WASHINGTON - February 11, 2021 – America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) today announced the election of its new board leaders and board members. The newly-elected officers and trustees will begin their terms on Monday, February 22, 2021.
Andrew Russell, President and CEO of PBS SoCal and KCET in Los Angeles, California, has been elected Chair; Susi Elkins, Director of Broadcasting and General Manager of WKAR Public Media at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, has been elected Professional Vice Chair; and David Steward II, Immediate Past Board Chair of Nine PBS in St. Louis, Missouri, has been elected Lay Vice Chair.
The newly-elected trustees are: Eric Easter, Lay Trustee of WHUT in Washington, D.C., and Anthony Hayes, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of New England Public Media in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Re-elected to the APTS Board of Trustees are W. Craig Fugate, At-Large Trustee in Gainesville, Florida; Jeffrey Gilbert, Board Chair of New Hampshire PBS; Mimi Chapin Gregory, Lay Trustee of WGCU in Fort Myers, Florida; and Edward Ulman, President and CEO of Alaska Public Media (AKPM).
Following is background on the board officers:
Andrew Russell is a 25-year veteran of public broadcasting, having held senior executive leadership positions at both PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Russell joined PBS SoCal as COO in 2013 and played a key role in building PBS SoCal as it grew into the role of flagship PBS station for Southern California. Named CEO in 2015, Russell has driven rapid growth in the station’s membership and revenues, increased content distribution, and forged new partnerships with major Southern California arts and cultural institutions. In 2018, PBS SoCal merged with KCET (and Link TV) to produce more original programs for seven Southern California broadcast channels, one national satellite channel and a dynamic library of programs that viewers love and trust available for streaming on any internet-connected screen. The new organization, the Public Media Group of Southern California, addresses the diverse community of the region and the changing demographic of the nation, as well as creates new community engagement experiences that educate, inform and inspire. Russell assumed the role of President/CEO and has been responsible for the third-most-watched PBS station in the country as well as a continued commitment to community engagement, early childhood education and social impact services. As schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Russell immediately partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the nation’s second largest district, to launch the At-Home Learning initiative, providing free educational resources both on-air and online. PBS SoCal and KCET changed their daytime broadcast schedule to air curriculum-aligned educational content for Pre-K through the 12th grade students, available to all regardless of internet connectivity. Following Russel’s leadership, local public television stations from nearly 100 stations in over 40 states adopted the At-Home Learning daytime broadcast schedule to ensure that all students had free access to on-air and online educational programming. A California native, Russell holds an MBA from Stanford University, an MPA from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and is a graduate of the University of California, Davis. He is a Member of the CEO Roundtable at UC Irvine and serves on the Board of the Los Angeles City Club.
Susi Elkins is Director of Broadcasting and General Manager of WKAR Public Media at Michigan State University. WKAR is home to public radio and television for the Michigan capital region, bringing the best of PBS, PBS KIDS, NPR, Classical music and award-winning original content to more than 500,000 mid-Michigan residents each week. Under Elkins’ leadership, WKAR has increased its commitment to early childhood education through the launch of the PBS KIDS 24/7 channel, WKAR Family original content and the PBS KIDS Playtime Pad research collaborative. Elkins also led the launch of a new WKAR News/Talk FM station for the capital region and strengthened local news coverage with an emphasis on education and public affairs reporting. During Elkins’ tenure, WKAR raised over $36 million during the university’s Capital Campaign and recently secured endowments to support experiential learning opportunities for students, education services and original content creation. In collaboration with MSU, Elkins led the effort to launch the first ATSC 3.0 experimental station licensed to a public media organization. Granted the FCC experimental license in June 2018, WKAR then launched the NextGen Media Innovation Lab to accelerate development of public service applications and NextGen business services for public broadcasters. Elkins holds a bachelor’s degree in telecommunication and a master’s degree in educational technology, both from MSU.
