Advisory Board
NECIR’s advisory board is made up of a diverse group of community and business leaders, media experts, prominent national and local journalists and Boston University College of Communication professors. The board provides NECIR staff with advice in several areas including: strategic planning, sustainability, management, partner relationships, identifying community needs and fundraising.
Board members include:
Martin (Marty) Baron has been editor of The Boston Globe since July 30, 2001. He previously held top editing positions at The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Miami Herald. Since his appointment, the Globe has won four Pulitzer prizes, including those for public service, explanatory journalism, national reporting and criticism. The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded in 2003 for a Globe Spotlight Team investigation into clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Baron previously was executive editor of The Miami Herald. Under his leadership, the newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage in 2001 for its coverage of the raid to recover Elián González, the Cuban boy at the center of a fierce immigration and custody dispute. Baron was named “Editor of the Year” by Editor & Publisher Magazine in April of 2001, and he was selected by the National Press Foundation as “Editor of the Year” in 2004.
Baron began his journalism career at The Miami Herald in 1976, serving as a state reporter and later as a business writer. He moved to The Los Angeles Times in 1979. He became business editor in 1983; assistant managing editor for page-one special reports, public opinion polling, and special projects in 1991; and in 1993 editor of the newspaper’s largest regional edition, in Orange County, which then had about 165 staffers. Baron moved to The New York Times in 1996 and in 1997 became associate managing editor responsible for its nighttime news operations. He departed to assume the post of executive editor at The Miami Herald at the start of 2000. Baron was born in 1954 and raised in Tampa, Fla., and speaks fluent Spanish. He graduated from Lehigh University in 1976 with both BA and MBA degrees.
Jim Barron, CEO, Barron Associates Worldwide, a communications strategies firm. Attorney, journalist, consultant, educator, and organization president, Jim has twenty-five years in business and public affairs, government, marketing and international collaboration. He is founder of the award-winning International Boston Initiative and Atlantic Rim Network, which have brought together business leaders, policy makers, and non-governmental groups for international programs in trade, tourism, transportation, environment, education, new technologies and health care. As lawyer and business consultant, Jim has represented clients on six continents, taught opinion research issues at MIT and Harvard and directed the Massachusetts Privacy Commission.
John Carlson is a Portfolio Manager and the Emerging Market Group Leader at Fidelity Investments. Mr. Carlson joined Fidelity in 1995 as a portfolio manager of Fidelity New Markets Income, Fidelity Advisor Emerging Markets Income, and Fidelity Advisor Strategic Income funds. In addition, he managed Fidelity Emerging Markets Bond Fund from July 1995 to September 1999. The Fund’s investment objective was changed and it was renamed Fidelity American High Yield Fund. Mr. Carlson assumed portfolio management responsibilities for Fidelity Strategic Income and Fidelity International Bond funds in 1998 and Fidelity Emerging Markets Fund in May 2001. Prior to joining the company in 1995, he was Executive Director of Emerging Markets with Lehman Brothers International. John is the Chairman of World Boston, an organization that facilitates international exchange and educates the public about foreign policy and international affairs.
Lisa Chedekel is an award-winning investigative reporter with more than 20 years experience writing for Connecticut newspapers. A former staff writer for The Hartford Courant, she has won a number of national awards, including a 1999 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news which she shared with a team of reporters. As a member of The Courant’s investigative team, she co-authored a series of stories in 2006 on soldiers’ mental health that led to sweeping reforms in the military’s system of screening and treating troops. The series was a finalist for the Pulitzer in investigative reporting in 2007 and won a George Polk Award, the Worth Bingham Prize and the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting. Chedekel’s other reporting projects included a series exposing deep flaws in the system of oversight for nursing homes, which led to calls for state and national reforms. She previously covered the state Capitol, education and immigration for The Courant, and was a reporter and columnist for the New Haven Register. She is now a writer at the BU School of Public Health.
Eduardo de Oliveira of Nashua, N.H., is the New England Ethnic Newswire’s first health reporting fellow. He has been a columnist for the Nashua Telegraph and is a former editor of the Brazilian Journal. He already has begun to report, write and develop sources for his new beat.
