Bill Buzenberg

Advisory Council

• Mail

Bill Buzenberg has been a journalist and newsroom leader for more than 45 years. Most recently (2007-2015) he was executive director of the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Public Integrity, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism in 2014.

He was vice president of NPR News for seven years (1989-1997), and before that an NPR foreign affairs correspondent for 11 years (1978-1989), including three years as NPR’s London bureau chief at the BBC. He oversaw a doubling of the NPR audience and was responsible for launching “Talk of the Nation,” as well as the expansion of “All Things Considered” and 24-hour NPR newscasts. During his tenure, the NPR News Division was honored with nine DuPont-Columbia Batons and 10 Peabody Awards.

He was also vice president of news for Minnesota Public Radio / American Public Media for nine years (1998-2006). At MPR, Buzenberg also doubled the size of MPR’s audience and launched American RadioWorks, a public radio documentary and investigative unit, and “Speaking of Faith” (“On Being”), a public radio program on religion. At MPR, Buzenberg helped launch Southern California Public Radio and KPCC, now the largest Los Angeles public radio news station. He also began Public Insight Journalism, an innovative use of technology to draw knowledge from the audience.

In spring 2015, Buzenberg completed his second Harvard fellowship, the latest one at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School. He now lives near Seattle and serves on various media boards. He launched Fundraising Whisperer Inc. in late 2015 to help non-profit news organizations grow their foundation support. He also works part time as a vice president and strategic director for YES! Magazine based on Bainbridge Island, where he resides. In early 2016, the American Press Institute will release a new major study on the ethics of foundation funding of non-profit news organizations, of which he is one of the main authors.

A former Peace Corps volunteer, Buzenberg has been recognized with numerous awards, including the CPB’s Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio’s highest honor. He was co-editor of the memoirs of the late CBS News President Richard Salant (“Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism“). A graduate of Kansas State University, Buzenberg has also been a fellow at the University of Michigan, the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Vicente Calderón

Advisory Council

• Twitter

With more than 30 years practicing journalism on both sides of the border, Vicente Calderón understands as few others do the dynamic and complex region that defines México and the United States.

Today we talk about the new phenomenon of “All Terrain” reporters, but Calderón has a long and impressive career that has grown and evolved with the development of multimedia platforms where the best news content is produced and consumed.

Calderón started in radio in Tijuana and has accumulated experience and knowledge in Los Angeles as a TV news anchor as well as in San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico, first as a reporter and today as editor of Tijuana’s first online news site, Tijuanapress.com.

He has developed news in English and Spanish, producing for CBS News and ITN of England or Al Jazeera America, as well serving as a correspondent for national media such as Milenio TV.

At the same time Tijuanapress.com is dedicated to the professional training and development of journalists and to the promotion and defense of freedom of expression on both sides of the border.

Calderón is also the editorial coordinator for Newsweek en Español in Baja California.

Jeffrey Davidow

Advisory Council

Over the course of a 34-year career in the Foreign Service, Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow became one of America’s most senior and well-respected diplomats. He has extensive experience in both Latin America and Africa, having served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Venezuela and Zambia. He also headed the State Department’s efforts in Latin America, serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. He retired in 2003 from the U.S. State Department with the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest position in the Foreign Service, which, by law, can be held by no more than five individuals at one time.

In 1993, President Clinton nominated Ambassador Davidow to be U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, a position he held until 1996. From 1996 to 1998, he was the State Department’s chief policymaker for the Western Hemisphere, serving as Assistant Secretary of State for that region. President Clinton nominated Ambassador Davidow again in 1998, this time as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. Ambassador Davidow held this post from 1998 until 2002. After leaving Mexico in September 2002, he became a Visiting Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Ambassador Davidow joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1969 and began his career at the American Embassy in Guatemala. He later became the head of the liaison office at the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe and later returned to the U.S. to act as the Director of the Office of Southern African Affairs in 1985. He also pursued a fellowship at Harvard University. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan nominated him to be U.S. Ambassador to Zambia, a position he held until 1990. After his ambassadorship to Zambia, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa. Ambassador Davidow spent many years involved in multiple negotiations in southern Africa — Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa itself — that helped bring relative peace to that region.

