Coalition Building on Steroids

Katie Briggs is a senior product designer at NPR. She has led design and user research for experimental initiatives on mobile and voice-first platforms, as well as for the Public Radio Incubation Lab, which focuses on innovative, user-centric solutions to public media’s business problems.

Before her work at NPR, Briggs bolstered design thinking and led product design at Southern California Public Radio (KPCC) and Houston Public Media. A graduate of American Public Media’s Emerging Leaders program, she is also a founder of Public Media Kitchen, a community where digital leaders collaborate to define and solve the next generation of public media problems together. In addition to being a Public Media Women In Leadership Ambassador, Briggs is the host for PMWL’s bi-monthly webinars.

Briggs has facilitated numerous workshops related to design and research, spoken internationally, and taught collegiate color theory and corporate identity courses. She received her Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Dolores Sukhdeo serves as the President & CEO of South Florida PBS, the merged organization that brings together WPBT2 and WXEL to represent the 7th largest TV market in the United States. In 1998, Dolores joined WPBT2 as Vice President for Facilities Services where she was responsible for the for-profit activities. She was promoted to Station Manager in 2002 and to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in 2003.

>p>Ms. Sukhdeo began her television career in 1990 at the international newsgathering division of Disney/ABC News Inc. - Worldwide Television News in New York, NY, where she worked her way through the ranks from Sales Assistant to Regional Executive for the USA & Latin America. During her tenure at Worldwide Television News, she managed large scale news events including the Oklahoma City bombing, Olympics coverage, presidential elections and the United Nations 50th Anniversary.

Ms. Sukhdeo is currently a Board Member of the America’s Public Television Stations (APTS); Member, The Strategic Forum; Member, NSU Levan Ambassadors Board; Immediate Past Chair for Florida Public Media, a statewide consortium of Florida public television and radio stations; and Past President of the International Women’s Forum (IWF) Florida; Additionally, she is past Chair of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce (GMCC) Nonprofit Business Committee, and of the GMCC Creative Industries Committee.

Ms. Sukhdeo earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Spanish Literature from Columbia University and a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Miami.

Holly Groschner, recently retired CEO of Vermont PBS, made her career at the intersection of law, communications, and new technology. As a partner at Vermont’s largest law firm, Downs Rachlin & Martin, Holly started a practice in spectrum-based communication networks. She was invited to build the legal department at Crown Castle International (NYSE:CCI) headquartered in Pittsburgh, now a $71B network infrastructure provider to the wireless industry. With a legal department of 25 and over 250 consulting lawyers, Holly managed the acquisition of $4B in communications towers from Bell South and Verizon over three years. She worked to support the success of professional women in the mobile telecom industry within Crown Castle and as a founding member and president of the Women’s Wireless Leadership Forum.

Returning to Vermont in 2010, Holly served as General Counsel to the Vermont Telecommunications Authority, a quasi-state agency building and funding broadband and cell service in rural communities, until joining Vermont PBS in 2015. Holly led Vermont PBS as it raised $56M in the FCC spectrum auction, revitalized the board and leadership team, relocated the station to a new state-of-the-art facility, and laid the foundation for an enhanced digital culture. Holly focused the organization on service to the Vermont community and adapting to a digital future, which led the talented Vermont PBS team to produce multiple Emmy-winning productions and began a collaboration with Vermont Public Radio (VPR). To secure the future of public media in a state of just 623 thousand, Holly consummated a plan with VPR’s Scott Finn to unify Vermont PBS and VPR. They created Vermont Public, a new $91M organization, approved by both boards in September of 2020.

Scott Finn has been VPR President & CEO since May 2018, where he has worked to expand VPR's impact and diversify its audience. Last year, VPR won the National Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence in the small market category.

He is formerly the CEO and Executive Director of West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB). During his tenure, Scott oversaw the transformation of the organization, enhancing its financial sustainability and overhauling content and programming to dramatically increase fundraising and audience. Prior to his leadership of WVPB, Scott spent more than a decade building multimedia news departments at WVPB and WUSF Public Media in Tampa. Before that, Scott was an award-winning reporter at the Charleston Gazette, where he was nationally recognized for his coverage of issues ranging from business news to drug addiction. Scott helped create the multi-station news collaboration called the Ohio Valley ReSource. He also was part of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Future Business Strategies Initiative and NPR’s Collaborative Coverage Committee.