Deanna Martin Mackey is president of the Public Television Major Market Group (PTMMG), a consortium of the 40 largest PBS member stations in the U.S. Mackey focuses her time on project management and national partnership development on behalf of the stations as well as system leadership activities. Previously, Mackey worked for 25 years at KPBS, San Diego, serving as COO in her final six years at the station. Mackey is credited with spearheading KPBS.org as a third content platform and creating KPBS’ converged newsroom.

In 2015, Mackey co-founded Public Media Women in Leadership, to provide mentorship/training for women in her industry and address issues of gender inequality in public media. Mackey serves as a Girl Scout troop leader for 20 high school girls and spent 10 years in board governance for Girl Scouts San Diego. In 2018 Mackey received the Hera Heroine Leadership Award from Hera Hub, workspace for women. In 2014 Mackey was named a YWCA Tribute to Women & Industry (TWIN) honoree for her work mentoring women at KPBS and via the Girl Scouts. She was named Outstanding Alumnus from SDSU’s Daily Aztec newspaper the same year and in 2010 was named one of five “Women who Move the City” by San Diego Magazine.

Prior to working at KPBS, Mackey was a writer and editor for several San Diego-based publications. She spent her early years in journalism as a radio news writer. Mackey earned her Bachelor of Arts from San Diego State University with a double major in journalism and political science. She lives in San Diego and recently married her sweetheart of eight years, Christopher Ingalls. She has three unique & inspiring children, Maddie, 23, Robert, 18 and Kristine, 14.

Paula A. Kerger is president and chief executive officer of PBS, the nation’s largest non-commercial media organization, with more than 330-member stations throughout the country. Having joined PBS in March 2006, Kerger is the longest-serving president and CEO in PBS history.

Under Kerger’s leadership, PBS has grown its audiences across genres and platforms. PBS has moved from the 14th most-watched network in America to number seven in the past decade. Over the course of a year, 83% percent of all U.S. television households watch PBS, and each month, Americans view nearly 300 million videos across PBS’s web, mobile and connected device platforms.

Since Kerger’s arrival, PBS has consistently presented high-quality, groundbreaking content that delivers on the founding mission of public television — to educate, inspire and entertain the American people. Among her accomplishments are the pop culture phenomenon “Downton Abbey” on MASTERPIECE; Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s critically acclaimed THE VIETNAM WAR; the documentary “Hamilton’s America,” about the Broadway smash hit musical, on GREAT PERFORMANCES; “Freedom Riders” on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE; and award-winning children’s programs such as DANIEL TIGER’S NEIGHBORHOOD. In the past year, PBS and its producing partners have been recognized with several prestigious honors, including seven Peabody Awards, six Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards and nine News & Documentary Emmy Awards.

Kerger has made particularly strong commitments to PBS’s work in children’s education. She led the historic launch of the PBS KIDS 24/7 broadcast and streaming channel, ensuring that PBS’s educational programming can reach children anytime and anywhere through local stations. In addition, Kerger oversaw the development of PBS LearningMedia, which empowers teachers across America to engage and inspire their students with high-quality digital content. Kerger also serves as president of the PBS Foundation, an independent organization that raises private sector funding — a significant source of revenue for new projects at PBS.

Kerger is regularly included in the Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment Power 100,” an annual survey of the nation’s top women executives in media, as well as Washingtonian Magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Washington. She has been honored with the Woman of Achievement Award from Women in Development, New York; the National Education Association Friend of Education Award; the Giants of Broadcasting Award; the Realscreen Hall of Fame Award; and Promax/BDA, B&C and Multichannel News Brand Builder Award. In 2017, she received the Advancing American Democracy Award from the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site.

Prior to joining PBS, Kerger served for more than a decade at Educational Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), the parent company of Thirteen/WNET and WLIW21 New York, where her ultimate position was executive vice president and chief operating officer. Her tenure boasts many achievements, including WNET’s completion in 1997 of the largest successful endowment campaign ever undertaken by a public television station.

Kerger received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Baltimore, where she serves on the Merrick School of Business Dean’s Advisory Council. She has received honorary doctorates from Washington University in St. Louis, Grand Valley State University, Allegheny College, Northeastern University and the University of North Carolina Asheville. She is a member of the Women’s Forum, director of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a member of Meredith Corporation’s Board of Directors and chair of the board of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

Jayme Swain is CEO of the Virginia Foundation for Public Media and President of VPM, Virginia’s home for Public Media. She is leading transformational change at VPM to be a best- in-class local multi-media content producer, an essential provider of early childhood education services resources, and a relevant partner in strengthening the community.

In her current role, Swain oversees VPM’s digital presence and broadcast stations, which reach nearly 2 million people across central Virginia including: PBS stations WCVE and WCVW in Richmond; WHTJ and WVPT in Charlottesville; WVPT in Harrisonburg as well as NPR radio stations WCVE News and WCVE Music in Richmond; WCNV in the Northern Neck and WMVE in Chase City.

Prior to joining VPM in January 2019, Swain served as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations at PBS. She was a trusted advisor to the CEO and COO, led strategic planning, managed organization-wide projects and developed solutions on behalf of the entire public broadcasting system.

Swain has developed multimedia content, consumer-focused digital products and social media strategies for top brands such as PBS, CNN, FOX Sports, U.S. News & World Report and Revolution Health.

