Meet the Newhouse Diversity Committee working in this initiative:
Hub Brown
Associate Dean for Research, Creativity, International Initiatives and Diversity
Associate Professor
Professor Brown is a former reporter, anchor and producer in local commercial and public television. He teaches courses on reporting for radio and television, long-form television reporting and production, the television newscast and on-air performance. He also teaches the Newhouse School’s course on Media and Diversity, as well as the School’s media ethics course. His research interests are in diversity issues in media, ethical challenges, and the impact of new media across journalism disciplines.
As Associate Dean for Research, Creativity, International Initiatives and Diversity, Professor Brown works to help colleagues advance their scholarly and creative agendas, strengthen diversity in the School’s curriculum and faculty, and bolster the Newhouse School’s engagement with the world.
Maximo Patiño
Director of Recruitment and Diversity
Patiño is the Director of Recruitment & Diversity at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, where he has presided over this position since May of 2004. Prior to this role, Maximo was hired by the Newhouse School as a Recruitment Specialist to help increase the number of Latino and African-American students at one of the most competitive communications programs in the country. Through the creation and implementation of personalized recruitment strategies and retention programs, he brought the multicultural population at the program from 9.8% in 2000 to 25.5% in 2011.
He has over eleven years of experience in the field of diversity recruitment and student leadership development. Throughout his tenure at Syracuse University, Maximo has helped launch several successful retention and development policies aimed at creating a multicultural culture within the school. During the start of his career in the media and non-profit sectors, Maximo worked in Hispanic marketing and government relations for Fortune 500 clients as an Account Supervisor for Wiscovitch Associates, Ltd. Clients included Anheuser-Busch, Time Warner, Inc., Pepsi-Cola, Banco Popular, The Hispanic Federation, among others.
Why is this initiative important?
– “Diversity is more than an issue of race. As Director of Recruitment and Diversity for the Newhouse School, a big part of my job is to help create a diverse environment for incoming students, that includes diversity of ethnicity, geography, socio-economic background, religion, gender and other unique traits that make an individual. The goal is to bring all these people from different walks of life and put them together to learn from each other and embrace each other’s difference. Being part of this committee allows me to share with the faculty the feelings that the students experience through their journey.”
Tula Goenka
Associate Professor
TELEVISION-RADIO-FILM professor Tula Goenka’s resume includes work with several top filmmakers and notable projects during her 25 years of experience in the film and television industry. An associate professor at Newhouse, Goenka has worked with Spike Lee on “Do The Right Thing” and “Malcolm X,” James Ivory on “Surviving Picasso,” and Mira Nair on “Salaam Bombay!” and “Mississippi Masala.” She has also worked on several award-winning documentaries, including “Unzipped,” the story of fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, and “Keep The River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale” about explorer and writer Tobias Schneebaum.
Since 2008, Goenka has taken students for a one-month Bollywood Internship program offered in conjunction with leading Indian filmmaker Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods International Institute for Film, Television and Media Arts (WWI). It is a one-month course, offered through SU Abroad, that introduces students to the history, aesthetics, language, business and process of hands-on filmmaking in Bombay. Her book “Not Just Bollywood: Conversations with Indian Filmmakers” will be published shortly.
Goenka was born and raised in India and continues to be very involved in the South Asian community in America. She is a founding member of Sakhi for South Asian Women, a New York City based organization working to end violence against women.
Barbara E. Jones
Professor of Practice
Barbara Jones is a Professor of Practice in the Television/Radio/Film Department at the Newhouse School. She teaches Television Business, Communications Frontiers, Media Industry Principles & Practices, and Industry Forces.
Jones, an award-winning documentary producer, began her career as a radio reporter. Since then, she has worked primarily in television and new media, on the launch of TV networks into Latin America and Brazil; TV network program planning, production and scheduling; marketing; audience and market research; interactive media projects; and media consulting.
Her previous executive roles include Director of Research for Western Broadcast Sales (Canada); Director of International Online, weather.com (U.S.); Vice President Programming & Marketing, Power Broadcasting (Canada); and Vice President Online Broadcasting, Alliance Atlantis (Canada).
In addition to actively participating in several industry associations, Jones has served on judging panels for CableAce Awards, CINE Awards, International PROMAX BDA Awards, Gemini Awards, Canadian New Media Awards, and is a former member of the International EMMA Jury.
Why is this initiative important?
– “Diversity in the communications field is a critical, from the perspective of hiring practices and from the perspective of understanding and delivering messages to unique audiences. I have had the pleasure of working internationally with professionals from throughout the globe, each adding a bit of themselves and their background to their work. Almost universally, the most innovative teams are the ones who embrace the concept of diversity and look for creative ways to infuse their ideas and their work with elements beyond their own experiences. As the author of “The 7 Habits for Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey says, “Seek first to understand then to be understood”.”