Tony Friscia founded AMR Research in 1986 and served as CEO until January of 2010, when the company was acquired by Gartner, Inc. Under his leadership, AMR Research grew to over 200 employees and became the leading firm providing research and advice to operations and IT executives on global supply chain and enterprise technology strategies. AMR Research’s clients include Global 500 manufacturing, retail, consumer goods, and life sciences companies, as well as technology suppliers and service providers.
Tony led AMR into many new research areas during his tenure. In the last few years, he focused on engaging AMR Research’s expertise in efforts to address global challenges, like identifying best practices in extending the global supply chain into emerging economies. He also led a research effort on environmental sustainability in the global supply chain.
Tony is often a featured speaker at industry conferences, has been widely published, is frequently quoted by the leading business press and has appeared on CNN and CNBC for his opinions on technology and business trends. He is a member of the Vassar College Board of Trustees and served as Chairman of The 21st Century Fund, which sponsors innovation in public high school education.
Tony is a graduate of Vassar College.
Donna Gittens is a visionary leader and an authority on cause-related marketing, Donna has built an exceptional advertising/social marketing agency, causemedia, inc. Dedicated to serving socially conscious corporations and non-profits, the agency is partner to some of the area’s most savvy industry leaders including the Boston Red Sox, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Mt. Washington Bank, AIDS Action of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Ms. Gittens is a senior associate at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship dedicated to helping global corporations define, plan and implement their corporate social responsibility efforts.
Prior to launching causemedia in 1997, Donna had a twenty-year career as a corporate executive at WCVB-TV and won numerous awards, including a Gabriel, an Emmy Award and the National Education Association Award.A Boston native and resident, Ms. Latson Gittens lends her talents and time serving many noteworthy organizations including the Boston Public Library Foundation, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s Women’s Network Advisory Committee, the Freedom Trail Foundation among others. She is a frequent speaker and panelist on issues of corporate social responsibility, entrepreneurship, and leadership.
She recently received the 1st Annual Jackie Robinson Award for Most Valuable Diverse Business Partner from the Boston Red Sox and Major League Baseball. She is the recipient of the Chamber’s 2005 Pinnacle Award for Entrepreneurship and was presented the Rebecca Lee Award from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Ms. Latson Gittens holds a BA from Park University and an MBA from Northeastern University and an honorary degree from Elms College in Chicopee, MA.
Brant Houston is the Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches and works on special projects for working journalists. For the previous 11 years, he was the head of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting, and also was a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He is co-founder of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and also serves on the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Brant has conducted more than 250 professional workshops and lectures on investigative and computer-assisted reporting for journalists around the world. He is the author of “Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide,” and co-author of “The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook.” Brant worked as an award-winning investigative reporter for 17 years at newspapers in Hartford, Kansas City, and the Boston area.
Ellen Hume supervises the NEWz project, which she created in 2006 with ethnic media leaders from Greater Boston. A former executive director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, she has taught at UMass Boston, where she founded the Center on Media and Society in 2004 as part of the McCormack Graduate School. Ellen is currently research director of the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT. She has more than 30 years of journalism and teaching experience that includes working as a White House and political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Santa Barbara News Press and Somerville (MA.) Journal, and various radio stations, television networks and magazines.
Georgia M. Johnson is a partner in the small management consulting firm, Johnson & Lawrence, Inc. Her firm analyzes and develops operational administrative processes, organizations, and systems, assessing the different, sometimes conflicting, business needs and work flows in order to develop a consensus approach to resolving operational issues. The results can include documented, standardized policies and procedures, automated systems development or enhancements, training, reorganizations, and management reporting or other mechanisms for ongoing communication.
Prior to forming Johnson & Lawrence, Johnson led the department responsible for the development of all operational and administrative policies and procedures for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as it grew from a $30 million to $5 billion organization. Johnson worked as a project manager in the management consulting practice of Price Waterhouse Coopers before joining HHMI and received her BA in history from Wellesley College and MBA in finance from the University of Chicago.
In addition to her professional experience, Johnson has served on a variety of boards, including the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance, the Brookline Community Mental Health Center, the Brookline High School 21st Century Fund, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Mental Health Association of Montgomery County, and the Corporate Partnership for Managerial Excellence for Montgomery County Schools.
