IVOH Core Team

Roberta Baskin

Roberta Baskin has recently accepted a newly created position at the
Inspector General's office in Health and Human Services as Senior
Communications Advisor. The opportunity developed following a series of investigative reports she did on a chain of dental clinics that exposed small children to unnecessary and painful treatments in a scheme to profit from Medicaid. Currently, she's working on a Frontline investigation about for-profit education to air on PBS next year.

Roberta has won more than 75 journalism prizes, including three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Awards, two George Foster Peabody
Awards, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Radio-Television News Directors Edward R. Murrow Award, and numerous Emmys. But her proudest achievements are righting wrongs, changing laws, and transforming the way companies do business.

During her distinguished journalism career, Baskin has served as the Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity, the senior Washington correspondent for "NOW with Bill Moyers," senior investigative producer for the ABC News magazine 20/20, chief investigative correspondent for the CBS News magazine 48 Hours, and contributed special reports to the CBS Evening News. Roberta began her career as an investigative reporter in Chicago and Washington D.C.

Eli Furie Bleich

Eli F. Bleich is President and CEO of mediagroup inc., a New York-based motion picture production company. He has more than 35 years working in the development and production of documentary film. In 1964, he began his career with CBS News in New York, with projects such as "The Warren Commission Report," with Walter Cronkite, and "In the Pay of the CIA" with Mike Wallace. He joined Charles Guggenheim Productions in 1968, and in 1980 was named creative director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential campaign. In a later move to LA he worked for ABC Television. Currently he is working on a theatrical documentary on the plight of wounded, returning soldiers from Iraq.

Bleich holds among his many awards the U.S. Cine Golden Eagle, a Gold Medal from the Atlanta Film Festival, and a Golden Mike Award from the National Association of Broadcasters. He has also received the NYIFF "Best Documentary Director" Award. He was producer and editor of Martin Scorcese's "The Big Shave," which received the L'Age d'Or Prize in Brussels.

Wendy Bromley Bodden

Wendy is a media and communications consultant, strategist and producer. She is a veteran marketing and corporate sponsorship executive with over 20 years experience developing and leveraging strategic partnerships, primarily within the public television and IMAX industries. She has forged alliances between Fortune 500 companies and award-winning programs including PBS' Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, and Charlie Rose, and the IMAX fim and science initiative, Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France. Current projects include an IMAX film and multi-media initiative on genetics and a multi-media, ecological oratorio.

In the strategic and communications arena, Wendy has worked with emerging non-profits and social entrepreneurs. She produces public engagement programs integrating various forms of media with dialogue and also designs and facilitates strength-based, personal development programs. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association. Wendy received her B.S. in English and studied for a MFA in Theatre Directing at Ohio State University. She received a Certificate in Appreciative Inquiry through Weatherhead School of Management. 

Shireen Chada

Shireen was born in India and educated in both India and the United States. After graduate work in Civil Engineering, she became aware of the profound sorrow in the world and began to search for a purpose to dissolve that sorrow. The search led her to the Brahma Kumaris (www.bkwsu.org) in Tampa Bay. Her experiences with the Brahma Kumaris touched her so deeply that she chose to dedicate her life to the spiritual path and to creating a new spiritual story for humanity.

Shireen coordinates the activities of the Brahma Kumaris (www.bkwsu.org) in Tampa Bay. Until recently she was on the faculty of the College of Engineering at University of South Florida. Besides teaching and administrative duties, she manages the Brahma Kumaris initiative, Celebrating Human Greatness (www.humangreatness.org) - the 30th anniversary celebration initiative of the Brahma Kumaris' service in the U.S. The initiative is designed to awaken the experience of one's own innate qualities of greatness and to appreciate each other's greatness.

Rita Cleary

Rita Cleary is a social entrepreneur whose background encompasses over twenty years of experience in organizational and community development. She is founder of The Learning Circle, a company that represents thought leaders in the management sciences who offer innovative methodologies in organizational learning, sustainability and appreciative inquiry.

Rita is also Founder of The Visions Of A Better World Foundation. The Foundation was created in 1994 as a result of a global dialogue held at the United Nations. The Foundation is dedicated to igniting the spirit of all people to conceive and make real their visions for a better world. In cooperation with other national, professional and grass roots organizations, the Foundation seeks to build bridges across sectors and cultures through dialogues and appreciative inquiry to generate collaborative learning for the common purpose of creating a better world.