David Steward II is an Academy Award®-winning producer who owns and operates multiple companies with a mission of creating, discovering, and highlighting multicultural and diverse content in the entertainment industry. In 2018, Steward II founded Polarity, a holding company to oversee the operations of a portfolio of companies. The companies offer an array of content offerings including graphic novels and comics, animated television, streaming and cinematic features, and gaming. Key portfolio companies include Oni Lion Forge Publishing Group (the merged entity of The Lion Forge and the twenty-year comic book publisher Oni Press), the European publishing house Magnetic Press, the original content developer Illustrated Syndicate, the animation studio Lion Forge Animation, and Lion Forge Labs. In 2019, Polarity launched the Lion Forge Animation Studio, credited for producing the Hair Love short film, distributed by Sony Pictures Animation, and winner for “Best Animated Short” in the 2020 Academy Awards®. Additionally, this new entity has partnerships in the works to highlight animators of color, and an ever-growing stable of properties under the Lion Forge banner. Steward II graduated Magna Cum Laude from American University in 1998 with a B.S.B.A. in International Marketing. In addition, Steward II served as an executive board member for the local chapter of the Habitat for Humanity. He is a current board member of the St. Louis public media outlet, Nine PBS, and America’s Public Television Stations (APTS).
Following is background on the newly-elected board members:
Eric Easter
Eric Easter is a producer, writer and media executive, and CEO of BlackBox Digital Studios, which produces non-fiction multi-platform programming. The former CEO of streaming channel Black Heritage Network and co-founder of Urban News Service, Easter advises content-based media startups including streaming channels, Kweli TV and the upcoming content subscription service, Kurrent.
A strong advocate for public media, Easter is immediate past chairman of Black Public Media, which funds and develops documentary film and digital projects on the black cultural experience for PBS. A co-founder and board member of tech and media policy advocacy group, Full Color Future, he is also a board member of WHUT TV and a former member of the board of the Public Media Platform, a joint effort to build a digital resource of public media content.
The former chief digital officer and VP of entertainment for Johnson Publishing Company (JPC), Easter launched and served as founding editor-in-chief of EbonyJet.com (now Ebony.com). As head of its entertainment unit, Easter spearheaded the company’s push into documentaries, online radio and short form video. The partnership he established with Google led to the digitization of the archives of Ebony, Jet, Negro Digest/Black World and Ebony Jr.
Prior to joining JPC, Easter directed communications outreach for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (washingtonpost.com, newsweek.com, Slate) and served as executive director of Lawyers for the Arts, where he worked with content and music creators to navigate the impact of digital technology on intellectual property.
Easter is the creator and co-author of the bestselling book “Songs of My People” (Little Brown 1992), a historic book and international photo exhibition on the lives of African Americans. In collaboration with actor Edward James Olmos and journalist Manny Monterrey, he produced “AMERICANOS: Latino Life in the United States” (Little Brown, 1990), a book, exhibition and award-winning HBO documentary which launched HBO Latino.
Anthony Hayes
Anthony Hayes is the Chief Operating Officer and General Manager for New England Public Media (NEPM), the multiplatform, community-focused public media organization formed by the merger of WGBY TV and New England Public Radio. Based in Springfield, Massachusetts, NEPM serves as a trusted voice across the western New England region.
As General Manager of WGBY, Hayes played an instrumental role in joining his TV operations with NEPR through his strategic vision and collaborative leadership approach. The new partnership has created an integrated, innovative organization that provides audiences with a broad array of locally-produced programs and educational resources across all media — TV, radio, online and mobile. Through his leadership at WGBY and now NEPM, he guides the strategic direction of the organization and all of its internal operations, functions and policies, always with a focus on diversity and inclusion. Hayes has been actively engaged in the community as an ambassador for the mission of public media with civic leaders, national elected officials, and businesses, gaining support for NEPM to continually advance its services for audiences.
Before joining WGBY, Hayes served as Senior Vice President for Engagement at Connecticut Public in Hartford, which includes CPTV and WNPR, where he guided fundraising and sponsorship initiatives to develop new strategic opportunities and growth. Prior to that he was at WAMU-FM, American University Radio, where he oversaw the sponsorship sales division and designed and implemented integrated fundraising, communications and outreach strategies, locally and nationally, that increased stakeholder engagement. Earlier in his career he was with WETA, public TV and radio in Arlington, VA, where he managed corporate marketing and developed non-traditional revenue initiatives.
A native of Queens, New York, Hayes holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the New York Institute of Technology, and a Master of Arts in Media Entrepreneurship from American University.
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About APTS
America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) is a nonprofit membership organization ensuring a strong and financially sound public television system and helping member stations provide essential public services in education, public safety and civic leadership to the American people. For more information, visit www.apts.org.
Contact:
Stacey Karp
202-654-4222
skarp@apts.org