Founding Advisors
Our founding advisors are experts in their fields working with Get Media Savvy to establish a healthy media environment for kids and families.
Soledad O’Brien
Award-winning Journalist
Founder, SO'B Productions
Truth-Teller
Soledad O’Brien is an award-winning documentarian, journalist, speaker, author, and philanthropist, and founder of Soledad O’Brien Productions, a media production company dedicated to telling empowering and authentic stories on a range of social issues. She anchors and produces “Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien,” a political magazine program syndicated in 95% of the country for Hearst and is a correspondent for HBO Real Sports.
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Soledad O’Brien Productions’ most recent projects include the Peabody-nominated documentary, “The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and streams on Peacock, and the multi-part series “Black and Missing”, which won the Independent Spirit and NAACP awards and streams on HBO. She also works with major foundations, like Ford, to produce impactful documentaries on topics like hunger, race and public health.
O’Brien’s work has been recognized with four Emmy awards, twice with the George Foster Peabody Award, four times with the Gracie Award, which honors women in media, twice with Cine Awards for her work in documentary films and also with an Alfred I. DuPont Award. She has a presence on the op-ed pages of places like The New York Times and gave Congressional testimony on media disinformation.
Dr. Michael Rich
Pediatrician
Founder, Digital Wellness Lab
Boston Children’s Hospital
Dr. Michael Rich is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical and practices Adolescent Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Rich is also the Founding Director of Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders (CIMAID), the nation’s first evidence-based medical program addressing physical, mental, and social health issues associated with digital technology.
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Sherry Turkle, PhD
Social Scientist
Author
Founder, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self
Sherry Turkle, PhD is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Professor Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.
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Melissa Rauch
Actress, Writer, Producer
Night Court. Big Bang Theory
Co-founder, Oscar’s Kids U.S.
Melissa Rauch is an actress, writer and producer best known for her portrayal of Bernadette Rostenkowski on the world’s most watched network comedy show, THE BIG BANG THEORY. Melissa currently stars in, and executive produces NIGHT COURT, a follow-up to the classic legal comedy series on NBC. Rauch starred in the feature film, THE BRONZE, which she co-wrote and executive produced.
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Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble
Psychologist
Intersectional Mental Health Advocate
Founder, The AAKOMA Project
Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble, (known professionally as “Dr. Alfiee”), is a pioneering psychologist, scientist, author, mental health correspondent, and the founder of The AAKOMA Project, which works to promote the mental health of BIPOC youth and young adults. Dr. Alfiee is a leading advocate for a world where EVERY child, teen, and young adult — inclusive of all points of diversity—feels the freedom to live unapologetically and authentically within an environment that allows them to rise and thrive.
In 2022, she released the report, The State of Mental Health for Youth of Color, a groundbreaking examination of the current state of mental health concerns and supports for young people ages 13-25 including LGBTQ youth and youth with disabilities. She is the author of two books, including Community Mental Health Engagement with Racially Diverse Populations, and is a regular media contributor for outlets including The Washington Post, SELF, CNN, Peacock, INSIDER, Fortune, The New York Times, and more. She was instrumental as a mentor and advisor to the first-ever MTV Youth Mental Health Action Forum held in May 2022. With superstar Lady Gaga, she co-hosted the short film The Power of Kindness, produced by the Born This Way Foundation; she joined Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne “Gammy” Norris discussing suicide and women’s mental health; and she joined Charlamagne tha God on the Hoda and Jenna hour of the Today show to discuss mental health in the Black community.
With over 25 years of experience and widely recognized for her ability to draw in audiences and inspire, Dr. Alfiee embodies her belief that there is enough love and light, informed by strong culturally-relevant science, to help everyone achieve #optimalmentalhealth.
Dr. Danny Rogers, PhD
Computational Physicist
Co-founder, Global Disinformation Index
National Security Expert
Dr. Danny Rogers, PhD, is the co-founder and CTO of the Global Disinformation Index, a non-profit focused on catalyzing change within the tech industry to disincentivize the creation and dissemination of disinformation. Prior to founding the GDI, Rogers founded and led Terbium Labs, information security and dark web intelligence startup based in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Dr. Heidi Boisvert, PhD
Creative Technologist
Founder futurePerfect Lab
Researcher, Neurobiologic Effects of Media
Dr. Heidi Boisvert, PhD is an interdisciplinary artist, experience designer, creative technologist and academic researcher who interrogates the neurobiological and socio-cultural effects of media and technology. Simply put, she studies the role of the body, the senses and emotion in human perception and social change. Boisvert is currently mapping the world’s first media genome, while taking great care with its far-reaching ethical implications.
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Doug Rushkoff
Author
Media Critic
Founder, Team Human
Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, as well as the recent Team Human, based on his podcast, and the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus.
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Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. He coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. He serves as a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and is a Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens College.
Linda Holliday
Tech Entrepreneur
Artist
Founder, CEO Citia
Linda Holliday
is a 4X entrepreneur at the intersection of design, media and tech. Now founder/CEO of Citia, a revolutionary, patented, no-coding platform for modernizing content — making it live, multi-channel, organized and data-gathering for superior experiences and results. Citia has been featured in various publications such as Forbes, The New Yorker, TechCrunch, and The New York Times.
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Prior to her current roles, Linda Holiday was the President & Founder of Medical Broadcasting Company (Publicis). She also founded ePharmaceuticals, an innovative XML subscription-based business intelligence system for the life sciences industry, which was sold in 2004. Additionally, she was a sports media innovator for Cablevision and worked as an Information Architect on TED founder Richard Wurman’s “Understanding” Book Series.
A Michigan grad in Design, Linda was the first BFA accepted to Wharton Grad where she studied Systems Science. She is also a Design Entrepreneurship Graduate Faculty member at the School of Visual Arts, where she has taught since 2011.
Wesley Lowery
Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist
Correspondent
Author
Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best selling author, podcast host and on-air correspondent. He specializes in journalism that marshals data to illuminate the realities within the three branches of the American criminal legal system — police, prosecutors and prisons.
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Linda Stone
Attention Researcher
Former Executive, Microsoft, Apple
Former Librarian
Linda Stone is a writer, speaker and consultant who coined the phrases continuous partial attention, email apnea, and screen apnea. Her work focuses on attention, innovation, and the psychophysiology of our relationship with technology.
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Kamal Sinclair
Emerging Media Artist & Producer
Senior Director of Digital Innovation
The Music Center
Kamal Sinclair supports artists, institutions, and communities working at the convergence of art, media, culture, and technology. Currently, she serves as the Senior Director of Digital Innovation at The Music Center in Los Angeles, which is home to TMC Arts, Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles Master Chorale, LA Opera, and LA Phil.
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