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http://www.umassathletics.com/sports/w-baskbl/mtt/dacko_marnie00.html In her six seasons in as Head Coach of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Women's Basketball Team, Marnie Dacko, has coached an honorable mention All-American, the A-10 Defensive Player of the Year and saw the school's first WNBA draft pick when Jen Butler was selected by the Cleveland Rockers with the 15th overall pick. In 2004-05, UMass had two All-Rookie team picks as well as a third-team All-Conference and All-Defensive team player. 2005-06 saw the Minutewomen have two second-team All-Conference selections, while in 2007-08, Kate Mills and Pam Rosanio earned All-Conference recognition. Dacko arrived at UMass on April 11, 2002, after a successful seven-year stint at Cornell (N.Y.) University. During her tenure with the Big Red, Dacko became the winningest women's basketball coach in Cornell history with 80 victories, including a school-record 15 wins in the 2000-01 season. Dacko directed the school to the only two winning seasons it had ever enjoyed in the Ivy League during her last two years with back-to-back 8-6 marks. At the Ithaca, N.Y., school, Dacko developed 10 All-League players, two academic All-Ivy picks, one Ivy League Rookie of the Year and four Ivy All-Rookie team selections. As a rookie head coach in 1995-96 Coach Dacko earned Ivy League Coach of the Year honors. Coach Dacko went to Cornell after serving as an assistant coach at Northwestern University for 11 years. At the Big Ten Conference, Evanston, Ill., school, she coached 25 All-Big 10 players and 20 academic All-Conference selections, one Big 10 Player of the Year, a Kodak All-American, a Champion All-American and a pair of Street and Smith's All-Americans. The Wildcats won the Big 10 title in 1989-90 with a 24-5 record and made four NCAA Tournament appearances (1987, 1990, 1991 and 1993) during her tenure. In Dacko's 11 seasons as an assistant to the highly regarded head coach Don Perrelli, Northwestern built a national powerhouse. Prior to moving to Northwestern, Dacko was an assistant basketball coach under Perrelli at Big East conference St. John's University from 1979-84. During her five seasons working at the Jamaica, N.Y., school, the Express recorded a 118-43 (.733) mark, including 102 victories during the last four years when the program made four straight postseason trips, three of which were to the AIAW or NCAA national tournaments. St. John's won the Big East Conference Tournament twice, and set a school record with 27victories in 1982-83 when it captured the league's first regular-season title. Dacko began to set her mark as a patient builder and rebuilder of programs when she started the softball program from scratch at St. John's in 1981. As head coach, she guided it to a 39-45 mark in four seasons at the helm, including the 1982 NYSAIAW softball title. The 1978 Southern Connecticut State graduate began her successful basketball career while in high school, leading her Trumbull, CT team to the state championship in 1974. In four seasons at Southern Connecticut, Dacko scored 1,306 points (14.7ppg) and grabbed 689 rebounds (7.7 rpg). Inducted into the Southern Connecticut State Hall of Fame in 1996, she led the Owls to a 72-27 record, four top 10 finishes and four trips to the AIAW Division I national tournament as a player. Dacko averaged team-highs of 17.2 points and 9.6 rebounds as a junior, as SCSU finished 20-6 overall and sixth at the national tournament. In her senior season, the Owls went 19-11 and finished fifth at the AIAW national tournament behind her 17 points and seven rebounds per game. In her final season of college ball Dacko was a finalist for the prestigious Margaret Wade Trophy, awarded annually to the nation's top women's basketball player. Upon graduation, she ranked as the top scorer and rebounder in school history. Dacko was also inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2006, the fourth class of inductees. While basketball was her main focus at Southern Connecticut, she also earned three letters in softball and two in volleyball. After graduating from Southern Connecticut State, Dacko began her collegiate coaching career at the University of Wisconsin as an assistant coach in 1978-79. A graduate of Trumbull (Conn.) High School, Dacko was a 1990 inductee into the Connecticut Women's Basketball Hall of Fame and is a member of the Trumbull High School Hall of Fame. When not coaching or recruiting Dacko plays golf, and enjoys other out of doors activities. She currently resides in Amherst, Mass. |
