Sasha Anawalt is director of USC Annenberg Arts Journalism Programs, including the Masters degree program in Specialized Journalism (The Arts). She also directs the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater and the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program. Anawalt wrote the cultural biography, The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company.

Maxwell L. Anderson has been The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art since May 2006. He began his career as a museum director in 1987, directing a total of four institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art (1998-2003). Anderson received an A.B. from Dartmouth in 1977 with highest distinction in Art History, and A.M. (1978) and Ph.D. (1981) degrees from Harvard.

Steve Buttry is C3 Innovation Coach, guiding Gazette Communications in pursuit of the Complete Community Connection, his vision for innovation at local media companies. He has spent 38 years as a reporter, editor, writing coach and executive for seven newspapers and the American Press Institute.

Jeff Chang is a writer whose first book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, garnered many honors, including the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. He was a 2008 USA Ford Fellow in Literature and a winner of the 2008 North Star News Prize. He is currently writing Who We Be: The Colorization of America.

Juan Devis is a Public Media artist and producer, whose work crosses across platforms – video, film, interactive media and gaming. Devis is currently the Director of New Media Production at KCET – PBS Los Angeles, in charge of all original online content and special projects, including; Webstories: Cultural Journalism in Southern California and the interactive documentary series and social network, Departures.

Margo Tatgenhorst Drakos , Chief Operating Officer of InstantEncore.com, has moved into business from a performance background. As the former cellist of the American String Quartet, Associate Principal of Pittsburgh Symphony, and a soloist and chamber musician, Ms. Drakos has performed throughout Asia, Europe, South America and the United States, and served on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and Aspen Music Festival.

James R. Gaines is the former chief editor of Time, Life and People magazines. He is currently the editor-in-chief of FLYP, an online multimedia magazine at www.flypmedia.com. He is also the author of three works of cultural history.

Patty Gessner is currently the Executive Producer of San Francisco Classical Voice. Her two-decade career in the arts includes more than ten years as Director of Marketing and Publications of the San Francisco Symphony. She has also served as the Senior Director of Marketing for Cardstore.com, the VP of Marketing for Match.com, and as an arts consultant.

Richard Gingras was appointed CEO of Salon.com in May 2009. Prior to joining Salon, he worked as an advisor to various technology startups and served as an advisor on media product strategy to the executive team at Google. He was founder, CEO and Chairman of Goodmail Systems and has advised various technology startups including Audiomill (merged into Real Networks, April 2002), technology incubator ChanceTechAV, web applications platform provider Laszlo Systems, custom book publisher MyPublisher, and broadband platform developer Sugar Media.

Anya Grundmann is Executive Producer of NPR Music, a multi-genre music discovery destination that won the 2009 Webby Award for Best Music Site. She also co-directs the NEA Institute for Classical Music and Opera.

Rainey Knudson is the founder and director of Glasstire. Her Houston upbringing emphasized both aesthetics, with frequent outings to the MFAH and the Menil Collection; as well as the gritty satisfaction of the wildcatter oil “bidness” (which has a lot in common with the gritty satisfaction of the wildcatter new media arts journalism bidness). If she had been a lot shorter, she would have been a jockey. As it is, she’s proud that Glasstire has not only survived, but thrived, for almost nine years.

Mark Mangan is co-founder and CEO of Flavorpill, a trusted online platform for arts and culture. Mark is also the co-author of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (Holt, 1996), a seminal book on the legalities of free speech on the Internet, and sits on the board of Housing Works Bookstore, which fights disease and homelessness through commerce and good culture.

Deborah Marrow is director of the Getty Foundation. Marrow joined the Getty in 1983 to launch a publications program that underwrote and published scholarly works on art history. Over the course of her 23 years at the Getty, she has served as director of the Getty Foundation, interim director of the Getty Research Institute, and dean for external relations of the Getty Trust.

Douglas McLennan is an arts journalist and is the founder and editor of ArtsJournal.com. He is also the acting director of the National Arts Journalism Program and a frequent speaker on issue in arts journalism and changing culture in the digital age.

Bill O’Brien is Deputy Director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Prior to his appointment, he served for seven years as producing director and managing director for Deaf West Theater (DWT) where he received a Tony and a Drama Desk nomination for producing the Broadway sign language production of Big River and received three Ovation Award nominations for his work on the production of Big River at Deaf West (as producer, sound designer and lead actor).

Geneva Overholser is director of the School of Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Previously, she held the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism, based in the school’s Washington bureau. She was editor of The Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995, leading the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She has been ombudsman of The Washington Post, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group, and a reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun.

Nihar Patel is a freelance journalist and writer based in Los Angeles. He’s reported and produced for NPR, PRI’s Marketplace, ABC News Nightline, and others. He also appears frequently on Current TV’s The Rotten Tomatoes Show, and has produced and written on pilots for network TV.

Seth Schiesel is the first staff video game critic of The New York Times. A member of the Times staff since 1996, Schiesel covered telecommunications and media business news before joining the Times culture department four years ago. A native of Woodstock, N.Y., he was previously a member of the editorial board of The Boston Globe.

Laura Sydell is an arts Correspondent with National Public Radio whose reports can be heard regularly on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Her work focuses on how new technologies are reshaping the form and the business of arts and entertainment. She has reported on topics such as the evolution of video games into a serious art form, the impact of eBooks on the act of reading, and the emergence of film technologies that can create convincing virtual actors. She is a former National Arts Journalism Fellow and a holds a JD degree from Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law in New York City.

András Szántó is a writer, researcher, and consultant whose work spans the worlds of art, media, policy, and cultural affairs. He is a member of the senior faculty of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York and Director of the NEA Arts Journalism Institute at Columbia University’s Journalism School, where he was formerly the Director of the National Arts Journalism Program.

Holly Willis is a Research Assistant Professor in the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, as well as Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, where she teaches, organizes workshops and oversees academic programs designed to introduce new media literacy skills across USC’s campus and curriculum. Willis is the editor of The New Ecology of Things, a collection of essays on pervasive computing, and the author of New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image, which chronicles the advent of digital filmmaking tools and their impact on contemporary media practices.

Ernest J. Wilson III is Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Dr. Wilson‘s experience at the intersection of communication and public policy spans the private and public sectors. He has served as a consultant to international agencies such as the World Bank and the United Nations, worked in government at the White House National Security Council and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, led research centers and academic departments at premier institutions of higher education, and held positions with media companies and other corporations.