com.


Past Officers and Board Members

2009
Karen Kring - President
Suzanne Hanney - Vice President for Print
Cheryl Corley - Vice President for Broadcast
Dr. Barbara K. Iverson - Vice President for New Media
Mindy Arbaugh - Treasurer
Amy Bernstein - Secretary
Suzanne Cosgrove - Member-at-Large
Keidra Chaney - Member-at-Large
Rene Edde - Member-at-Large
Natalie Y. Moore - Member-at-Large
Meg Tebo - Member-at-Large

2008
Karen Kring - President
Suzanne Hanney - Vice President for Print
Cheryl Corley - Vice President for Broadcast
Dr. Barbara K. Iverson - Vice President for New Media
Mindy Arbaugh - Treasurer
Anitra Rowe - Secretary
Suzanne Cosgrove - Member-at-Large
Sylvia Ewing/Amy Bernstein - Member-at-Large
Keidra Chaney - Member-at-Large
Dee Daniels - Member-at-Large
Rene Edde - Member-at-Large
Natalie Y. Moore - Member-at-Large
Meg Tebo - Member-at-Large

2007
Mary Galligan - President
Suzanne Hanney - Vice President for Print
Cheryl Corley - Vice President for Broadcast
Dr. Barbara K. Iverson - Vice President for New Media
Mindy Arbaugh - Co-Secretary
Anitra Rowe - Co-Secretary
Kelly Kleiman - Treasurer
Michael Deas - Member-at-Large
Sylvia Ewing - Member-at-Large
Cristi Kempf - Member-at-Large
Karen Kring - Member-at-Large
Natalie Y. Moore - Member-at-Large
Diantha Parker - Member-at-Large