August 2009 – Marnie Dacko July 2009 – Evelyn Harris Evelyn Harris has dedicated her voice to giving depth and meaning to an extensive array of musical styles, creating stirring interpretations of African-American traditional and contemporary material, freedom songs from around the world, jazz, pop, rock ‘n’ roll and blues. Her 18-year tenure with the internationally acclaimed Black women’s acapella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock guided her studies as an artist, performer, arranger and composer. Her compositions include State Of Emergency (1988 Grammy nomination), and My Lament. With Sweet Honey, she recorded and co-produced ten albums on the Warner Brothers, Redwood, and Flying Fish labels. Evelyn relocated to the Pioneer Valley in Fall 2002. She has directed the choir at the North Hadley Congregational Church, taught at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School and served as vocal instructor during the Rock ‘n’ Roll Girls’ Camp at the Institute for the Musical Arts in Goshen, MA. Evelyn currently directs “The Kuumba Women’s Chorus” at the Northampton Community Music Center and workshops with teenage mothers in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She has enthusiastically shared the stage with The Safari East Jazz Trio, Hip-Hop performance poet Lenelle Moise, singer-songwriter Pamela Means and piano phenom Miro Sprague. Earlier collaborations include a diverse spectrum of artists like Odetta, Holly Near, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, June Jordan, Sonia Sanchez, Horace Boyer, Charles Neville, Art Steele and Jane Sapp. Evelyn tells a story of the struggle for peace and justice through songs that confess the reveries and fears of a people intimately affected by violence and hatred. She is widely respected for the mastery of her craft and her mentorship of young musical talent. “My life is full with abundant manifestations of good. Singing is my giving back with thanks and praise.” |
August 2008 – Kathleen Kamping http://www.mainstreetmotionmedia.org/ Founder and Board President, Main Street Motion Media Kathleen Kamping, a seven-year resident of Northampton, brings more than 30 years experience in the film industry, start-up marketing and branding expertise to this initiative. Unlike many non-profits, Main Street Motion Media will have an an earned income of individual and group ticket sales. Ms. Kamping has a proven track record in developing market-driven sales programs and in particular understands the strategy of maximizing yield where inventory is lost if not sold the same day. While her private sector experience is extremely valuable to MSMM, Ms. Kamping has also donated her time and resources to the Northampton Independent Film Festival, the Academy of Music, WFCR and more recently the Fisher Home Hospice in a strategic planning/fundraising capacity. Ms. Kamping championed the development of the most successful single event fundraiser for the Children's Aid Society Foundation of Toronto, raising more than $250,000 (in 1989). In addition to her for-profit and nonprofit success, her background in film financing, production and broadcast programming, as well as distribution in the U.S. And internationally, give Main Street Motion Media strength across all aspects of film arts. As an Executive Producer, Ms. Kamping faces the challenge of raising substantial funds from network, specialty and cable broadcasters, from foundations and government agencies, and created partnerships to finance each film project from the ground up, while taking full financial responsibility for each independent production. Above all, Ms. Kamping understands the need to build bridges – that in a world of hard-to-get financing and shared fundraising resources, the relationships created between community organizations, staff and Board are central to the achievement of Min Street Motion Media's mission. |
July 2008 – Sabrina Rodriguez http://www.wggb.com/Global/story.asp?S=8366022&nav=menu1460_8 Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, ShineFest emcee Sabrina Rodriguez, WGGB’s Weekend Anchor, came to Western Massachusetts in February 2007. News is her passion and Connie Chung her childhood hero. Since joining WGGB, Sabrina has covered a variety of stories, including an investigative piece into the Springfield school security systems, where she went undercover as a high school student. The story motivated the schools to step up security and earned her an award from the Associated Press. As the station's Health Reporter, Sabrina informs viewers about the medical breakthroughs, treatments, and programs that exist in the area. Before coming to WGGB, Sabrina honed her journalism skills as an anchor and reporter for the CBS affiliate, KCBY-TV in Coos Bay, Oregon. Currently, she anchors abc40’s weekend news at 6 and 11 p.m., and reports throughout the week. |
August 2007 – Kelsey Flynn http://www.wrsi.com/Kelsey-Flynn/3222248 Kelsey Flynn makes her living as an actor, a writer, and a DJ for WRSI the River, 93.9FM. She began her theatre career performing stand-up in such clubs as Caroline's, Gotham Comedy Club and Catch a Rising Star in New York as well as the Milky Way Lounge and Lizard Lounge in Cambridge. Since leaving stand-up, Kelsey has performed on stage with the Hampshire Shakespeare Company, the Majestic Theater in West Springfield, PaintBox Theater and Queens Shakespeare in New York. She also was an original member in the Villa Jidiots, the Pioneer Valley's premiere comedy improv group. This winter Kelsey will perform in her original comedy "Santacide", co-written with nationally syndicated cartoonist Hilary Price.
