Brian Bandell

Brian Bandell is the South Florida Business Journal's real estate editor who covers real estate, the business of health care providers and the business of higher education. He joined the Business Journal in 2004, and his coverage has won more than two dozen journalism awards, including a Green Eyeshade from the Society of Professional Journals in the Southeast U.S. and best business reporting from the Florida Press Club. He previously held roles at the Boca Raton News and the Associated Press. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Miami and is also a published author of science fiction and thriller novels who has spoken at the Miami Book Fair. 

Adam Bell

Veteran award-winning journalist Adam Bell is the business editor and the arts editor for The Charlotte Observer, where he has worked for the past 25 years in a variety of reporting and editing roles. Bell, who is based out of suburban Philadelphia, has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize five times. At the Observer, he oversees development and production of high-impact, exclusive content, and is an expert in using social media and analytics to engage and grow the online audience.

Donna Blankenship

Donna Gordon Blankinship is a longtime Seattle journalist at The Seattle Times, Cascade PBS, The Associated Press and about 25 years ago as editor of The Jewish Transcript. She is helping start a new Jewish publication in the Seattle area and looks forward to returning to the AJPA. 

Lisa Brennan

Lisa Brennan is a writer in San Gabriel, Calif. She worked for over 25 years as a reporter at various American Lawyer newspapers and magazines, Bloomberg News and freelanced for news outlets and magazines. Brennan also does publicity for non-profits.

Barri Bronston

Barri Bronston spent over 30 years as a staff writer at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans before making the switch to public relations in 2012. Currently, she serves as Editorial Writer at Tulane University, where she writes for the online newsletter “Tulane Today” as well as the Tulanian magazine. She is the author of “Walking New Orleans: 33 Historic Neighborhoods, Waterfront Districts and Recreational Wonderlands,” published by Wilderness Press.

Bronston has won awards from the Associated Press, the Louisiana Press Association and the New Orleans Press Club, and in 2006, she shared in the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. She lives in suburban New Orleans and has a grown daughter, Sally Bronston Katz, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband Michael and 18-month-old daughter Frankie.

Sharon Broussard

Project Manager, Former Editorial Writer for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, and a Former Reporter for the New York Daily News

David Y. Chack

David Y. Chack is a professor in The Theatre School at DePaul University in Jewish and Holocaust Theatre/Performance. He is also producing artistic director of ShPIeL and TEATRON Festival of Jewish Theatre: Chicago, Los Angeles, Louisville, New York. He is a theatre consultant for Taube Center for Jewish Life and Learning in Warsaw as well as the Illinois Holocaust Museum. A director, producer and dramaturg throughout the United States, he was the initiator and programs curator for the 2016 Museum of the City of New York’s major exhibition “New York’s Yiddish Theatre: From Bowery To Broadway.”

He has written for American Theater Magazine, The Forward, and Howl-Round/Emerson College. His B.F.A. is from Tisch School of the Arts/NYU and Circle-in-the-Square Theatre on Broadway; and he did Masters work at Tufts University, and Ph.D. work with his mentor, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, at Boston University. He is vice president of the Alliance for Jewish Theater, an international umbrella for Jewish theatre worldwide.

Dawn Fallik

Dawn Fallik is an associate professor at the University of Delaware who teaches STEM students how to communicate to the public. She was a full-time reporter for 15 years, most recently for the medical and science desk at The Philadelphia Inquirer. She continues to publish with NPR, The Washington Post and Neurology Today. She has lived in 14 states including Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, California and New York.

Thom Fladung

Thom Fladung is managing partner of Hennes Communications, one of the few firms in the U.S. focused exclusively on crisis communications and reputation management. Hennes, with offices in Cleveland and Akron, offers a wide range of crisis management and crisis communications services, including media training, litigation communications support, issues and crisis preparation, social media strategy and peer reviews of crisis plans. Hennes works with hundreds of corporations and manufacturers, law firms, government agencies, nonprofits, hospitals, public and private schools and more.

Thom spent 33 years in newspaper newsrooms, most recently serving as managing editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. He also was managing editor of The Akron Beacon Journal and The Detroit Free Press and editor of The St. Paul Pioneer Press, in Minnesota. Thom, a native of Canton, Ohio, is president of the board of the Press Club of Cleveland.