Since 1999 the Visions Of A Better World Foundation worked in partnership with Case Western Reserve University and the Brhama Kumaris World Spiritual Organization to launch and sustain the Images and Voices of Hope Global Conversation Project. This project convenes conversations of media professionals in all parts of the world to explore the question of how the media could become more of an agent of world benefit.

From 1992 to 1995, Rita served as a member of the Governing Council of the MIT Organizational Learning Center. In 1995 she served as a Founding Design Team Member in the creation of the Society for Organizational Learning (SOL).

Randi Fiat

Randi Fiat has been working at the intersection of art, design, innovation and social consciousness for the last 25 years. From 1984 through 2008 she was president of Randi Fiat & Associates, an agency that represented visual artists and designers from around the world. From 2008-2010 she worked with Bruce Mau Design as Director of Business Development in the U.S. She is currently working on creating a new model for Transformational Leadership Training Programs within corporations and business schools using art and culture to frame a vision for an ethical, sustainable World in the 21st century.

Lois Fiore

Lois Fiore is a journalist by osmosis. For 35 years she worked at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, absorbing as much as possible. For the first 20 of those years she was assistant to Curators James C. Thomson, Jr., Howard Simons, and Bill Kovach. Among her responsibilities was organizing weekly seminars, where influential academics, writers, journalists, artists, and generally interesting or funny or smart people met with the Nieman Fellows for intimate and informal conversation.

For 15 years she was assistant editor of Nieman Reports-working at various times on all aspects of the magazine-for five years with editor Robert Phelps and 10 with editor Melissa Ludtke. Fiore took early retirement from the foundation in 2009.

Along with her work at the foundation, Fiore has been a painter for more than 30 years, living in a loft/studio at the Brickbottom Artist Building in Somerville, Massachusetts. She's curated (and had work in) shows in the building's gallery, participates in the annual open studios and in group shows, and has had solo exhibitions.

Fiore began her career wanting to be a music critic and remains intensely interested in contemporary music.

Nancy Callaway Fyffe

Nancy is the President of Fyffe Callaway & Associates, a communications consulting firm specializing in broadcast media, marketing and production. She has had a distinguished career in television as a producer/director, feature producer, station manager, documentary maker, and on-air talent. She began her career in Indianapolis where a documentary series she produced won a Peabody Award. Moving on to Kansas City and then to WLS-TV in Chicago, she directed newscasts, Emmy-winning documentaries and special news broadcasts and talk shows. She also worked for ABC Network in Sports and for Good Morning America. In 1981, she was recruited by ABC News in New York to work for News Special Events. While in New York she also created and directed the award-winning series, "Signature" for CBS Cable. She has worked as a movie script scout for Gannaway Films. She also was station manager for WTIU-TV in Bloomington, IN where she developed a regional center for television and video production. Her recent documentary "Columbus, Different by Design" aired on PBS stations and was distributed internationally. Nancy is a graduate of Indiana University. She did graduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College and at the University of Southern California.

Linda Gerber

Linda Gerber is a writer and producer who heads her own production company in Chicago, Linda Gerber Productions, Inc. Thirty years in the field, she has worked as director, producer, reporter, writer, creative consultant, supervising editor, and technical director on a wide range of assignments for television news and entertainment, and educational publishing. At WLS-TV (ABC 7) for nine years, Linda started as associate producer for an Emmy award-winning children's program and moved to the newsroom, editing award-winning news documentaries and investigative reports. After earning a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University, Linda started her own production company. She has been part of the Images and Voices of Hope conversation since it began 10 years ago.

Veronica McHugh

Veronica was born and educated in Ireland. While working for the Civil Service she developed a love of travel which took her to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America and the Caribbean. From this emerged an interest in inner travel and in London in 1976 her search led her to the Brahma Kumaris. She was one of the first western students of this World Spiritual University. The intense experiences there in meditation, coupled with a means to serve, were most compelling. After spending six years at the European headquarters she came to the United States to establish teaching centers in Florida; first Tampa and then Miami. She now coordinates the Brahma Kumaris work throughout the state. Besides, teaching and administrative duties that involves world wide travel, she also helps maintain the international Brahma Kumaris website which can be found at www.bkwsu.org. She is Director of BKWSU Florida

Gayatri Naraine

Gayatri Naraine has been a part of Images and Voices of Hope since its inception, working as one of the main organizers of the first IVofHope Conversation in New York City in 1999 and helping to facilitate conversations in Africa, Malaysia, and various locations in the United States.