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July 2007 – Julie Akeret http://www.womenarts.org/network/profile_23.html Akeret is the producer-director of several documentary films. Not Just Garbage (1986), about an artist-in-residence at the New York Sanitation Department, premiered at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and won Best Documentary Short in the USA Film Festival (1986) and first place in the National Educational Film Festival (1986). In Defense of Animals (1990), about Australian philosopher and animal rights activist Peter Singer, premiered at the Public Theatre in New York and won first place at the Birmingham International Film Festival (1989) and a Silver Cindy Award from the Association of Visual Communicators (1989). Looking for Common Ground (1997), about the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights at a rural Massachusetts high school, received funding from Frameline and aired on several of PBS affiliates, including WGBH Boston, WHYY Philadelphia, and WNET New York. She was recently awarded a Massachusetts Media Fellowship by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. |
June 2007 – Ann Cieko http://www.umass.edu/communication/faculty_staff/ciecko.shtml Professor Ciecko is an international cinema educator and academic researcher, critic and arts/culture writer, and curator. She has received a 2008 Fulbright Research Scholar award in Film Studies in Jordan. She is editor of Contemporary Asian Cinema: Popular Culture in a Global Frame (Berg, 2006). As an accredited journalist, she has covered the Fukuoka, Pusan, Dubai, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, and Cairo international film festivals, and has published interviews with Asian and Arab filmmakers. She curates the annual fall film series, New Asia Cinema and Arab Cinema Panorama, on alternate years. An experienced arts administrator, she is dedicated to bridging the classroom and the community with multicultural public programming, community arts, and related service-learning initiatives. Her writing has appeared in the following academic journals and arts publications: Afterimage, Asian Cinema, Asian Journal of Communication, Cinema Journal, Cinemaya, Film Quarterly, History, Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, Literature/Film, Quarterly, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Spectator: Journal of Film and Television Criticism, Tamkang Review, Velvet Light Trap, and others; and she has given invited talks and workshops on Asian and Asian diaspora cinema and participated in numerous academic conferences and symposia in the U.S. and abroad. Her current and ongoing research interests include global cinema (especially popular Asian cinema, pan-Arab film culture and national cinemas in Arab countries, African cinema and Afropop music, international co-productions, diasporic audiences); international transmedia stardom and celebrity; intercultural film/video and multimedia installations by women; and international film festivals. She is a core faculty member in the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies and Coordinator of the new Graduate Certificate in Film Studies. |
Winter 2006 – Kate LaMay–Miller http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=982257070 LaMay-Miller owns and operates her own media production company, Multi Media Impact, based in Northampton, MA with studio facilities in Easthampton, MA. The company provides communication strategies and marketing solutions for business and non-profits in addition to creative production services for the web, television, radio, print and other internal media venues. Kate has worked in the communication and marketing fields for over twenty years with companies and institutions like the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, AT&T, American International College, The Department of Environmental Management, Community Enterprises Inc., Holyoke Medical Center, Clapp Memorial Library, The 3 County Fair, Community Resources for People with Autism, the University of Massachusetts, and many other regional and national businesses
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August 2006 – Janice Dompke http://janiced.net/Bio.html
That's because singing isn't just about entertaining others. It's not simply a commercial endeavor, although increasingly she makes a living at the microphone with a huge repertoire of covers in several distinct genres. Dompke's vocals hark back to the 1940s and the popularity of torch songs — the songs of unrequited love. And for Dompke, love infuses her approach to music. "It's like an expression of love," says Dompke, the daughter of parents who similarly integrated song into the lives of their family. Her parents, she says, "used to fight in song." Music, she says, is "good for expressing all the passions." * * * As a college student at St. Norbert College in DePere, WI, Dompke turned her attention to theater, an experience that deepened the appreciation she has for performing