Board of Advisors

MARISOL BELLO works as a reporter for USA Today. Before making the move, Bello covered Detroit politics and City Hall for the Detroit Free Press. Bello began her career at the Dayton Daily News, where she was a feature writer, covering youth trends and fashion. Bello also spent ten years in Pennsylvania, first as a metro reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News and then as a projects reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Bello graduated from New York University with a degree in journalism and Latin American Studies.

TANYA BALLARD BROWN is an editor for NPR.org and former editor for investigative and long-term projects at washingtonpost.com. During her tenure at washingtonpost.com, Ballard Brown coordinated with the print and online newsrooms to develop multimedia content for investigative reports, including creation of "Washington Post Investigations," the first definitive home for the Post's award-winning investigative journalism on washingtonpost.com. Ballard Brown also led production of the 2006 "Being a Black Man" series, which won numerous awards including the Peabody, Scripps Howard National Journalism award, Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and a regional Emmy award. Other Web projects included "Silent Injustice" and "Walter Reed and Beyond." A native of Charlotte, N.C., and an alumna of N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro, N.C., Ballard Brown is a former congressional fellow with the American Political Science Association. She has been a reporter or editor at GovExec.com/Government Executive magazine, The Tennessean in Nashville and the (Greensboro) News & Record.

DEWIGHT ELLIS is the former vice president of the department of Human Resource Development at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). Prior to his position at NAB, Ellis' broad range of professional experience included: chief staff member to former Congresswoman Cardiss Collins (D-Ill); management of his own public relations and advertising consulting firm; and five years as an NBC radio and television host. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions throughout his professional career. A graduate of the District of Columbia Teachers College, now the University of the District of Columbia, Ellis went on to earn a law degree from the George Mason University School of Law.

PAUL C. LIGHT is New York University's Wagner Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service and founding principal investigator of the Organizational Performance Initiative. Until joining NYU, Light served as the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, founding director of its Center for Public Service, and vice president and director of the Governmental Studies Program. He previously served as director of the Public Policy Program at The Pew Charitable Trusts and associate dean and professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Light has written nearly 20 books, including the award-winning Thickening Government and The Tides of Reform. He is also a co-author of a best-selling American government textbook, Government by the People. His research interests include: bureaucracy, civil service, Congress, entitlement programs, executive branch, government reform, nonprofit effectiveness, organizational change and the political appointment process.

WANDA LLOYD is executive editor of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser. As executive editor she is responsible for all of the newspaper's news content, the editorial page and the newsroom's staff and resources. She also writes a column in the Advertiser.

Lloyd was managing editor at The Greenville (S.C.) News. Before that, she was senior editor/days & administration at USA Today, where she served earlier as deputy managing editor/cover stories and managing editor/administration. She has also worked as an editor at The Washington Post, the Providence Evening Bulletin, the Miami Herald and the Atlanta Journal. Lloyd served for two years as a Pulitzer Prize juror. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions throughout his professional career.

Lloyd earned a bachelor's degree in English from Spelman College in Atlanta and she holds an honorary doctorate of laws from Briarwood College in Southington, Conn.

BEN MARRISON is editor at The Columbus Dispatch. He began his journalism career in Toledo at The Blade covering numerous beats including Toledo City Hall, the utility industry, county government and nonprofit agencies. He left Toledo to begin working for The Plain Dealer. He began working in the suburbs exploring fraud and abuse in various municipalities. He was assigned to the Columbus bureau of The Plain Dealer in October 1994 and was named bureau chief in January 1996.

He joined the Dispatch in February 1999 as Managing Editor/News. In that position, he led the newspaper’s news-gathering and story production on a day-to-day basis. He became editor in November 1999 and is now responsible for all sections of the newspaper, with the exception of the editorial page. Marrison is a graduate of Bowling Green State University with a major in journalism and a minor in economics and computer sciences.

ROBERT E. RICH is the chairman of the Tax, Probate and Estate Planning Department of the law firm of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati. Rich is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and then the Harvard Law School in 1969. He served as a law clerk for Hon. Bert T. Combs of the Sixth Circuit United States Court of Appeals in 1969 and 1970.

