About – Black Public Media

MISSION STATEMENT

Black Public Media is committed to a fully realized expression of democracy. We support diverse voices by developing, producing and distributing innovative media about the Black experience and by investing in visionary content makers.

HISTORY

Founded in 1979 as the National Black Programming Consortium, Black Public Media (BPM), began because there was a need to encourage the development of films and television programs about the black experience that involved creative risks and addressed the needs of unserved and underserved audiences.

Dedicated to creating a pathway for funding and distribution for Black storytellers, BPM provided seed money for projects along with opportunities for distribution through PBS. For many filmmakers like Spike Lee, Julie Dash, Stanley Nelson, Shola Lynch, and Byron Hurt, BPM became a beacon of support at the earliest stages of their careers. Inspired by a spirit of excellence in stories about the Black experience, BPM’s thoughtful and compelling approach to selecting projects has resulted in supporting a host of award winning and nominated films. By 2006, with an expansion of funding support to include content exclusively for the web (Black Folk Don’t, Evoking the Mulatto, Ask A Muslim), BPM has been able to engage the public in necessary conversations about race, history, and social issues through short narratives and online properties.

Today, after nearly 40 years of historic work, BPM continues to leverage its expertise by investing in innovative content creators, and bringing dynamic programs about the Black experience that provoke, educate, and entertain on and off the screen.

Please join our regular mailing list here for updates on NBPC funding initiatives and projects. Join our social media conversation over at Twitter, or Facebook.

BLACK PUBLIC MEDIA STAFF

leslie fields-cruz

executive director

Leslie started at Black Public Media in 2001 managing the program development fund. In 2005, she was promoted to Director of Programming, was crucial to launching AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, Black Public Media’s signature series now entering its 10th season. In the fall of 2014, Leslie was appointed to serve as Black Public Media’s third Executive Director.

Prior to joining Black Public Media, Leslie was as a Program Coordinator at the Creative Capital Foundation and the Membership Director at the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF). She served on the board of Women Make Movies from 2005 – 2013.

Leslie lives with her family in Westchester County, where she spends her downtime teaching theater to youth at New Era Creative Space, a community center committed to using the arts as a tool for building a better society.

diane carr-joseph

director of operations

Diane Carr-Joseph serves as the Business Manager for National Black Programming Consortium. She is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the organization including human resources, financial forecasting, resource allocation, fund management, accounting and control. Diane holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting from Baruch College New York.

alexis aggrey

director marketing + engagement

Alexis Aggrey is the director of marketing and engagement at Black Public Media. She is a producer that has worked with public television, cable, and museum clients for more than ten years creating documentary content that educates and inspires. Alexis believes in the importance of public television and freelanced on projects with Black Public Media, PBS, SCETV, and Capital Concerts, Inc. Alexis’ public television experience ranges from long-form vérité documentary to managing digital campaigns, live event production, and segment producing. As a key member of the Peabody Award-winning 180 Days: A Year Inside an American High School production team, Alexis fell in love with public television and the network of stations across the country that supported the broadcast event and engagement campaign. In 2016, Alexis produced three galleries of media for the Smithsonian on African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. Responsible for more than 30 video installations, Alexiscollaborated with the curatorial team to produce mini-documentaries, large format video installations, media as artifact and scholarly interviews. Working on the National Museum of African American History and Culture was truly the project of a lifetime and an opportunity to contribute to a groundbreaking project.

lisa osborne

director of emerging media

Lisa Osborne believes that storytelling is a powerful change agent—for individuals, groups, and entire cultures. As Black Public Media's Director of Emerging Media Initiatives, she introduces independent filmmakers to the storytelling potential of virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and similar technology. Her current priority is increasing Black creative participation in the VR industry. Early in her career, Lisa helped Turner launch its first online magazine, ran adidas.com while based in Germany and The Netherlands, and supervised productions at the American Film Institute's incubator, working with ABC, NBC, MTV, ITVS, Cartoon Network, and PBS (Independent Lens, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Design:e2) to create interactive prototypes. After AFI, she worked independently for film and TV clients, plus created and taught a digital marketing class for Carnegie Mellon University. She earned a journalism degree from Northwestern University and has a strong interest in developing family, YA, science fiction, and fantasy content.

alisa norris

development associate

Alisa is a development associate for Black Public Media. With a background in corporate outreach and sponsorship, she will help build the foundation of the department as well as maintain relationships with funders, foundations, and private industry. Alisa is a DMV native and an alumnus of Virginia Commonwealth University (B.S. Mass Communications).

BLACK PUBLIC MEDIA BOARD

eric easter

chairman

Eric Easter is a producer, author, columnist and speaker who fights for strong public media. The CEO of BLQBOX Digital Studios — a start-up streaming network featuring non-fiction content on the global black cultural experience — and the chairman of NBPC’s board of directors, Mr. Easter is a highly successful creator and producer of multiplatform content with global audience reach. He is a proven leader and innovator in the strategic use of new and emerging digital platforms to create unique business models to drive revenue, build brands, influence audiences and reach new markets. He was most recently chief of digital strategy and VP of Entertainment for Johnson Publishing Company (Ebony Magazine). He also serves on the boards of WHUT, Public Media Platform, the NAACP’s historic CRISIS Magazine and the community advisory panel of AT&T.

quincy b. troupe

treasurer

Quincy B. Troupe — Senior Vice President, Supply Chain at The Boston Beer Company — is a consumer goods executive with more than fifteen years of supply chain management experience in the consumer food industry. Since 2013, he has served as Vice President, Manufacturing and Supply Chain Strategy, for the Pepperidge Farm division of Campbell Soup Company, Inc., and from 2010-2013 as Vice President, Supply Chain for Campbell North America. Prior to joining Campbell, Mr. Troupe served in various senior operational roles with Mars, Inc. of McLean, Virginia from 1997-2010.