the music. "It's not that I gave up singing," she says — the theater experience "gave me a back story for my singing. It made me create a story for each song I sing. It helped me bring that out more, and it made it more personal." "I usually sing to one person — the person who that song is about for me," Dompke says, as her languid vocals of Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going on?" confidently surge through the stereo. Sometimes the object of her singing is a "collage of a person." From there, Dompke studied at HB Studio in New York City, an acclaimed school for professional theater studies. There, she took voice classes from the real pros and "got [her] confidence up." She describes classes so intense and so abstract that "it was like someone trying to explain the color blue." * * * In front of the microphone, Dompke feels especially at home with performing the work made popular by singers in the 1940s, singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Kay Starr, Blossom Dearie, and Dinah Washington. "A lot of those songs I knew," she says. "My mom used to sing those songs." She also points out that those songs were written to be performed, with attention paid to the vowels and vocal range, and Gayle Swymer, her voice teachers at HB Studio, "wouldn't let you sing anything [written] after the 1960s." "When I take apart a song to learn it technically, I first sing only the vowels," Dompke says, giving one example of a love song from the 1940s sung this way — called "singing legit” — with hypnotic melodies of one vowel segueing into the next, a sound at once alien and recognizable as the linguistic scaffolding that holds up the normal words that the casual listener will hear tumble out of a vocalist's mouth without so much as a second thought. "I love torch songs," Dompke says. "I guess it's the yearning, the wanting-to-be-seen sort of thing." "I like happy songs, too," she says, and notes her role as the lead vocalist in the band Shakin' All Over. "If anyone had ever told me that I'd be singing rock, I'd have told them, 'You gotta be freakin' kidding me." It took her a while to "get into it," Dompke says, "but I did learn it, and the songs got sassier and more fun, and now I really enjoy that kind of music."
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Winter 2005 – Carlyn Saltman Documentary filmmaker and video biographer Carlyn Saltman has a Master’s degree in Documentary Filmmaking from the highly selective National Film and Television School in London, England, and a B.A. in History from Mount Holyoke College. While on staff at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health, she produced videos with health messages for African audiences in collaboration with local specialists. She filmed her first cultural documentaries in Africa in 1982. Carlyn’s style is marked by an unobtrusive photojournalistic approach that brings together the cinematic storytelling of an artful eye, an open heart, and a curious mind, with state-of-the-art technical standards. In addition to other honors, two of her films are included in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection. |
Summer 2005 (Aug?) – Kathy Tobin
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/kathy_tobin_leaving_abc40_to_b.html?category=Arts/Entertainment+category=Springfield Kathy Tobin was named News Director at WGGB-TV in 1997, becoming the first woman News Director in this area. Since taking that position, Kathy has led abc40 to a new level of coverage. Under her leadership, abc40 was awarded for two consecutive years Associated Press’ “Newscast of the Year.” In year three abc40 was awarded “News Station of the Year.” Since then the News Department took home three prestigious Edward R. Murrow Awards: In 2002, for “News Documentary”on Habitat with Humanity’s work in Greater Springfield; In 2004 for “Continuing Coverage” of the Molly Bish story and “Overall Excellence.” Prior to being named News Director, Kathy was a News Anchor and reporter at abc40. She covered the campaign trail, the Pope John Paul’s first visit to the United States and reported from Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. Kathy is most proud of the highly successful television health franchise that she created and produced for almost ten years. Kathy has been honored by many civic and business groups including the National Organization for Women, the Young Business and Women’s Professional Group, The Springfield Girl’s Club, The YWCA, The MA Commission for Rehabilitation. Currently she serves on the Board for the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce the Board of Directors for the Willie Ross School for the Deaf and Cathedral High School in Springfield.. A graduate of Emerson College with a Bachelor of Science in Broadcast Journalism and Communications, Kathy received an honorary Doctorate Degree in Business Administration from Nichols College in 1998. She and her husband Joseph Martin make their home in Springfield with their three sons.