Harriet Brown
Associate Professor
Professor Brown has nearly 30 years’ experience as both a writer and editor in magazines. She’s worked on two start-up staffs—Wigwag and American Girl—as well as at magazines like Redbook and New York Woman, and writes for many nationals, including the New York Times Magazine, O Magazine, Vogue, Psychology Today, Prevention, and Parenting. Find her recent work in the New York Times science section, where she covers issues like food, eating, and body image. She’s written op-eds for the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, and has read several of her essays on NPR.
Brown’s most recent book is Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia, a work of both memoir and science journalism based on a feature that ran in the New York Times Magazine; the book won a “Books for a Better Life” award in 2011. Brown has edited two anthologies, Feed Me!: Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image and Mr. Wrong: Real-Life Stories About the Men We Used to Love. Her other books include TheGood-bye Window: A Year in the Life of a Day-Care Center and Madison Walks.
Professor Brown helped organize Syracuse University’s first-ever symposium on body image in 2010. She also founded Project BodyTalk, a web-based oral history project that invites people to record commentaries on the subjects of food, eating, and body image. In 2011, she was awarded the John F. Murray Award for Strategic Communication for the Public Good by the University of Iowa Journalism School. She speaks on campuses and at conferences around the country.
Why is this initiative important?
– “I’m involved with the Diversity Committee in part because I know firsthand what it feels like to be discriminated against on the basis of gender. And I don’t want anyone to ever have to feel that way for any reason–because of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, body size, sexuality, or any other reason. I also feel very strongly that it is in the best interests (as well as being the right thing to do) for all our communications students to grapple with issues around diversity, because we live in a world that is continually diversifying, evolving, and changing. We must all speak to many different audiences. That makes us not just better communicators but better people as well.”
Brian Sheenan
Associate Professor
After graduating from College of the Holy Cross in 1983, Brian joined what was then Dancer Fitzgerald & Sample (now Saatchi & Saatchi) in New York that same summer. He began his career working on the General Mills account, developing advertising for such brands as Cheerios. By the mid 1980s, Brian was working on the Toyota account developing ads for the “Oh, What a Feeling!” campaign.
In 1996, he was appointed CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia. The agency’s accounts included: Procter & Gamble, Toyota, David Jones, SHOWTIME, Castrol, and NRMA. In 1998, S&S Australia was named “Agency of the Year” by AdNews. Later in 1999, Brian was made Chairman and CEO of Team One Advertising in Los Angeles. Team One is a wholly-owned division of Saatchi & Saatchi. Team One’s largest account is Lexus, which they launched in 1989 and have established as the top-selling luxury automotive brand in the U.S. for the past eight years. In addition to Lexus, Team One was awarded the Ritz-Carlton business in 2004. In 2005, Team One became a P&G roster agency by being awarded the Millstone coffee business. In 2007, Team One won the Flexjet private jet business. Flexjet is a division of Bombardier.
In the fall of 2008, Brian left Team One to take up his new position as Associate Professor of Advertising in the S. I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He will continue his relationship with Saatchi & Saatchi as a consultant, managing the agency’s Toyota Worldwide Executive Board (TWEB). Brian is also an advisory board member of Fuhu, a China-US based internet-software company, as well as Mission Metrix, a web applications company.
In September 2010, Brian published his first book: “Basics Marketing: Online Marketing.” He also publishes articles regularly in top trade publications, such as Advertising Age.
Why is this initiative important?
– “I am involved in the Diversity Committee and I think it is important because communications are now global at the touch of a finger. In order to be successful communicators today, we all need to be open to diverse cultures and points of view. Closer to home, our country has always been a melting pot and its diversity continues to be greater than ever before. We can only tap its potential by bringing an open mind to everything we do, and teaching our students to do the same. Oh, and I think it will make us happier too!”
Melissa Chessher
Chair, Magazine
Director, Magazine, Newspaper and Online Journalism
Associate Professor
Professor Chessher has more than 20 years of experience in the magazine field as both a writer and an editor. She worked on the launch of Real Simple, the largest magazine launch in Time Inc. history, and Gusto, a healthy living magazine for Latin American women. She also has held several staff positions, including fitness editor and staff writer at Cooking Light; executive editor of Weight Watchers magazine, and senior editor of American Way, the in-flight magazine of American Airlines. She has written for more than a dozen national consumer publications, including Self, Health, Marie Claire, Fitness, Men’s Health, and Parents magazines. She teaches classes in magazine writing and editing.
Want to get involved or get to know members of our committee?
Contact us via email at nhdiversity@syr.edu, Facebook or Twitter!