Lynda Gorov

Lynda Gorov is a long-time reporter and editor who has covered everything from urban affairs to Afghanistan. She served as The Boston Globe’s Los Angeles bureau chief and, more recently, was executive editor of a media website that investigated the high cost of health care and insurance coverage.

Roy Gutterman

Roy Gutterman is an associate professor of communications law and journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Marcy R. Harris

Marcy R. Harris worked as a news and features reporter at a daily newspaper, as a reporter and writer at several magazines, and as a litigator, before retiring to serve as president of her synagogue. She currently serves on the boards of several Jewish organizations and is an avid reader of the Jewish press.

Deborah Hirsch

Deborah spent more than 27 years as an entertainment editor and columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper. She edited daily and weekly copy, while also writing entertainment features and an arts column for the newspaper’s weekly Showtime section. In later years, as the newspaper transitioned its emphasis from print to digital, she also wrote and edited for the newspaper’s SouthFlorida.com entertainment website.

Through the years, Deborah has utilized her communications skills in volunteer work at public schools, her synagogue, Hadassah and the local Jewish Family Service.

A native Chicagoan, Deborah received her B.A. with honors from the University of Iowa in political science and journalism and attended the journalism master’s degree program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Deborah Kalb

Writer, Editor, Book Blogger

Leslie Katz

Leslie Katz is a Forbes senior contributor covering the intersection of science, technology and culture. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times and J: The Jewish News of Northern California. As CNET’s former longtime culture editor, Leslie led a team covering entertainment, offbeat consumer tech and awe-inspiring science. Her reporting highlights include visiting the set of HBO series “Silicon Valley,” investigating social media’s role in loneliness and exploring how geoscience is uncovering buried Holocaust history. She’s delighted to be a first-time Rockower judge.

Joel Magalnick

Principal Consultant for The Refined Story

Jonathan Make

Jonathan Make has served in a variety of volunteer roles at journalism associations and has judged many news awards. He's a member of two Jewish congregations, one in the Denver area and one in Cheyenne. In his day job, he's a managing editor at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (whose official views he does not represent in his volunteering). Before joining the USPTO in 2023, he was a journalist from 1992 to 2022. 

Tom Mashberg

Tom Mashberg is a longtime newspaper reporter and editor, former investigative editor and Sunday editor at the Boston Herald, and frequent contributor to The New York Times and the Boston Globe.

Josh Meltzer

Assistant Professor, Photo Journalism

Hugo H. Ottolenghi

Hugo H. Ottolenghi teaches undergraduate and graduate communications courses at Florida International University in Miami. He brings the knowledge and experience gained as a senior editor at two national news companies and as an online communications writer and editor to the classroom. Hugo sits on the board of Florida Bulldog, an independent, nonprofit news organization that produces in-depth and investigative stories on government, business and the environment.

Abraham (Avri) Ravid

Professor of Business/Finance, Yeshiva University

Larry Reisman

Reisman has been community editor and columnist based on Vero Beach since January 2014. He spent the previous nine years as TCPalm.com's and Treasure Coast Newspapers' first opinion and audience engagement editor. Before that, he was Press Journal editor for almost 11 years. During that time the newspaper won dozens of state and national awards. He came to the Treasure Coast in 1985 as a reporter before becoming the Press Journal's first editorial page editor. Reisman started his newspaper career in Pennsylvania with the Allentown Morning Call and Bethlehem Globe-Times. A graduate of Lehigh University, he was honored for his commitment to local public service with the E.W. Scripps Co.'s Bill Burleigh Award. Reisman has served as president of the Indian River Soccer Association and Literacy Services of Indian River County and worked on numerous other local boards, including United Way and St. Edward's School.

Neil Reisner

Neil Reisner is a journalism professor at Florida International University in Miami. In four decades as a newspaper reporter and editor, he covered corrupt officials, complicated public policies and hardball politics for the Miami Herald and other newspapers. He currently freelances for The New York Times for which he’s covered the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting, the Surfside building collapse, the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago and other major stories. He was a pioneer in database journalism, which he taught to hundreds of journalists around the country, Canada, the UK and Mexico. He taught at Rutgers and Columbia universities before coming to FIU. Reisner is currently working on a book, “Pythons in Paradise – How Burmese Pythons Have Ravaged the Everglades.” He started his career in Jewish journalism.

