Our current board consists of 16 members:
Marilyn Cohen, Executive Director, was one of AME’s founding members. Marilyn has been actively involved in curriculum development, training and research focused on media literacy education since the early 90s. She also currently serves as the Director of the Northwest Center for Excellence in Media Literacy, College of Education, University of Washington. Through her work with AME and the NW Center, she has taken a leadership role in organizing and implementing a number of media literacy-based initiatives designed to grow the media literacy movement, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
Laura Axon has been a School Library Media Specialist in Portland Public Schools since 2017 and the Oregon Region 4 for the Oregon Association of School Libraries. Collaboration with the Oregon Library Association has led her to the Co-Chair of the International Relations Round Table and Co-Chair of the Middle School Oregon Reader’s Choice Committee. Laura has also provided testimony for the OLA Legistaive Committee in Salem, Oregon. She is a member of the Statewide Database Licensing Advisory Committee, and the Oregon Historical Society Teacher’s Advisory Board for the Portland History Reader Third/Fourth Grade Update. She is also endorsed as a French teacher. She has completed her own personal quadfecta of climbing Mt Hood, Mt St Helens, Running the Hood to Coast and the Portland Marathon.
Molly Berger is an English language arts teacher, regional and state level ELA specialist, and a professional development facilitator. At the East Valley School District in Yakima, she integrated media literacy in her middle and high school English classes. Moving to program coordination at ESD 105 in Yakima and then as an ELA specialist at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, she worked with teachers on a variety of grants and initiatives but always connected media literacy. From her master’s project on Teaching Literary Concepts through Film to her more recent work teaching research, reading images, and reading digitally, she has knowledge of and experience with the many aspects of media literacy. She has presented at the state, regional and national level on media literacy and English Language Arts topics. She has shared an open educational resource (OER) on Connected Reading in a Media Saturated World on the Washington OER Commons and taught an online class titled Reading Digitally: Exploring What We Know and What We Can Do. Now retired, Molly is continuing her work on reading images and digital texts.
Shanna Brooks serves as the Regional Literacy Coordinator at North Central Educational Service District in Wenatchee, WA. She provides regional and customized on-site professional development including structured literacy, language development and support for paraeducator staff. She is currently supporting the review and development of the new Washington State English Language Arts (ELA) Standards which will reflect current research and integrate skills that are the foundation for Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship. Shanna obtained her Principal Credentials from WSU, a Master’s in Reading from CWU and is a Washington State certificated principal and K-8 teacher. Shanna’s experience includes teaching in high poverty, high migrant and multilingual schools.
Deborah Fournier is a National Board Certified Library Media Specialist in the Edmonds School District with 25 years of teaching experience. In addition, Deborah is an adjunct instructor in the Library Media Endorsement program at Central Washington University and she sits on the board with the University of Washington Alumni Association.
Susie Gerard is a National Board certified teacher in adolescent and young adult social studies. She has been working as an educator for Spokane Public Schools since 1984 where she is currently the Secondary Social Studies and English Language Arts Coordinator. She taught 33 years at Lewis and Clark High School, teaching AP European History, AP US History, and a variety of other classes both in the brick-and-mortar classroom at Lewis and Clark High School and in the virtual classroom for Spokane Virtual Learning.
Susie is passionate about helping every student succeed and received both the Spokane Public Schools Distinguished Teacher Award and the Spokane Public Schools Equity Award for promoting racial and cultural equity and for encouraging more students to challenge themselves in AP classes at her school. She also received the 2021 League of Women Voters Good Citizen Award. She is excited about bringing as many opportunities as possible to students, and hopes to help create intelligent, civically-involved young citizens.
Monika Hanley is a media-literacy educator, researcher, and associate at the Media Education Lab. In addition to being an international journalist and Fulbright Scholar (Latvia ’19; Albania ’24), she has been designing and delivering media-literacy programs worldwide for teachers, librarians, and policy makers, recently co-authoring a State-Department-funded MOOC that has been translated into ten languages and reached 40,000 learners worldwide.
She is also a reports editor with NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, and developed the Baltic Very Verified course with IREX. Her academic publications appear in many journals and book chapters, and is an educator with the University of Washington’s Media Literacy Institute. Monika holds a BA in both linguistics and political science, an MA in International Relations, and an LLM in Human Rights Law, credentials she now channels into media literacy solutions, data-driven approaches for tracking influence campaigns and improving algorithmic transparency in classrooms and communities.
Ms. Linda Kennedy is the principal in the media education and consulting firm of LK Media. LK Media specializes in teaching media literacy to parents, teachers, students, caregivers, childcare providers, and community organizations. Ms. Kennedy has more than 25 years of experience in the media. She started her career as a radio and television reporter in Omaha, Nebraska and after a short stint in Portland, Oregon moved to Seattle to become an a reporter, anchor, and producer at KING 5 Television in Seattle.
She was elected to the National Board of Board of Directors: Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television & Radio (AFTRA) in 1991 and served as an AFTRA board member until 2008. For several years afterward, she continued to serve as a Board alternate. After leaving KING, Ms. Kennedy directed internal and external communications for Public Health – Seattle & King County.
Art Land is a journalist and educator. In television news since 1982, he worked at CNN headquarters as an assignment editor and show producer. He has extensive and current experience as a freelance field producer for ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, Vice News, and Al Jazeera America, among many others. He began his career in local news in Georgia and South Carolina where he also made documentaries, sports programs, and commercials. Since 1994, Art has been teaching journalism and communication at colleges including Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, West Georgia State University, and currently at Lake Washington Technical Institute. His wife, Kristin Fraser, is a producer for Vice News Tonight on HBO.
