About ReelChanges
ReelChanges.org is owned and operated by the Center for Media Change, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit corporation based in Palo Alto, California. The mission of the Center for Media Change, Inc. is to enrich our culture by facilitating the creation and distribution of more high-quality documentaries. Contributions to the Center for Media Change, Inc. and to individual documentary projects posted and displayed on the site are tax deductible as allowed under U.S. federal law.
Contact Information:
Center for Media Change, Inc.
email contact: [email protected]
Meet the Officers and Board of Directors of the Center for Media Change, Inc.
Hal Plotkin
Hal Plotkin is a veteran Silicon Valley journalist, commentator and business analyst. Plotkin was a founding editor of the public radio network's daily "Marketplace" program, Silicon Valley Correspondent for CNBC.com, TechBEAT columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate.com and a contributing writer for both the Harvard Management Communications Update and the Harvard Management Update. Plotkin's other publishers include Inc. magazine, Inc. International, International Business magazine, Forbes ASAP, Barron's Online, California magazine, California Business magazine, Family Business magazine, Securities Industry Daily, Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year magazine, France's Courrier International newspaper, Biotechnology magazine, Biotechnology In Japan Newsservice, The Peninsula Times Tribune, Investools.com and Arthur Andersen's Knowledgespace.com. Plotkin also serves as a member of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District Governing Board of Trustees. Plotkin earned his Bachelor of Arts in Behavioral Science from San Jose State University and his Associate of Arts, History, from Foothill Community College. Plotkin is the founder and CEO of the Center for Media Change, Inc. and the Editor of ReelChanges.org.
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Yoav Potash
Yoav Potash is a filmmaker, writer, and film instructor. For over ten years, he has produced award-winning narrative and documentary films that have aired on PBS and screened at film festivals worldwide. His work has earned the San Francisco Film Society's Golden Gate Award, the Berkeley Film and Video Festival's Grand Festival Award, and UC Berkeley's highest honor in creative writing, the Eisner Prize. In addition to directing independent films, Potash also produces work for hire, and his commercial production clients include Apple Computer and Neutrogena, as well as nonprofit organizations such as Jewish Family and Children's Services and The Koret Foundation. An Apple-certified instructor, Potash regularly teaches professional seminars for institutions such as Bay Area Video Coalition, the University of San Francisco, Film Arts Foundation, the National Black Programming Consortium, Stanford University, and the Academy of Art University. Potash has been involved in crafting ReelChanges since its inception and currently serves as Director of Film Community Outreach.
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Andy Hertzfeld
Andy Hertzfeld was a key member of the original Apple Macintosh development team, writing a big chunk of the original system software for the original Macintosh while he worked at Apple from 1979 until 1984. After leaving Apple in 1984, he co-founded three innovative companies: Radius in 1986, General Magic in 1990 and Eazel in 1999. He has been working as a software engineer at Google since August 2005. In August 2003, he developed a web-based system for collective storytelling, and used it to publish numerous anecdotes about the development of the original Macintosh on the web at http://folklore.org. The stories have been collected in an O'Reilly book, "Revolution in the Valley", published in December 2004. He graduated from Brown University with a Computer Science degree in 1975 and obtained a master's degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979. Hertzfeld serves on the ReelChanges Board of Directors.
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Jason Zelin
Jason Zelin is a veteran Los Angeles-area entertainment industry lawyer and film producer. Mr. Zelin is the former president of Miracle Entertainment, a publicly-traded film company, and the former senior vice-president, acquisitions, at Miramax. Zelin has also served as the Director of Legal and Business Affairs at Warner Brothers Television, Vice President of Acquisitions at Lorimar Home Video, and Vice President of the Completion Bond Company, where he was responsible for the bonding of more than $100 million in new film productions by CBC, a subsidiary of the Transamerica Corporation. Mr. Zelin holds a Juris Doctor degree from the UCLA School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, from Tufts University. Zelin serves on the ReelChanges Board of Directors.