Since leaving the Foreign Service, Ambassador Davidow has served as President of the Institute of the Americas in San Diego. Established in 1983, the Institute of the Americas is a leading institution in United States-Canada-Latin America cooperation. The Institute, best known for its energy and technology programs, brings together business and government leaders and representatives of civil society in forums designed to seek ways in which public and private entities can collaborate, clarify rules and regulations so private enterprise can flourish, promote the development of infrastructure through public-private funding, and implement effective policies for managing economic growth in Latin America.

Ambassador Davidow is also an accomplished public speaker and author. He has published articles in Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs and authored two books, one on international negotiations and the other, The US and Mexico: The Bear and the Porcupine, a bestseller in Mexico and a prominent textbook at American universities. He speaks frequently on hemispheric policy and on Mexican developments for organizations such as the North American Forum, the Trilateral Commission, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Pacific Council, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the InterAmerican Development Bank, and many university and other groups. He also served as an adviser to President Obama for the 2009 Summit of the Americas. He currently serves as Senior Counselor with The Cohen Group.

A native of Massachusetts, Ambassador Davidow received a BA from the University of Massachusetts in 1965 and an MA from the University of Minnesota in 1967. He also did postgraduate work in India in 1968 on a Fulbright travel grant.

Jason Fry

Advisory Council

• Twitter

Jason Fry is the author of “The Jupiter Pirates” young-adult space-fantasy series and a longtime “Star Wars” author. He spent 12 years at The Wall Street Journal Online, serving as an editor, columnist and blogs guru, and is a former adjunct faculty member at the Poynter Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Lynne Friedmann

Advisory Council

• Twitter
• Facebook

Lynne Friedmann is editor of ScienceWriters magazine, published by the National Association of Science Writers. As a science journalist and educator, she has organized dozens of seminars and conferences on journalism and science communications topics throughout the United States and internationally (Canada, Japan, Qatar). For more than a decade, she has been involved in science journalism training of Latin American reporters. She is a member of the organizing committee of the World Conference of Science Journalists which will take place for the first time in the United States (San Francisco) in 2017.

Jon Funabiki

Advisory Council

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Mail

Jon Funabiki’s career spans journalism, philanthropy and academia. He is a Professor of Journalism and Executive Director of Renaissance Journalism (renjournalism.org) at San Francisco State University. He joined the university in 2006 to teach and to develop projects that explore promising new forms of journalism and storytelling that serve, strengthen and empower communities. Recent initiatives include the Equity Reporting Project, Michigan Reporting Project, Imperial Valley Youth Storytelling Project and Vietnam Reporting Project.

Funabiki also serves as founding executive director of the Dilena Takeyama Center for the Study of Japan and Japanese Culture (japancenter.sfsu.edu), which sponsors programs to promote improved relations between the United States and Japan.

Funabiki joined the university after an 11-year career with the Ford Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropic institutions, where he was Deputy Director of the Media, Arts & Culture (MAC) Unit. Responsible for the Foundation’s multimillion-dollar grant strategies on news media issues, he worked closely with journalists, filmmakers, other media professionals and leaders from research, education, nonprofit and business institutions. As MAC’s deputy director, he worked with Foundation staff and media leaders throughout Asia, Latin America, Africa and Russia.

Prior to Ford, Funabiki was the founding director of San Francisco State University’s Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, the nation’s first university-based center focused on news media coverage of ethnic minority communities and issues.

Funabiki is a former reporter and editor with The San Diego Union, where he specialized in U.S.-Asia political and economic affairs and reported from East and Southeast Asia. His writings also have appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, National Civic League Journal and other publications.

