Thursday, Speaker Bios
Brian Stelter, Writer/Reporter, New York Times
Brian Stelter is a media reporter at The New York Times. He writes about television and the Web, both for the paper and for the paper’s blog Media Decoder. Before joining The Times in 2007, Stelter was the founder and editor of TVNewser, the pre-eminent blog about the television news industry. When not writing, Stelter enjoys traveling, singing karaoke and posting pictures to Tumblr.
Dr. Michael R. Heintze, Associate VP for Enrollment Management & Marketing, Texas State University-San Marcos
Michael Heintze, a native of Central Texas, has been involved in enrollment management and marketing for more than twenty-five years. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in history from Texas Lutheran University, a master’s degree in history from Texas State University and a doctorate in history from Texas Tech University. His primary areas of research are Southern United States and African American Studies. His professional career began in admissions at Texas Lutheran University in 1978. In 1985, he joined the admissions staff at Clemson University where he served as Director of Undergraduate Admissions. In 1998, Heintze was named Vice President for Enrollment Management at Texas Tech University, and in 2003 became Oklahoma State University System’s vice president for enrollment management and marketing. In 2005, Heintze returned to the Texas Hill Country when he was named Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management and Marketing at Texas State University. Areas reporting to him include Undergraduate Admissions, Financial Aid and Scholarships, the University Registrar, and University Marketing. Heintze has been active as an author and presenter, and has held leadership positions in a variety of professional organizations, including the College Board, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, Southern Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, and Southern Association for College Admission Counseling. He has served as a member of the College Board’s Southern and Southwestern Regional Councils. In 2007, Heintze was elected as a Trustee of the College Board.
Kim Gannon, Director of Alumni Relations, Texas State University-San Marcos
Kim Gannon is the director of Alumni Relations at Texas State University, a position she has held since October of 2010. In this role she is responsible for the overall management of the university-wide alumni program, serving over 140,000 alumni and 5,000 association members. She also serves as the Executive Director of the Texas State Alumni Association and provides direction and leadership for the organization which is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization created to support Texas State University-San Marcos. Gannon has nearly 23 years of alumni relations and management experience. Prior to her position at Texas State, she served as the Director of Alumni Relations at California Polytechnic State University, the Director of Alumni Relations & Annual Giving at Sonoma State University, the Director of Alumni Relations at the University of LaVerne and as the Assistant Director of Alumni Relations at Cal Poly.
Bryan Miller, Director of Marketing & Promotions, Bobcat Athletic
Bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience from working in professional sports marketing, Bryan Miller begins his sixth year at Texas State as head of the department’s marketing and promotion efforts. Miller rejoined the Texas State Athletics staff as director of athletic marketing and promotions in 2005 and was promoted to assistant athletic director in July 2007. He is responsible for expanding marketing initiatives within the university and San Marcos communities as well as throughout the I-35 corridor. He also oversees Texas State’s corporate partnerships, event presentation, department branding, promotions, community programs, website, spirit programs, and Bobcat Vision video productions. In 2009 Miller was given the responsibility of overseeing Texas State’s new ticket sales program and then in 2011 given oversight of licensing. In 2009, Miller oversaw Texas State’s rebranding campaign, which coordinated Texas State’s efforts to unify all marks, colors, uniforms, look and perception of the Bobcat brand. As part of the campaign Texas State established new colors, unified typography, redesigned all sport program uniforms and constructed a long-term agreement with sport apparel industry leader, Adidas to become the official outfitter for Bobcat Athletics. He is a 2008 graduate of Leadership San Marcos and a current member of the San Marcos Convention and Visitor Bureau board of directors where he serves as Vice-Chair and sits on the sports tourism and marketing committees. Miller holds both a bachelor degree in marketing (1998) and a master’s degree in science in sports administration (1999) from Texas Tech University.
Doug Hester, Assistant, Marketing & Promotions for Bobcat athletics
Doug Hester is beginning his second year as the assistant director of marketing and promotions at the Texas State University Department of Athletics. He is responsible for directing game operations at all home volleyball, softball, and men’s basketball events, and is also responsible for marketing efforts for these sports, including managing a staff of athletics marketing interns. In addition to directing game operations and marketing, he manages Texas State’s corporate partnership elements and activation, and works with student outreach across campus. He also helps facilitate community outreach programs, including overseeing the Texas State Athletics Kids First program, that gives area youth the opportunity to visit Texas State’s campus and attend a Bobcat Athletics event, in an effort to raise awareness and interest in getting a college education for the youth of Hays County. Hester’s previous experience includes working game day operations and equipment ma
nagement with the Austin Wranglers arena football team in 2008 and working as a member of the San Antonio Spurs Game Crew last season. He began working with Texas State Athletics as a marketing and promotions intern in March of 2010, before being promoted to his current position. Hester is also a member of the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club of Greater San Marcos.