Arnie Rosenberg

Editor

Ellen Roteman

Ellen Roteman began her professional career as a journalist at the Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh. She later served in a wide range of writing and marketing capacities, most recently as director of marketing for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. Her work has encompassed writing and managing projects ranging from annual reports and brochures, to speeches and scripts, to newspaper and magazine features. She received numerous awards for her writing and for marketing campaigns she developed, and recognition by the International Association of Business Communicators, Women in Communications and the Jewish Community Centers Association.

Since “retiring,” she has authored five books for children, published by Menucha Publishers.

Michael Roteman

Michael Roteman has done extensive research on Jewish athletes and frequently writes and speaks on this subject. His series of 21 articles about the Greatest Jewish Athletes of the Twentieth Century was published in four different Jewish newspapers.

Mr. Roteman has also been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, and is the author of three baseball novels, “Phenom,” “Warning Track Power” and “Hometown Hero.”

A Pittsburgh native and a graduate of Duquesne University (BSBA & MBA), Mr. Roteman spent many years in Harrisburg, Pa., where he was a senior executive for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and where he also edited the agency’s in-house newspaper, From the Vine. In addition to his work for the government, Mr. Roteman also worked as a freelance television and radio announcer, and as a freelance sports writer. His play-by-play experience includes the Pittsburgh Pirates Class AA affiliate, the Harrisburg Senators, the Harrisburg Horizon minor league basketball team, the Harrisburg Patriots minor league football team, and hundreds of high school football and basketball games.

Mr. Roteman resides in both Lakewood Ranch, Fla., and Pittsburgh with his wife Ellen. He currently writes a weekly blog for his synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Lauren R. Rublin

Lauren R. Rublin is the senior managing editor at Barron’s. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Joel, and is active in her local Jewish community.

Iris Samson

Was previously an assistant editor of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle for almost 2 decades, now Iris Samson is a film producer.

Rebecca Shimoni-Stoil

Historian, Journalist and Professor at Clemson University

Stella Silverstein

Emily Soloff

Emily Soloff holds a Master's degree in journalism from Columbia University where she served as an adjunct professor in broadcasting. She also taught reporting and writing at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She subsequently worked in print journalism for 25 years. During that time she won several Rockower Awards. Starting in 1997 she joined the staff of the American Jewish Committee specializing in interreligious relations. She writes book reviews for various publications while enjoying retirement from 40++ hour work weeks. 

Jeffrey Spitz Cohan

Jeffrey Spitz Cohan worked for 18 years in print and broadcast journalism, most recently as a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

For 11 years, he was the executive director of Jewish Veg, a national nonprofit organization. He writes occasional articles for the Times of Israel Blogs and Medium.

Jeffrey lives in Pittsburgh, with his wife Kathryn, dog Maizie and cat Nala.

Andrea Stone

Andrea Stone is a nationally known journalist whose four-decade-long career started in the Bronx on her high school and college newspapers and eventually took her to 47 states and more than two dozen countries as a reporter for one of the largest news organizations in the country.

Stone has a B.A. from Herbert H. Lehman College (CUNY) and an M.S. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She spent the first seven years of her career working at trade publications and covering local news as a freelancer for newspapers and magazines in New York, Florida and Illinois, including the Gainesville Sun (Fla.), Newsweek and the Chicago Sun-Times. (Ill.). As a staffer, she was a newspaper reporter at The Riverdale Press (Bronx, N.Y.), the Daily Journal (Wheaton, Ill.) and the Lake Forester (Lake Forest, Ill.).

After working as a full-time freelancer at outlets such as National Geographic and Smithsonian Magazine and teaching journalism at American University in Washington, Stone moved back to New York to return to her alma mater as career director at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York.

Stone retired in 2019 and remains active as a freelancer, journalism contest judge and high school journalism mentor. She also volunteers at Ellis Island and the Museum of the City of New York.

Shira Vickar-Fox

Shira Vickar-Fox worked for decades in Jewish media. She was managing editor of New Jersey Jewish News, editor of Fresh Ink for Teens, and contributor to the New York Jewish Week (some at the same time!). She is a creative storyteller/writer at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Hamantashen are her favorite Jewish dessert and she loves shutting down her phone every Shabbat eve.

Ellen C. Weiman