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Winter 2004 – Jill Connolly http://www.jillconnolly.com/ Jill Connolly, Signature Voice for Boston PBS, is a full-time professional voice-over talent with more than a dozen years of experience, working with some of the best and brightest people in the business. She also has 20 years of experience as a vocalist in many styles of music. Since 1990 the base of her voice-over business has been in Boston, MA where she is best recognized as an ongoing Signature Voice for PBS' flagship television station: WGBH Boston. Jill now also works from her own recording studio in the western part of the state, with clients from all over the country.
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July 2004 – Rachel Mueller – Lust http://www.wondrance.com/mueller-lust.htm Rachel Mueller-Lust, an ABC Network TV vice president, is a former Professor of Psychology at Oberlin College and has mentored many young women in academia and business. For 15 years, first as a psychology professor and then as a market and media research executive, Rachel used psychology and research skills to further the knowledge of human behavior in education and business settings. As a student of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, her early interest in psychology focused on how people understand language in social settings. Rachel went on to study Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics (the Psychology of Language), earning a M.S. and Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz. While at the University, Rachel started her teaching career and then continued her academic career as assistant professor of Psychology at Oberlin College. Seeking to grow and further apply her interest in understanding people to a business context, Rachel moved to New York City and worked in the market and media research industry for over 10 years. She worked at Eric Marder Associates, a consulting market research firm and then moved to Nielsen Media Research for 9 years. As Vice President, Methodology Research at the television-ratings firm, Rachel developed numerous strategies for improving the methods used to measure television audience and was a featured speaker at numerous professional and academic conferences, associations and Universities. She later moved to Media Metrix, where she was Vice President, Research for the Worldwide Internet and Digital Media Measurement firm. Rachel received her formal coaching training from the Coaches Training Institute and is certified as a professional coach (CPCC). Since launching Wondrance Coaching and Consulting, Rachel has been able to apply years of leadership, teaching, and mentoring skills as well as her excellent organization and project management skills to help people make the changes they want in their own life. Rachel helps people to reinvent their life by giving them the support and feedback that enables them to pursue their dreams. Rachel has coached people of all ages, at all stages in their life from all over the United States on how to make career changes, be better sales and marketers, improve their heath and fitness program, start and build a new business, reduce clutter in their work and home life and brainstorm ways to get what they want out of life. Her coaching style is based on providing a tremendous amount of support and warmth while holding high expectations for reaching goals. Rachel believes that people can have all that they want in their life if they have the support and desire to achieve those goals.
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Sally Clark http://www.greatlakesfilmfest.com/Past%20Fests/2002/Films/cowgirls.htm New York producer Sally Clark is a member of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership in Women. She recently produced a documentary on cow girls and is currently developing a piece about young women and the vote. Sally Clark was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She graduated from l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris and from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism where she won the John M. Patterson Award for best documentary short. Before launching Cowgirl Productions, Inc. in July 2000, Sally spent four years in France working in documentary video production on a variety of topics--from the private lives of cult leaders to the environment's effect on human reproduction. She has also worked for ABC News Turning Point, WNET's City Life, and CNN FN.
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