Ms. Swain is a graduate of the University of Virginia.

Cheraine Stanford is the Director of Content Strategy at WPSU, responsible for developing and implementing the strategy for the station's original productions across digital, radio, and television. She is also a moderator and on-camera host. For many years, Stanford was a journalist, producer, director and writer with a career spanning print, web, TV and independent film.

Stanford is the past Chair of the PBS Digital Media Advisory Council. She is an interviewer and host for the radio program Take Note and a moderator of the Penn State Forum Speaker Series. Stanford was a 2016 Next Generation Leadership Senior Editorial Fellow and a 2011 CPB/PBS Producers Academy Fellow. Before joining WPSU, she worked on several projects with her filmmaker icon Albert Maysles at Maysles Films in Harlem, New York. Stanford also served as Production Coordinator for the election road-show series for Washington Week with Gwen Ifill, working with her mentor and friend, Gwen Ifill.

Her work has garnered four Mid-Atlantic Emmy® Awards, a George Foster Peabody Award, CINE Golden Eagle, Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters Award and several Mid-Atlantic Emmy® nominations.

Her productions include the multi-platform projects Women in Science Profiles (WisciFiles) and Water Blues - Green Solutions, the television documentaries Holding History and As Long As We Dance, the web series Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings and The Geospatial Revolution and the multimedia project African American Chronicles. She is the narrator of Why We Dance: The Story of THON.

Yamiche Alcindor is the White House correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, a role she began in January 2018. She often tells stories about the intersection of race and politics as well as fatal police encounters.

Alcindor is also a contributor for NBC News and MSNBC often appearing on a number of shows including Morning Joe, Andrea Mitchell Reports, The Rachel Maddow Show and Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.

Previously, Alcindor worked as a national political reporter for The New York Times where she covered the presidential campaigns of Mr. Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders as well as Congress. She also wrote about the impact of President Donald Trump's policies on working class people and people of color.

Before joining The Times, she was a national breaking news reporter for USA Today and traveled across the country to cover stories including the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. and the police related protests in Ferguson, Mo. and Baltimore, Md. Alcindor’s overall goal is to be a civil rights journalist and she was inspired by the late PBS NewsHour anchor Gwen Ifill.

In 2020, the White House Correspondents’ Association named Alcindor the recipient of the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage. She has also been honored with the Ifill Next Generation Award by Simmons University and NextGen Leader Award by the Georgetown Entertainment & Media Alliance. In 2017, she won an award in a tribute to Ifill during Syracuse University's Toner Prize ceremony. She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and was named the organization’s "Emerging Journalist of the Year" in 2013.

Alcindor earned a master's degree in broadcast news and documentary filmmaking from New York University and a bachelor's in English, government and African American studies from Georgetown University. A native of Miami, Fla., Yamiche is married to a fellow journalist and is the daughter of Haitian immigrants who met while attending Boston College.

Tanzina reports and speaks on issues of race, media, and inequality in the United States. She is also an Eisner Fellow at the Nation Institute, author of the forthcoming book "Uppity," and a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

Tanzina has contributed to CNN, CNNMoney, WNYC Radio, Reuters television, Billboard magazine and The New York Times, where she won an Emmy award for outstanding new approaches in documentary media and various awards from the National Press Photographers Association.

NPR’s Code Switch called her one of their “Journalists — Of Color! — To Watch” and The Huffington Post listed Tanzina as one of the 40 top Latinos in American media.

Jodi-Ann Burey (she/her) has a mission is to disrupt “business as usual” to achieve social change. She is a speaker, writer, and equity advocate. Her work is grounded in centering the experiences of historically underrepresented communities and the systemic intersectional approaches needed to address inequities. Jodi-Ann holds a Masters in Public Health from the University of Michigan. She prides herself on being a cool auntie, a twist-out queen, cancer survivor, adventurer and reluctant dog owner. Jodi-Ann is currently working on her first book and podcast called Black Cancer, which explores the stories about women of color and healthcare.

Patti Perez is founder and CEO of PersuasionPoint, a modern-day consulting firm dedicated to teaching leaders and teams how to create and sustain healthy, inclusive and profitable workplace cultures.

Patti is a culture transformation expert, an international speaker, an award-winning, best-selling author, and a sought-after leadership coach and consultant. She is on a mission to transform workplace culture. She is passionate about and committed to helping organizations realize the vision of a workplace where employees are inspired to innovate, where leaders make courageous decisions and create a sense a deep trust, and where colleagues are aligned and profoundly connected. She calls this a "CULTURE OF ENCOUNTER".

Patti combines her experience as a licensed California attorney, a professionally-certified HR executive, a tech company leader, a specialist in the prevention and resolution of workplace drama, an expert witness in state and federal court, a state regulator and as an entrepreneur to create a revolutionary shift in the way we communicate and connect at work.

Patti is the author of the best-selling, award winning book, The Drama-Free Workplace: How You Can Prevent Unconscious Bias, Sexual Harassment, Ethics Lapses, and Inspire a Healthy Culture (Wiley 2019). The Drama-Free Workplace is a one-of a kind, informative resource that explains what it takes to build and sustain an equitable, inclusive and healthy workplace culture.