Staff

Malkia Cyril, Executive Director

Malkia Cyril is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice (CMJ).  As an award-winning organizer and communications leader, Malkia has more than 15 years experience conceiving and managing grassroots communications and media organizing initiatives.  Since founding CMJ in 2002, Malkia has led the organization to help organizations like People Organized to Win Employment Rights, Media Literacy Project find communications strategies and policy solutions to support their campaigns for social justice change.

Malkia’s organizational goals are to build the strategic communications capacity of the progressive movement to forward a social justice agenda, to empower traditionally disenfranchised communities, and to hold corporate media accountable for biased content and policy.  Her work is premised on the core principal that communications is fundamentally a human right, and should not be for sale.

Malkia is the recipient of the Media Leader award from the Alliance for Community Media, the Emerging Leader award from the Media That Matters Film Festival, and other awards from the Media Justice Fund, Rock the Vote, and others.  She has made appearances in Democracy Now, Hard Knock Radio, Breakdown FM, Free Speech TV, the documentary Outfoxed, the documentary Broadcast Blues. She has has written for and been published in the SF Weekly, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and others.

For fun, Malkia spends an inordinate amount of time writing fiction and poetry when she should be sleeping.

Malkia can be reached at malkia@centerformediajustice.org, 510-698-3800, x401, and on Culture Jedi.

Kristi Black Solwazi, Deputy Director

Kristi provides internal leadership, supervision, and direction for staff and consultants as well as serving as a liaison to CMJ funders. With over 13 years of nonprofit management experience, she contributes a unique blend of community capacity building, financial acumen, funding and development skills, and heart and passion for what she does.

An Oakland native, Kristi has experienced firsthand the range of life experiences that make the Bay Area unique, diverse, and complex. She draws on these experiences to help CMJ implement a more far-reaching vision of social progress that involves not just local, but global, activism.

Kristi has a B.A. in Speech Communications, with an emphasis on Intercultural Communication, from San Francisco State University, and a background in secondary education studies.

Kristi is an avid reader, artist, researcher, and writer who believes her life’s work will always involve acquiring cultural knowledge, debunking myths and lies, and creating alternate realities through art and media to combat racism and greed. She is also a wife and mother, dedicated to her family and healthy living.

Kristi can be reached at kristi@centerformediajustice.org, and 510-698-3800 x408.

amalia deloney, Grassroots Policy Director

amalia coordinates the media policy initiatives of the Center for Media Justice and the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net).  She has over 15 years of experience in community and cultural organizing, with a specific interest in human rights, cultural rights and traditional knowledge.  At CMJ, amalia uses her extensive experience for field-building, community-building, and policy advocacy.

Born in Guatemala, she worked for many years at the Main Street Project–a MAG-Net anchor–in her hometown of Minneapolis.  While there, she co-directed a nationally recognized four-state rural Latino capacity-buliding initiative called The Raíces Project.  Nationally, amalia is a board member of the Indigenous Women’s Network, Main Street Project and the Media and Democracy Coalition.

amalia earned her B.A. in Urban Studies and History from Macalester College and her J.D. with a focus on Social Justice from Hamline University School of Law – as a result, she has huge student loans, which she likes to complain about.

When she is not working, amalia likes to travel, read, watch pretty much anything on TNT, work on her personal blog—or Tweet from the borderlands where she lives, works and plays!

amalia can be reached at amalia@centerformediajustice.org, 510-698-3800 x403, and on Twitter: @guatemalia.

Karlos Gauna Schmieder, Communications Program Director

Karlos coordinates movement building strategic communications projects and products at the Center for Media Justice, and currently provides communications services to the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAGNet) and Communities Creating Healthy Environments (CCHE).  He has over 15 years experience as a community organizer, political strategist and communications specialist.

Karlos served as co-chair of communications for the 2007 and 2010 US Social Forums. He has been a featured presenter at national conferences such as the National Conference on Media Reform, True Spin, Netroots Nation, Bioneers, Progressive Communicators Network, and more. Karlos has appeared in most major media outlets around the world, has trained thousands of community organizers in communications, and is a leader in a re-emerging participatory “justice communications” movement.

Karlos has no time for authority and control, and uses his skills as a framer, storyteller and organic working class intellectual to disrupt dominant stories, and to work with others to imagine, strategize and organize for a better future. His mom, Jeanne Gauna, co-founder and longtime director of SouthWest Organizing Project, is his s/hero.