Naraine serves as the Brahma Kumaris' Representative to the United Nations in New York, and in that capacity is responsible for exploring the connection between the social and humanitarian and spiritual domains of public and private life. She is also part of the design team for the Call-of-the-Time Dialogues, a global leadership dialogue and has spent the last ten years exploring the transformational depth of silent reflection and the impact this has on the actions we take for world benefit.

Kathleen Pearce

Kathleen Pearce is a filmmaker and journalist who has spent 25 years producing and directing non-fiction films for national and international television. Pearce is a principal in Mediagroup Films, a documentary production company focusing on environmental, social and humanitarian issues.

Pearce's first independent feature length documentary, Fast Lane Summer is now in both theatrical and DVD distribution. Pearce is currently developing a film about the legendary comedy writer, director and producer Leonard Stern, and a documentary called Wounded which examines the psychological effect of traumatic head injuries on soldiers of war.

Pearce has a B.Sc. with Honors in Journalism from the University of Maryland, and is a member of Omicron Delta Kappa Honor and Leadership Society. She is currently back at the University of Maryland getting a masters degree in social work. She now serves on the managing team of Images & Voices of Hope, and on the advisory board of Women in Film and Video, Washington, D.C. 

Georgia Popplewell

Georgia Popplewell is a media producer, journalist, editor and blogger from Trinidad and Tobago. She has worked in independent television in the Caribbean since 1989 and has written extensively on culture, music, film and sport. In 2005, she started Caribbean Free Radio, the Caribbean's first podcast. Popplewell is Managing Director of Global Voices, an international citizen media project founded at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  

Popplewell started her media career in 1989 at the pioneering television production company Banyan, where she developed and produced Body Beat, a magazine series on AIDS targeted at adolescents. She is also a founding member of Earth Television and has worked in the US as an Associate Producer on the Nickelodeon pre-school series Gullah Gullah Island. She has also been music editor at Caribbean Beat magazine and editor of The Ticket, a film and entertainment magazine. Popplewell has also contributed to international publications such as The Rough Guide to World Music and National Geographic Latin America.  

Popplewell has also been an active participant in film industry planning and policy development in Trinidad and Tobago for the past several years. In 1995 she curated the Carifesta Film Festival, and was on the screening committee for 2002's Kairi International Film Festival (now the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival), for which she continues to be an informal advisor.  

Meredith Porte

Meredith Porte has been a producer and host at WLRN-PUBLIC TELEVISION Channel 17 for over 25 years. She currently produces and hosts the arts and entertainment program on WLRN-TV entitled ArtStreet. Meredith has also produced many specials including the National Pledge Special for Public Television with co-author of the Best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul books, Jack Canfield. Meredith also produced the award-winning Memories of the Night: A Study of the Holocaust, a documentary about teaching the Holocaust to people of multi-cultural backgrounds.
Meredith also recently produced Enlighten Up South Florida, with host, Michele Gillen. This series focused on how people can bring more balance and harmony into their lives.

Meredith has actively worked on the local level for the Million Minutes to Peace Appeal which received the Peace Award from the United Nations for its world wide impact. Meredith is the South Florida coordinator of Images and Voices of Hope.

She attended Northwestern University, and the University of Miami where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism.

Judy Rodgers

Judy Rodgers is the founding director of Images and Voices of Hope. She was recruited from radio in the pioneer days of the prerecorded video business in 1982, where she started as assistant director of sports production for Twentieth Century Fox Video. She left sports and moved to an educational division of CBS-Fox Video, where she served as Director or Programming and then Vice President. She was one of a small group of investors that bought the division from CBS-Fox in a leveraged buy-out and for many years she was executive vice president for the new company, Video Publishing House. Eventually she left the field, returning for a brief period at New World Entertainment, where she was recruited to start up an educational division. In 1999 she and a small group organized the first Images & Voices of Hope conversation in New York City. Aware they had "hit a nerve," on the topic of media's impact on society, they organized in order to continue to sustain the conversations.