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Richard Alexander
Richard Alexander is the senior partner at Alexander and Hawes, LLP, a San Jose law firm with a national practice. Alexander has served as a member of the Board of Governors of The State Bar of California, President of the Santa Clara County Bar Association and the Board of Governors of Consumer Attorneys of California. Mr. Alexander's firm holds Martindale-Hubbell's highest rating and is recognized in the List of Preeminent Law Firms in the U. S. Alexander was the first recipient of the "Man of the Year Award" from The Women's Fund, the recipient of a Pro Bono Award for advocacy and service on behalf of persons injured in the work place by the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health and the first winner of the Santa Clara County Youth Commission Medal in recognition of his special service to young people. Mr. Alexander is also founding member of the National Association of Consumer Advocates and the publisher of the largest collection of free legal articles on the Internet. Mr. Alexander holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago. Alexander serves on the ReelChanges Board of Directors.
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Susan E. Hoffman
Susan E. Hoffman is currently the director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, Ms. Hoffman directed the program in Art, Culture and Civic Education and the New Media Institute at San Francisco State University. During the previous decade, Ms. Hoffman served as the Executive Director of the California Confederation of the Arts, a California-based non-profit organization with 1200 art organization members, with offices in Sacramento and Los Angeles. Ms. Hoffman also served as an arts and humanities consultant to the California State University System and to the University of Florence, Italy. She was the Founding Executive Director of the People's Theater Coalition from 1979 to 1985, which supported twelve theater groups at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. Ms. Hoffman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Miami University. Hoffman serves on the ReelChanges Board of Directors.
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Loren Stein
Loren Stein is an award-winning Bay Area journalist whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. Ms. Stein was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Boston Herald in 1989 and won first place for investigative reporting for large circulation weeklies from the California Newspaper Publishers Association in 2002 and has also shared in broadcast awards. Her publishers include Health magazine, Christian Science Monitor, LA Weekly, California Lawyer, Hippocrates, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Columbia Journalism Review, The National Law Journal, The Recorder, Mother Jones, The Progressive, The National Catholic Reporter, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, WebMD, Consumer Health Interactive and SF Weekly. Stein's work has been widely reprinted, including in college course readers, a textbook, through online syndication and in magazines and books. She has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. Stein is the Treasurer of ReelChanges and a Special Advisor to the CEO.
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Linda Jue
Linda Jue directs New Voices in Independent Journalism (NVIJ), a national initiative whose mission is to develop and support a more diverse pool of independent investigative reporters who want to pursue public interest/social justice journalism. Linda is the former associate director of the Independent Press Association, where she directed several national journalism programs designed to attract and mentor journalists disillusioned with mainstream media to work in independent media. Before going to the IPA, she directed San Francisco State University's Community Press Consortium, an advanced professional training program for reporters and editors working in the community and ethnic press. Linda is a former associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting and a former editor at San Francisco Focus magazine. Her work has appeared in San Francisco Focus, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Toronto Globe and Mail, GEO, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, PBS, Frontline and other outlets. She also worked for eight years as the Northern California correspondent for C-SPAN. She has won two Thomas Moore Storke International Journalism Awards and a Maggie for excellence in feature writing. She is also well known in national media diversity and media reform circles. Jue serves on the ReelChanges Board of Directors.
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Diana Hembree
Diana Hembree is an award-winning health and medical journalist. Hembree served for more than a decade as a news editor and reporter at the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco, working on health-related stories for CBS's '60 Minutes,' PBS's Frontline, the Times of London syndicate, and dozens of newspapers and magazines. While at CIR, she also worked with local and national TV stations and served as associate producer for Frontline's 'The Great American Bailout', an award-winning PBS documentary about the aftermath of the savings and loans debacle. Hembree's has also served as a senior editor at Hippocrates and Time Inc. Health, was a contributing editor at Parenting magazine and helped launch ParentTIME, the magazine's Web site. A longtime member of the Association of Healthcare Journalists, she has lectured on journalism at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford, San Francisco State, and other institutions. She has received more than two dozen national journalism awards, including the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for television reporting, the National Education Writers Award, a Jesse Neal Award for magazine editing, the National Press Foundation's Spanish Language Fellowship, and a team award for World Wide Web health reporting. Hembree serves on the ReelChanges board.
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General Information:
ReelChanges.org is the pioneering application of technology developed and owned by ReelChanges, LLC, the audience-funded media platform provider™. For more information about ReelChanges, LLC, including for platform-related questions or inquiries, please visit www.reelchanges.com or contact [email protected]