Bill Ketter is a veteran journalist, news executive and journalism educator. He has served as editor-in-chief and vice president/news of the Lawrence, Mass., Eagle-Tribune, which won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news in 2003; vice president and foundation president of the Boston Globe; vice president and editor of The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass., and chairman of the Boston University Journalism Department. He was also a reporter, editor and vice president with United Press International for 16 years. He has served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University, and a national director of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Ketter was the first chairman of the international editors forum sponsored by the World Newspaper Association in Vienna, Austria, in 1994 and has traveled to more than 25 countries on behalf of a free press. He was a co-founder of the Massachusetts Judiciary-Media Committee, and serves as chairman of the New England Academy of Journalists, the organization that annually awards the “Yankee Quill” award to individuals who have made an extraordinary contribution to New England journalism. Ketter received the award in 1987. He was appointed vice president of news for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., which owns and operates 90 dailies and 50 nondailies in 26 states, in the fall of 2006 after it purchased the Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co.
Paul La Camera was appointed General Manager of The WBUR Group in October, 2005. The principal outlets of The WBUR Group, licensed to Boston University, include WBUR-FM, Boston; WBUR-AM, West Yarmouth; and wbur.org. Previously La Camera served for more than 33 years at WCVB-TV, Boston’s ABC affiliate, including almost 12 years as President and General Manager. Prior to joining WCVB, Paul La Camera was Director of Communications for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and worked as a reporter for the Boston Record American and Sunday Advertiser. La Camera served on the White House Advisory Committee (Gore Commission) on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. He has testified on local television issues before both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the U.S. House Telecommunications Subcommittee. La Camera is a board member of the Boston Foundation, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. He is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, where he serves as a trustee. He has three master’s degrees: in Journalism and Urban Studies from Boston University, and in Business Administration (MBA) from Boston College. La Camera has received honorary doctorate degrees from both the University of Massachusetts and Boston’s Emmanuel College.
Dick Lehr, Professor of Journalism at Boston University, is a veteran journalist and author who worked at The Boston Globe for nearly two decades, where he was primarily an investigative reporter but also served as a magazine, legal affairs and feature writer. He has won numerous national and regional journalism awards, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting. Lehr, an attorney, is co-author of Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders; Black Mass: The Irish Mob, The FBI and a Devil’s Deal, and The Underboss: the Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family. His new book, The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide, due out in the spring, is a study of the blue wall of silence and police brutality in Boston.
Charles Lewis is a professor and founding executive editor of the new Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C. A national investigative journalist for nearly 30 years, Lewis is a bestselling author who has founded or co-founded three nonprofit organizations in Washington including the Center for Public Integrity. Lewis left a successful career as a producer for the CBS News program 60 Minutes and began the Center, which under his leadership published roughly 300 investigative reports, including 14 books, from 1989-2004.
David B. Musket has been following developments in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries for over 25 years. From May 1984 to May 1989, Musket was an Associate Analyst and then Vice President in the Equities Research Division of Goldman Sachs & Co. sharing responsibility for research and investment banking coverage of the pharmaceutical industry. While Musket was at Goldman, this team was consistently ranked among the top in the industry polls conducted by Institutional Investor and the Greenwich Survey. In 1991 he founded Musket Research Associates, a venture banking firm focused exclusively on financing and investing in emerging healthcare companies. In 1996 he co-founded ProMed Partners, a healthcare-focused investment fund. He is still actively involved with both of these entities.
Musket’s scientific training included over four years in a doctoral program in Pharmacology and Neurobiology at Cornell University Medical College before he joined Goldman Sachs & Co. His undergraduate education was completed at Boston College (Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude). He has served on the Boards of several private and public companies and is currently on the board of TherOx, Inc. Since 2002 Musket has also served as a member of the Advisory Council of the Harvard/MIT Health Sciences and Technology program as well as its Biomedical Enterprise Program.
George Pillsbury is founder and development director for the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network and was co-founder of MassVote. George has been a long-time advocate for campaign finance reform and openness in government. He also has extensive experience in fundraising. Over the years, NECIR’s director has partnered extensively with George on various investigative reports focused on money and politics.