Karla Leal / Anchor/Reporter / Telemundo Austin
Karla Leal joined the KEYE-TV/ Telemundo Austin team in October 2009 to be part of the first local Spanish newscasts of the Telemundo network in Austin, Texas. Leal is the main anchor for Telemundo Austin’s weekly newscasts at 5 p.m. & 10 p.m., and she complements her anchoring duties working on special reports for both KEYE & Telemundo Austin, helping with production duties, and she’s also Telemundo Austin’s weather forecaster. This year Leal was the selected by the International Center for Journalists to take part in a multimedia reporting boot camp. There, she has been acquiring tools to better expose and research projects with the help of digital media. Part of this program’s focus is to train those taking part in it to share what they are learning & for them to apply what they are learning in the field through hyper-local projects. Leal has a Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from Columbia College Chicago.
Lance Lawhon, President of New Covenant Consulting, Inc.
The business tale of a certain Lance Lawhon unfolds as a strange one. Originally he dreamt of emerging from the chrysalis of his Texas State years as a paragon of culture–an artist par-excellence or the burning forge of the greatest American novel ever. Yet it was not so. For years after his degree, he toiled in the wretched existence as the receiving manager of a furniture store that shall not be named. But not all was lost. After he gained freedom from his chains at the furniture store, he found employment at an association management firm. His task . . . his one and only task . . . sell a mailing list to callers. Soon, management tossed the odd advertising sales opportunity onto his plate, where it piled higher still. With the grace of the Divine he found the maze of magazine sales a tolerable task. And who could resist the delicious Carrot of Commission? Though his job was fraught with stability and pleasant co-workers, he longed for his identity as a creative dude. Thankfully, he was allowed to take writing classes at ACC while working. For a time, creativity and sales coexisted. In 2003, everything changed. Management forced him to work from home (after much strum and drag our protagonist loved the change). In 2004, he was laid off from his job. Thereafter, with many bumps and stressful nights, he had crafted his own company doing what he’d done for someone else: niche-marketing advertising sales. And so he traversed the straits of incorporation yet also working on his own creative work, the crafting of a novel.
Leslie Hancock, Freelance Communications Professional, Leslie Hancock Communications
Leslie Hancock has been a freelance communications professional since 1996. She has written thousands of pages of material for textbook publishers, business magazines, health care device manufacturers, and many other clients. Hancock calls herself a “Swiss Army Knife of Communications” because she is comfortable and experienced with almost every aspect of the field, including writing, editing, speaking, researching, and analyzing. Hancock is a member of Austin Chapter of the Association for Women in Communications, Freelance Austin, and the Social Media Club of Austin. She serves on the board of SMCAustin as Sponsorship Chair, and she serves as the Social Media Coordinator for Freelance Austin. Hancock also teaches college writing classes as an adjunct professor at Austin Community College.
Susan Lahey, Freelance Communications Professional, Fishpond Content
Susan Lahey knew she wanted to be a reporter from the age of 12 and started working for newspapers at the age of 17. She has been a business reporter, associate editor of a business/lifestyle magazine and freelancer for newspapers and local and national magazines. As a freelancer she also wrote white papers, web content and public relations materials and recently formed her content marketing company.
Julian Aguilar, Reporter, Texas Tribune
Julian Aguilar covered the 81st legislative session for the Rio Grande Guardian. Previously, he reported from the border for the Laredo Morning Times. A native of El Paso, he has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Texas and a master’s degree in journalism from the Frank W. Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism at the University of North Texas.
Jason Buch, Reporter for San Antonio Express-News
Jason Buch covers immigration and border affairs for the San Antonio Express-News. Buch graduated from Texas State in 2007, serving as editor of the University Star his senior year. After an internship at the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Buch took his first job at the Laredo Morning Times. There he covered federal courts and wrote about organized crime in the area. In 2009, Buch took a job on the business desk at the Express-News. In 2010, he moved to his current beat.
Hernán Rozemberg, Journalist, Fronteras-The Changing America Desk
at NPR
Senior Field Correspondent Hernán Rozemberg (San Antonio) is a veteran journalist with nearly a decade-and-a-half experience, most of that time spent reporting on immigration and border issues. He has traveled the length of the northern and southern U.S. borders on assignment. Born in Argentina, he’s a native Spanish speaker who has lived, worked or studied on five continents. He holds a degree in political economy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a degree in international relations from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.