Cora Mackoff graduated with a degree in Anthropology from the University of Washington and a Masters in Education and Curriculum. She has been a dedicated and inspirational educator for Seattle Public schools for almost four decades, teaching everything from World History, Public Speaking, AP Human Geography, APLA to Modern World Literature. Cora started the Women’s Literature/Studies program at Roosevelt high school in Seattle 18 years ago and it is still going strong. A fierce fan of Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship, she incorporates its lessons to all her students as often as possible. She has worked, along with Marilyn Cohen, Barbara Johnson, and Jennifer Slack, on some of AME’s most iconic curriculums including Creating Critical Viewers,Tobacco and Media, and her favorite, Violence and the Media. She has been a member of AME for over 20 years and continues to apply its mission in her work at Roosevelt high school.
Maliha Masood is a Pakistani born writer and educator. She is the author of two books, Zaatar Days, Henna Nights and Dizzy in Karachi, based on her travels in the Middle East and South Asia. Maliha has ten years of experience as a research analyst in the IT sector at Microsoft and tech startups. She studied Public Policy as a grad student at Harvard University and earned a Master’s degree in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University in Boston. Maliha has taught World History at Ingraham High School and Political Science at Bellevue College and is currently a summer enrichment instructor at Open Window School where she teaches Debate and Literature. Her work has been featured on PBS, NPR and the Wing Luke Museum.
Dean Miller edited daily and weekly newspapers for more than 15 years, worked as a reporter for more than a decade and has co-authored and edited non-fiction books in the true crime and outdoor adventure genres. After a Harvard Nieman Fellowship, he served as Director of Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy for six years, then as Senior Vice President/Content at Connecticut Public Broadcasting. In 2020, The Seattle Times hired him as Free Press Editor to write the twice-weekly “Save the Free Press” column for The Seattle Times. As the disinformation tsunami hit, he joined Lead Stories, a fact checking agency working in 21 languages around the world, where he is managing editor.
Danni Minteer gained experience working with the news media as a government major at Connecticut College, while immersed in local, state and national politics. Before pursuing a teaching career in secondary education, she was awarded a fellowship to complete a Master’s Degree in Special Education and earned another bachelor’s degree in English. During her years as a secondary teacher at Bainbridge High School and Klahowya Secondary School she introduced media literacy into her English, Social Studies and Special Ed classes as a result of attending a NAMLE conference. Now retired, Danni continues to be absorbed in trying to understand and evaluate the ethics of the digital world, social media and the neuroscience that draws us in. She hopes to further AME’s goals among her former colleagues and the professional and community organizations to which she is committed.
Janith Pewitt is an Evergreen State College grad who has been at Roosevelt High School since 2003. Her teaching has spanned from remedial reading development courses to Advanced Placement Language and Composition. She has served as department chair for English Language Development program since 2011. Believing that informed and critical consumers of information are a fundamental component of participatory democracy, and believing that public schools have the responsibility to foster such consumers, media literacy is a daily practice in her classroom. One premise of media literacy is that how we say things is inseparable from what we say. What’s more—from a social justice perspective—how we say things is often more compelling and almost always more revealing. And it’s that perspective that centers Janith and her work.
Irene Smith is a National Board Certified teacher who has over 40 years teaching experience. The majority of Irene’s classroom teaching has been in the Yakima School District, where she taught English and US History for 26 years at the Discovery Lab School, 2 years at Yakima K-8 Virtual School, and currently teaches Civics and US History at A.C. Davis High School. Irene has served as a writer for a variety of Washington State education groups. She currently serves on the Professional Education Advisory Board (PEAB) for the WEA’s Teacher Residency program. Her Masters study was focused on Media Literacy, and she is passionate about helping students identify misinformation and manipulation. Irene loves living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest and enjoys spending time with family, friends and books.
Anne Stewart has had a diverse and extensive career in the field of education spanning three regions of WA state. A nationally board certified educator, she started her career in Edmonds where she taught secondary English and Social Studies, worked at the district level, and was a teacher librarian. While there she helped the district adopt a film studies unit for all high school seniors and was the inaugural instructor for International Baccalaureate Language and Literature which explores language through its cultural development, media forms and functions. After relocating to Central WA, she joined the North Central Educational Services District where she supported 29 mostly rural school districts, conducted bi-annual workshops for regional librarians, and led OSPI media literacy grants that focused on integrating media literacy with social studies, civics, and digital citizenship education. During this time she also testified before the legislature in support of media literacy legislation on behalf of the region. Currently Anne works as an educational consultant in Southwest WA.
Rebecca Wynkoop has been a Teacher Librarian in the greater Seattle area since 2002. She has worked at both the elementary and secondary levels as well as in both independent and public schools. She is currently the elementary school teacher librarian at Frank Love Elementary in Bothell, WA. In 2019 Rebecca was named the AASL Social Media Superstar: Advocacy Ambassador for her work advocating for school libraries. In 2020, Rebecca served as the School Library Division Board Director for the Washington Library Association.
Di Zhang is a librarian at Renton Technical College. Passionate about promoting digital citizenship and information literacy in all forms, Di has taught these skills to media organizations, educators and students, librarians, and the general public. He developed The Fake News Survival Guide, a curriculum on news literacy taught at The Seattle Public Library, which has been used and adapted by educators and librarians throughout Washington State. Di’s current interests include media use among today’s members of iGen/Gen Z and how social media platforms increase division and partisanship. Di lives in Federal Way with his wife, daughter, and son.
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