Elizabeth (Liz) Shannon is Director of The International Visitors Program and The Trustee Scholars Program at Boston University. An author and journalist for most of her life, she has reported for The Washington Star, The Boston Globe, Commonweal, The Washingtonian, Boston Magazine, The National Observer, The Irish Times, Irish Independent, The San Antonio Light and Radio Free Europe. She is the author of three books including “Up In The Park: The Diary of the Wife of the American Ambassador to Ireland,” “I Am Of Ireland: Women of the North Speak Out,” and “Bloodlines,” co-authored with William Rademaekers. Liz has lectured at the Women’s National Press Club, The Smithsonian Institute and at several colleges in the Boston area. She has taught expository writing at the Harvard University Extension School. She is a past or current member of several boards including the Mugar Library board at Boston University, The Exiles Theatre Company in Ireland and WorldBoston. Liz was married to the late William Shannon, a member of The New York Times editorial board and a Washington correspondent and columnist for the New York Post, who also served as ambassador to Ireland under President Jimmy Carter. She resides in the Boston area with her husband, Dr. Stephen Freidberg, a neurosurgeon at the Lahey Clinic.
Charles Terry is a 30 year veteran of online information, e-content and real-time news businesses including 14 years with CompuServe, 9 years as CEO of COMTEX News Network and most recently president of MarketResearch.com. Throughout his career, Terry has been in a missionary role chartered to create new markets with innovative information and network-based products. At CompuServe, Terry, was on the forefront of B2B go-to-market initiatives for new products including database software, financial information databases, electronic mail, videotext and other network-based applications. At CompuServe, Terry served as a divisional VP, sales manager, product manager and software engineer.
As CEO of COMTEX News Network, Terry created the largest re-seller network of real-time news. Terry partnered with over 75 world-wide news services including The AP, Knight-Ridder, Agence France, Itar-Tass and Africa News Service. These services were then distributed through the distribution network of 800+ services including Factiva, NewsEdge, BigCharts.com, MarketWatch, ILX and Bloomberg. Currently, Terry is leveraging his missionary go-to-market experience through his CEO advisory consultancy, CWT Group.
Lisa Williams is the founder and CEO of Placeblogger.com, the largest searchable index of local weblogs. Placeblogger.com was a winner of the Knight 21st Century News Challenge Award, a program aimed at funding innovative, open-source tech projects that promote new forms of journalism and access to civic information. In 2008, she participated in TechStars as one of only ten teams out of four hundred to be selected for seed funding and intensive mentoring as part of TechStars’ annual start-up incubator program. Before Placeblogger, Williams started H2Otown.info, a nationally recognized example of a citizen journalism community site covering and talking about Watertown, MA, where she lives and works. She has also worked with boston.com on online community, social networking and blogging. Before that, she was director of the Enterprise Software research group at Yankee Group, a Boston area technology analyst firm.
John Wilpers is the founder and president of John Wilpers Media Consulting which specializes in blending traditional and new media to increase an information organization’s reach, relevance, and revenue. John vets and delivers the highest quality local or global bloggers writing about specific geographic or thematic subjects to enhance the breadth and depth of content made available to a publication’s readers. John’s clients have included the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, GlobalPost.com, The Miami Herald, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and BostonNOW. John was also the founding editor of multiple city sites in AOL’s Digital City network. Beyond the web, John has launched more free dailies than any U.S. editor, served as editor-in-chief of an international newspaper group, and been an editor at multiple daily newspapers, including the Boston Globe and Boston Herald. Outside of publishing, John is the founder of a self-esteem building soccer program that has graduated 4,000 girls since 1996 (hotshotssoccer.org). He is also a long-board surfer, and has performed as “Mother Ginger” in a Boston production of “The Nutcracker” for the last 15 years. He, his wife of 35 years, and his two daughters live in Marshfield, MA.
Mitch Zuckoff, is a former special projects reporter at The Boston Globe who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting. He received the Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Livingston Award for International Reporting, the Heywood Broun Award, and the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award, among others. He is the author of Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend, a New York Times Editors’ Choice book; and Choosing Naia: A Family’s Journey, which received the Christopher Award and was named a Massachusetts Honor Book; and co-author of Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders, which was a finalist for the Edgar Award. His next book is an oral biography of director Robert Altman, scheduled for publication in the fall of 2009.