Rich practices in the health care and managed care medical field, as well as in general tax planning and the defense of tax issues, exempt organization and private foundation matters, probate administration, estate tax planning and personal service contracting, and in the formation and operation of partnerships and limited liability companies of all kinds. He has had extensive experience in the organization and operation of independent physician associations and multi-specialty medical practice groups. He is currently a Volunteer Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Rich is listed in The Best Lawyers in America and named an “Ohio Super Lawyer” by Cincinnati Magazine.

CHRIS SATULLO is a columnist and director of civic engagement at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Until this fall, he had been editorial page editor of The Inquirer, serving in that role for seven years. He’s been with the paper 19 years, previously working as deputy editorial page editor and deputy suburban editor. He is the founder and director of the paper’s Citizen Voices program, an effort to engage readers in deeper political dialogue. He writes a regular column called Center Square.

He won the 2000 James F. Batten Award for Excellence in Civic Journalism for his work on Citizen Voices. He was also was named person of the year in 2005 by the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Institute of Architects for citizen projects involving public design issues. Before coming to Philadelphia, he worked 13 years for The Express newspaper in Easton, Pa. He was assistant managing editor there and wrote a weekly column that was distributed throughout the Thomson Newspapers chain. He has won more than 30 awards for columns, editorials, newswriting and newspaper design. He has written two books, “The Christmas Quartet” and a National Issues Forum guide on “Crime and Punishment: Is Justice Being Served?,” and co-authored the 2006 report of the National Summit on School Design, an event he helped plan and lead.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he is a graduate of Williams College and spent a year teaching in France on a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. He lives in Montgomery County, Pa., and is married with two children.

MIZELL STEWART III is the editor of the Evansville, Indiana Courier & Press, and the former managing editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, supervising day-to-day newsroom operations. Before moving to Akron, he was a consultant for Knight Ridder newspapers, the nation's second-largest newspaper company. In that role, he was part of a team of KR journalists who coordinated coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at the (Biloxi) Sun-Herald.

Stewart is also the former editor and vice president of the Tallahassee Democrat. Stewart previously worked at the Akron Beacon Journal in a series of local news editing posts from 1994 to 2000. He was also a reporter and editor at the Dayton Daily News and a reporter for the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun. He began his newspaper career as a 16-year-old summer photography intern with Sun Newspapers. He is a journalism graduate of Bowling Green State University.

LEE THORNTON, Ph.D., is the Richard Eaton Professor of broadcast journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland. Thornton is a longtime journalism educator, and an award-winning reporter and producer. After working in local television and radio news at Cincinnati’s WLWT, Thornton was hired by CBS News, eventually being named a White House correspondent covering the administration of President Jimmy Carter. She was the first African American to be regularly assigned to the White House beat by one of the then three broadcast news networks.

Thornton is also an award-winning National Public Radio program host. Again, she was the first African American to regularly serve as host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” She was also a longtime producer of CNN public affairs programs. In nationwide syndication, she produced “The Jesse Jackson Show." Thornton holds what is believed to be the nation’s only endowed academic chair in broadcast news, the Richard Eaton Chair at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, one of the highest-rated journalism programs in the nation.

BRAD TILLSON is the former president and CEO of Cox Ohio Publishing, where he was responsible for four daily newspapers, five weekly newspapers, specialty publications, commercial printing and Internet publishing. Tillson retired from Cox in 2003. During his tenure, the Dayton Daily News won numerous awards including a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

Tillson previously worked at the Dayton Daily News as a reporter covering county and city government and special projects, state government and state and national politics. He also served as assistant city editor, city editor, assistant managing editor, managing editor and, editor. He was named publisher in 1988. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions throughout his professional career. Tillson received his BA with a major in English from Denison University in Granville, OH.

JOHN WICKLEIN is a former reporter and editor for The New York Times. He is now an independent writing, reporting and editing coach for newspapers around the country. He has a long-term assignment coaching reporters regularly at The Washington Post. He has contributed articles to The Atlantic Monthly, Washington Monthly, American Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review, Quill and other magazines.

From 1984 through 1989 he served as director of the Kiplinger Program for journalists at Ohio State. He was dean of the School of Public Communication at Boston University and professor of journalism there from 1974 to 1980. He has taught as an adjunct at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.He started out as a reporter in the Elizabeth, New Jersey bureau of the old Newark Evening News.