guy-max delphin

After over twelve years of investment experience, Guy-Max Delphin opened Delphin Investments. Currently, he is the Senior Portfolio Manager heading Fundamental Research and Macro/Top-Down overlay. Mr. Delphin’s extensive experience includes the Yale-New Haven Health System as a leading Investment Strategist, Senior Analyst at Fortis Investments, and Senior Associate of Equity Research in the Small-Cap Industrials group, a division of Jefferies & Company, Inc. Mr. Delphin also held an Associate Analyst position within the Prudential Equity Group, LLC. Early in his career, Guy-Max functioned as a quantitative analyst in the Investment Product Design and Risk Management Group divisions of OppenheimerFunds, Inc. In 2012, he joined the NYC Special Education Collaborative, an organization working with charter schools advocating sustainable, high-quality special education programs. Mr. Delphin is on the Stony Brook Foundation Board of Trustees and serves as Chair of the College of Business Advisory Board. His philanthropic activities focus on education and healthcare. Mr. Delphin received a M.S. in Financial Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, in addition to B.S. degrees in both Applied Mathematics and Economics from Stony Brook University.

dawn porter

Dawn Porter is a documentary filmmaker whose first feature, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award in 2013 and later broadcast on HBO. The film was nominated for an Independent Spirit award and an Emmy. Dawn’s other films have appeared on PBS’s Independent Lens, OWN and the Discovery Channel. Her latest project, Trapped, explores the impact of laws regulating abortion clinics in the South. It will premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

darryl ford williams

Darryl Ford Williams is the Vice President of Content for WQED Multimedia in Pittsburgh. In her current role at WQED, Ms. Ford Williams oversees the creation, development, production and delivery of all new and existing local, national, international and syndicated television, radio, interactive and educational programming for WQED Multimedia. She led the effort for the PBS series American Masters, August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand serving as Executive Producer for this highly acclaimed documentary. Under her leadership, productions have taken WQED documentary teams across the country and abroad to Kenya, Poland, Vietnam and Austria for productions distributed to the PBS system. She also launched an informational television station for the Government of Bermuda.

Prior to her work with WQED, she was the sole proprietor of the Ford-Williams Agency, one of the first companies in the nation to focus on minority recruiting for major market television stations. Throughout her career, Ms. Ford Williams led content and program development for broadcast groups across the country. Her background as a television news producer and news manager is extensive. The following are just a few examples of that work: managing site producer for CBS News in its coverage of September 11—focusing on the Pennsylvania crash site of United Flight 93; coordinating producer for ABC-TV’sGood Morning America; executive producer at WJLA-TV in Washington, DC; news producer at KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh and WBAL in Baltimore.

Ms. Ford Williams’ work has been recognized with many awards, including several Emmy Awards in addition to numerous Emmy nominations. She has been honored by the Easter Seals Society, International Association of Business Communicators, and has won multiple awards from Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters.

steve hissam

With roots in the Midwest, Steve Hissam mixes creativity and strategic agility with solid business acumen to deliver quantifiable results in the ever-changing marketing space.

He began his career on Madison Avenue where he worked on a range of product categories from Mercedes-Benz automobiles to Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink. At Kirshenbaum & Bond he propagated the agency’s distinctive under-the-radar approach to advocacy marketing for clients such as Duckhead apparel and CNBC cable network.

His pioneering social media campaign for Hennessy cognac not only garnered industry awards and praise from The New York Times and Business Week, but also changed the way spirit brands are marketed.

Accepting an offer to work for a client, Steve spent the next phase of his career working in brand management. Leading blue chip companies like Remy Cointreau and LVMH toward creative resolutions across a myriad of business challenges, Steve’s expertise in equity-building initiatives and innovative integrated marketing campaigns have become his hallmark.

Steve established film as an event marketing platform for Grand Marnier, and created strategic partnerships with major and independent film studios and film organizations. Sponsorship of the New York Film Festival achieved exceptional consumer outreach and awareness through a comprehensive public relations program that generated over 100 million impressions.

To fill in knowledge and data gaps in the multicultural space, Steve employed an anthropological approach to insight mining and leveraged his expertise to improve the cultural competency of the organizations.

At Geometry Global, Steve served as a key player in integrating and elevating best-in-class shopper marketing process and practice into the new Mondelez organization and SC Johnson.

Working directly with both brand and field teams, Steve identifies strategic opportunities to reinforce brand equity and drive category growth across multiple classes of trade.

lesley norman

Lesley Norman served as the senior producer for the PBS special 180 Days: A Year Inside An American High School, where she was responsible for the production management, budget development and oversight, content supervision, legal and post-production oversight, and outreach and engagement development, creation and implementation. An experienced production executive, Ms. Norman served as the Executive Director of Filmmakers Collaborative and Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of JumpStart Productions. While at JumpStart, she was the Executive In Charge of the award-winning PBS series NOW. Ms. Norman also served as Vice President and Production Executive of David Grubin Productions and worked on award-winning productions such as The Secret Life of the Brain, Napoleon and Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided. She also worked as a grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Science Foundation, Ms. Norman has received numerous honors for creative achievement including Emmy awards for her work on NOW and the Edward R. Murrow award from the Overseas Press Club for her senior producing role on the film Child Brides, Stolen Lives. She was a panelist at Silverdocs, a program participant at RealScreen and produced several panels for the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers. Ms. Norman holds a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in government from Skidmore College.