A graduate of San Francisco State University, Funabiki was awarded the John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, where he studied East Asian politics and economics; the Jefferson Fellowship at the East-West Center of Honolulu, where he studied East and Southeast Asian economics; and a National Endowment for the Humanities Professional Summer Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied the cultural dimensions of U.S. history.

He has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity; the Ethnic Media Champion Award from New America Media; a Special Recognition Award from the Asian American Journalists Association; the Gerbode Foundation Fellowship; and a variety of awards for reporting and writing.

Kris Lindblad

Advisory Council

• Facebook
• Mail

S. Lynne Walker is a Pulitzer Prize finalist whose reporting has taken her to Mexico, where she lived for almost 16 years and reported on political, economic, legal and social issues affecting U.S.-Mexico relations.

Walker began her journalism career at the age of 18 when she got her first newspaper job at The Honolulu Advertiser.  After graduating from the University of Hawaii, she worked at newspapers in Tampa, Sacramento and San Diego. It was at The San Diego Union-Tribune, while covering California’s agricultural industry for the business section, that Walker became interested in Mexico coverage. She received her first national journalism award — the 1989 Gerald Loeb Award from the UCLA Anderson School of Management — for her four-part series, “The Invisible Work Force.”

Walker did a three-month stint in Saudi Arabia in 1990-91 during Operation Desert Storm as a correspondent imbedded with an Army tank division. A year later, she was hired by Copley News Service as Mexico City Bureau Chief. It was from her base in Mexico City that Walker came to understand the Mexican people and appreciate their rich culture, music and art, as well as the political, economic and social issues that shape their country.

Her coverage of Mexico and Central America won numerous national and international journalism awards.  In 1997, she received a National Headliner Award for a 14-part serial narrative that showed the human drama of illegal immigration to the United States. Her coverage took her to remote corners of Mexico: to Chiapas, where she rented a plane to fly into Zapatista-held territory, and to a remote village in the mountains of Oaxaca where she traveled on horseback to report on rural poverty.

In 2004, Walker was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for “Beardstown: Reflection of a Changing America,” her four-part series about a small Illinois town that was transformed by immigration. That same year, she received the American Society of News Editors’ Diversity Award.

Walker received the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2005 for her outstanding coverage of Latin America. In awarding the Cabot Prize judges said, “Among the many correspondents who cover the uneasy relationship between the United States and the countries south of the border, Walker stands out as one of the very few who manages to fully convey the human side of the story. With a natural sympathy for the underdog and a keen eye for detail, and by probing the depths of Latin American culture and society, Walker gives readers an unblemished view of and greater insight into the region.”

Before joining InquireFirst, Walker served for eight years as the vice president of the Institute of the Americas, a nonprofit organization on the University of California, San Diego, campus.  There, Walker established the Institute’s regional journalism program, creating an international network of journalists and raising funds to provide them with scholarships to attend week-long journalism workshops that she organized and directed.

Walker continues to travel to Latin America to help colleagues there find new ways to produce in-depth reporting and broaden their audiences. She has conducted Spanish-language journalism workshops in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Argentina.

Richard Louv

Advisory Council

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Mail

Richard Louv is the author of eight books, including “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” and “The Nature Principle.” Translated into 13 languages and published in 17 countries, his books have helped launch an international movement to connect children and their families to nature. Richard is cofounder and chairman emeritus of the Children & Nature Network. He has written for the New York Times, the Times of London, Parents Magazine and many other publications, and has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, the Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News and other programs.

Among other awards, Richard Louv is the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal; past recipients have included Rachel Carson, E.O. Wilson and Jimmy Carter. In 2010, he delivered the plenary keynote at the national conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and in 2012 was keynote speaker at the first White House Summit on Environmental Education. His ninth book, “Vitamin N,” will be published in 2016. He is currently working on his tenth book, about the evolving relationship between humans and other animals. Married to Kathy Frederick Louv, he is the father of two young men, Jason and Matthew. He would rather fish than write.