Karlos can be reached at karlos@centerformediajustice.org, on Facebook, Twitter:  @anotherpundit, and 510 698 3800 x402.

Betty Yu, National Organizer

Betty coordinates the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) where she manages our national media justice network of over 100 grassroots community organizations, coordinates nine regional chapters and curates the media justice learning community. She has over 15 years of community organizing, media activist, and filmmaking experience.

Betty has additionally worked as a labor organizer for the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, an immigrant rights workers center in New York City’s Chinatown. She is also co-founder of National Mobilization Against Sweatshops (NMASS), a 15 year-old multi-racial workers center. Betty is a board member for Deep Dish TV and Third World Newsreel, two media organizations that nationally distributes radical videos and films.

Betty has appeared on several local and national news outlets, and has been featured in such publications as the New York Daily News, the Financial Times, Stress magazine, Brooklyn Bridge, and City Limits.

When she is not working Betty can usually be found talking about her love of Brooklyn (born and raised), working on her creative projects, or finishing her MFA in Integrated Media Arts.

Betty can be reached at betty@centerformediajustice.org, and 510-698-3800 x404.

Oshen Turman, Program Associate

Oshen coordinates all program operations, including event logistics, database management, support for MAG-Net operations, and general program administration.  She has been involved in social justice work for over a decade.

An East Oakland native, Oshen has spoken on panels about issues involving homophobia in the Oakland public school system.  She also co-authored a resource guide for queer-identified youth and their allies.  Oshen worked for six years with a youth development organization in Oakland on issues including reproductive justice, health and wellness education, political development, grassroots organizing, and organizational development.

Oshen is a writer, artist, and student of healthy living.

Oshen can be reached at oshen@centerformediajustice.org, 510-698-3800 x405, and on Twitter: @oshenfloor.

Lisa Jervis, Operations Director

Lisa plans and coordinates organizational operations including the management of information systems and office technology, the management and implementation of key financial activities, and coordination of office administration.  She has more than 15 years devoted to building organizational infrastructure.

Lisa is a native New Yorker.  Her experience includes positions as the founding editor and publisher of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, founding board chair of Women in Media and News, advisory board member at outLoud Radio, and fundraising committee member at the East Bay Meditation Center.

She has written and lectured widely about feminism, independent media, and local food. When not geeking out on CMJ’s information architecture projects, she can be found pickling vegetables, napping, and designing her next tattoo.

Lisa can be reached at lisa@centerformediajustice.org, 510-698-3800 x406, and on Twitter: @cook_food.

Brandi Collins, Communications and Marketing Director

Brandi is responsible for driving organizational identity, branding, communications, and marketing for CMJ.  She has over five years experience in nonprofit strategic communications, branding, public policy advocacy, and project management.

Formerly Public Policy Associate for Safer Foundation in Illinois, Brandi has crafted state and national recommendations and statements on workforce development, community capacity building, and prisoner reentry.  These were included in reports and publications for the American Correctional Association, the Obama-Biden transition team, the Illinois Poverty Commission and Illinois Human Services Commission, among others.

Brandi earned her B.A. in History (with an emphasis on 20^th century US immigration and migration) from Agnes Scott College, and her J.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.

In her spare time, Brandi likes nerding it up- she can be found watching documentaries, reading non-fiction books, tweeting indignantly, and blogging her feelings.

Brandi can be reached at brandi@centerformediajustice.org, 510-698-3800 x409, and on Brandi Sink or Swim.

Alison Roh Park, Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator

Alison coordinates the CMJ communications training and technical assistance initiative, tailors communications curricula and tools and works with CMJ staff and the Associates Network to and provides communications services and special contracts to CMJ clients, members and partners.

Alison has over 6 years of experience in media relations, marketing, branding and strategic communications, working with non-profits and grassroots groups engaged in social movements to end domestic violence, the prison industrial complex, crimimmigration enforcement, policing and other neoliberal projects. Alison has appeared on Univision and Telemundo and has been quoted in national media venues talking about international human rights, gender (in)justice and institutional racism. Alison, a Pushcart-nominated poet, has used the arts in her organizing, activism and cultural work for over a decade.

When she’s off the clock, you might find Alison busy repping her native Queens, NY neighborhood, going on local adventures with her canine companion, eating, and cooking.

Alison can be reached at alison@centerformediajustice.org and on Twitter: @handsoffmymedia.