Annenberg Alumni News, Spring 2017

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1960-1969

Lewis R. Elin (M.A.C. ’61) currently volunteers with Chicago Voyagers to provide urban youth with the opportunity to explore nature.

Margot F. Horwitz (M.A.C. ’62) recently published her fourth book, From Kimchi to Pizza: My Little Brothers’ Adoption Story (Book Architecture).

Ahmad Mesbah (M.A.C. ’64) and his wife Ziba still run their multi-lingual translation agency, General Documentation Resources. Their grandson will graduate from Penn next month.

Alan Levin (M.A.C. ’65) received Penn’s Alumni Award of Merit in 2016 and was honored at a gala on campus last October.

Don Skerrett (M.A.C. ’65) recently launched NanoPhagix, a new company that is developing a unique therapeutic system for physicians to better treat patients with cardiovascular diseases.

Kas Kalba (M.A.C. ’67) is an international consultant, and his company, Kalba International, Inc., has completed projects in more than 75 countries on six continents.

1970-1979

For the past few years, Peter Flemington (M.A.C. ’71) has been working with York University in Toronto on advanced media work.

Since retiring in 2010, Jack Narvel (M.A.C. ’71) and his wife Jan have worked with several nonprofits including Transitional Youth in Portland, O.R., Youth With A Mission in Newcastle, Australia and Myrtle Beach, S.C., and most recently, Journey Church in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Geoffrey Haines-Stiles (M.A.C. ’72) is the writer and producer of The Crowd & The Cloud, a documentary series on citizen science. Episodes air on PBS and are also available online.

John Carey (M.A.C. ’71, Ph.D. ’76) serves on the board of The Media Majlis, a museum in Qatar dedicated to media in the Middle East.

Maria Rychlicki (M.A.C. ’78) recently retired from a career in local government and is currently participating in the development of a new social media app, IXTopia.

John M. VanDeusen (M.A.C. ’78) recently retired from his role as Global Director for Talent and Organization Development at Bose Corporation and is now developing a consulting practice.

Martin Nisenholtz (M.A.C. ’79) has been appointed Professor of the Practice of Digital Communication at Boston University.

1980-1989

Stewart M. Hoover (M.A.C. ’81, Ph.D. ’85), Professor of Media Studies and Religious Studies and Director of the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture at the University of Colorado Boulder, was a visiting scholar with the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the Annenberg School in the fall 2016 semester. In addition, Hoover serves on the Alumni Advisory Board at the Annenberg School.

After 30+ years in motion picture marketing and publicity, Blaise J. Noto (M.A.C. ’85) is now an assistant professor of Communication at Barton College.

Roy Head (M.A.C. ’89) is CEO of Development Media International.

1990-1999

Warren Bareiss (M.A.C. ’90), Associate Professor of Communication at the University of South Carolina Upstate, won a Disability Services Advocacy Award for his research and teaching.

Lisa Henderson (M.A.C. ’83, Ph.D. ’90), Professor of Communication and Faculty in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School this semester with the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication.

David Perlmutter (M.A.C. ’91) was recently elected Vice President of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Nikhil Sinha (M.A.C. ’89, Ph.D. ’91) was appointed Chief Business Office and Senior Adviser for Coursera, Inc.

Karin Gwinn Wilkins (M.A.C. ’87, Ph.D. ’91), Associate Dean for Faculty Advancement and Strategic Initiatives for the Moody College of Communication and Professor of Media Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, was a visiting scholar with the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the Annenberg School in the fall 2016 semester.

Amy Sarch (M.A.C. ’90, Ph.D. ’94) was recently promoted to Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Shenandoah University.

Adam Mackler (M.A.C. ’95) was promoted to Senior Vice President of Engineering at Hearts & Wallets, LLC of Rye, New York.

In February, Caty Borum-Chattoo (M.A.C. ’98), a professor of Public Communication at American University, gave a lecture at the Annenberg School entitled “The Role of Documentary and Entertainment Storytelling for Social Change: Intersecting Contemporary Practice and Scholarship.”

2000-2009

Isabel Molina-Guzmán (Ph.D. ’00), associate professor in Latina/Latino Studies and Media & Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School this semester with the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication. She also wrote a chapter entitled “#OscarsSoWhite: How Stuart Hall Explains Why Nothing Changes in Hollywood and Everything is Changing” in the forthcoming collection Stuart Hall Lives: Cultural Studies in an Age of Digital Media (Routledge).

Vanda Krefft’s (M.A.C. ’01) new book, The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox (Harper), will be published in November.

Brad Linder (M.A.C. ’01) and his wife Farrah Parkes are producing a podcast, The Loving Project, that features stories of interracial married couples.

Ron Nirenberg (M.A.C. ’01), currently a San Antonio councilman, is running for mayor of San Antonio.

Alex Slater (M.A.C. ’03) founded his own communications and public affairs firm, Clyde Group, which was shortlisted for Boutique of the Year in 2017. Slater was also recognized by PR Week as a 40 Under 40 practitioner.

David Dutwin (Ph.D. ’02), Executive Vice President and Chief Methodologist at SSRS, was elected Vice President/President Elect of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. His term will begin at the upcoming AAPOR conference in New Orleans.

David Gudelunas (M.A.C. ’01, Ph.D. ’04) has been named Professor of Communication and Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Tampa, to begin on June 1. Gundelunas is also the co-editor of a new book RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Shifting Visibility of Drag Culture (Palgrave Macmillan).

Eran Ben-Porath (Ph.D. ’08) was recently promoted to Executive Vice President of SSRS.

Ken Farrall (Ph.D. ’09), Project Manager at MTM LinguaSoft, gave a presentation entitled “Encoding Nightmares” at the Philadelphia Software Localization meetup in March.

2010-2016

Adrienne Shaw (Ph.D. ’10), Assistant Professor of Media and Communication at Temple University, is the co-editor of a new book Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press). Shaw is also the co-editor of a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication, which will be released as an anthology Queer Technologies: Affordances, Affect, Ambivalence this spring.

Dan Berger (Ph.D. ’10), who teaches comparative ethnic studies at the University of Washington Bothell, joined the blogging team at Black Perspectives in March 2017.

In April, Jessica Taylor Piotrowski (M.A.C. ’06, Ph.D. ’10), Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Amsterdam, gave a book talk at the Penn Bookstore for her recently published book, Plugged In: How Media Attract and Affect Youth (Yale University Press).

In January, C. Riley Snorton (Ph.D. ’10), an Assistant Professor at Cornell University, gave the 2017 George Gerbner Lecture in Communication at the Annenberg School, entitled “The Color of Sex: Race and the Visual Culture of American Gynecology.”

Joel Penney’s (Ph.D. ’11) new book, The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age (Oxford University Press), will be released in June. Penney is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at Montclair State University.

Christopher Ali (Ph.D. ’13), Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, is a Fellow with the Center for Advanced Research on Global Communication at the Annenberg School this semester. He recently published a new book, Media Localism: The Policies of Place (University of Illinois Press).

Nora Draper (Ph.D. ’14) received the Roland H. O’Neal Professorship from the University of New Hampshire. Her three-year term will begin in July.

Sandra Ristovska (Ph.D. ’15) is a 2016-2018 George Gerbner Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School and a Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. She is the recipient of the NCA’s Outstanding Dissertation of 2016 in Visual Communication award.

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