Matt Waite, Professor, University of Nebraska
Matt Waite is a professor of practice at the College of Journalism and Mass Communication, teaching reporting and digital product development. He is also a graduate of the college, earning his Bachelors of Journalism in 1997. Prior to joining the faculty, he was the Senior News Technologist for the St. Petersburg Times of Florida and the principal developer of the Pulitzer Prize winning PolitiFact. In 2007, he began working as a hybrid journalist/programmer, combining reporting experience and web development to create new platforms for journalism. The first platform he developed was PolitiFact, a website that fact checks what politicians say. The site became the first website awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. After PolitiFact, he and the New Products Development Team built journalistic products involving entertainment listings, high school sports, local crime and real estate. In 2009, he co-founded Hot Type Consulting, a company that builds applications for media outlets. Hot Type has helped launch a major new non-profit journalism entity in the Texas Tribune and has produced award-winning websites for other clients.
Denise Malan, Investigative/Data Editor, Corpus Christi
Denise Malan has been data/investigative editor for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times since May 2010. Before that she worked for the paper as an investigative reporter for four years. Malan has covered illegal government contracts, controversial waterfront developments and South Texas political antics. Before joining the Caller-Times in June 2006 as a local government reporter, Malan covered city politics and education for The Morning News in Springdale, Arkansas. She has received numerous awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors groups in Arkansas and Texas as well as other organizations. She is originally from Pittsburg, Kansas, and attended the University of Arkansas.
Roy Bragg, Writer, San Antonio Express-News
Roy Bragg is an award-winning reporter, columnist and blogger at the San Antonio Express-News where he has worked since 1994. His specialties are breaking news, off-beat stories and narrative journalism social media. Prior to joining the staff at the Express-News, he worked on the state and suburban desks at the Houston Chronicle for 11 years. At the Express-News, he helped recruit, train and coach nearly 80 citizen bloggers for the newspaper’s City Brights project and produced an online training manual, Roy Bragg’s School For Blogging Scoundrels. He earned his BA in journalism from Texas A & M in 1980.
Stephen Arnold, President & Composer, Stephen Arnold Music
Often referred to as “the most heard–least know composer in America,” Stephen Arnold has composed the musical signatures for some of the world’s best-known media and consumer brands. As president of Stephen Arnold Music, the company he founded in 1993, he heads a full-service internationally acclaimed music production company with headquarters near Dallas, Texas, and studios in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Stephen Arnold Music is widely regarded as the leading producer of original music for the broadcasting industry with music compositions heard daily in over 100+million American homes. A pioneer and early evangelist of sonic branding–blending original music compositions with distinct tones and special audio effects to create a distinct auditory signature–Stephen Arnold has led his team at Stephen Arnold Music in the creation of a multitude of Emmy, Addy and Promax Gold award-winning musical compositions. Working with television networks, cable channels, television stations, advertising agencies and film studios, as well as with emerging broadband channels, mobile content providers and video game producers, the company’s client roster has included CNN, ABC News, CBS, FOX, as well as major advertisers including McDonald’s, Honda, Pizza Hut, Hershey and Kodak and most recently, a number of international sonic brands including Kuwait TV, India TV, TRK Ukraine, GSP Romania, Info TV (Slovenia), and Azteca TV (Mexico).
Paul Robinson, President and Chief Operating Officer for Apogee Results
Paul Robinson currently serves as the President and Chief Operating Officer for Apogee Results, The Online Marketing Authority, based in Austin, TX. Robinson is an experienced business leader with over 18 years experience building high performance, customer focused and profitable teams. He has a strong track record of leading business and revenue growth in both the B2B and consumer environments.Prior to joining Apogee Results, Paul held multiple senior level leadership positions in both sales and business operations for major national and international companies such as Dun and Bradstreet, MCI and MCI Worldcom. Paul specializes in organizational design and development, process improvement, strategic planning and innovative problem solving. Paul holds a B.S. in Business Administration and is currently completing his M.B.A. at St. Edwards University in Austin, TX.
Matt Stiles, Data Journalist, NPR
Matt Stiles is database reporting coordinator for NPR’s StateImpact project bas
ed in Washington, D.C. He most recently worked as a reporter and data applications editor at The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit public media organization in Austin. Stiles has also covered government, politics and law enforcement at both The Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle.
Ryan Murphy, Data Journalist, The Texas Tribune
Ryan Murphy is a data journalist with The Texas Tribune. Based in Austin, the Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that promotes civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics and government. Ryan maintains and develops the interactives found in the Tribune’s growing collection of data applications, conducts data analysis and currently is the primary updater of the government employee salary database. He first joined the Tribune as an intern during the summer of 2010, and was hired full-time July 2011. He graduated in 2010 with a degree in multimedia journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, where he served as the web editor for the student newspaper, The Daily Texan.