Return to Conference Homepage All Sessions

​Chloe Arensberg is a Washington-based senior producer for CBS This Morning, where she oversees the regional coverage of the program. Previously, she served as Asia bureau chief for CBS News while based in China. At CBS News, Arensberg has held a number of key positions within the New York and Washington, DC, newsrooms, including as White House producer and producer of CBS Evening News.

​Autumn A. Arnett is the editor of Education Dive. She has contributed to a number of publications, most recently Diverse: Issues In Higher Education, HBCU Digest, and the Atlantic, largely around issues of diversity and access in higher education.

​Pete Boyle has been vice president of public affairs for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) since 2013. Previously, he spent nearly 15 years working on national higher education policy issues and directly with colleges and universities for two Washington, DC-based public relations and communications agencies. Earlier, Boyle served as a political communications director providing counsel for candidates for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

​Sarah Hardesty Bray is opinion editor for Inside Higher Ed. Previously, she served as vice president for communications and marketing, and editor in chief of Trusteeship magazine, for the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. She also worked for 11 years as a senior editor for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

​Sunni Brown is assistant director of media and public relations at the University of Richmond. Previously, she served as the media spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, and earlier, as an anchor and reporter at two Virginia-based TV stations.

​Bill Burger is vice president for communications and chief marketing officer at Middlebury College. Previously, he was associate vice president for communications at Brandeis University. Early in his career, he was an editor and writer for Newsweek magazine, where he worked in New York, London, and Tokyo.

​Kevin Burke became vice president for communications at Franklin & Marshall College in 2015, after having joined the college as associate vice president in 2013. He previously served as director of strategic communications at the University of South Florida, director of university communications at Ball State University, and director of media relations for Earlham College.

​José Luis Cruz is president of the Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York. Widely regarded as one of the nation’s leading advocates for policies to expand opportunities and improve educational outcomes for all students, he is a frequent keynote speaker and writer on higher education issues. Previously, Cruz served as provost of California State University, Fullerton. He also was vice president of Higher Education Policy and Practice at the Education Trust in Washington, DC, and vice president of student affairs for the University of Puerto Rico system. Cruz is a professor of physics in Lehman’s School of Natural and Social Sciences and serves on the board of directors of the Education Trust, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

​Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) since 2000, has overseen the growth of CIC membership by more than 40 percent. He previously served as vice president for programs of Atlantic Philanthropies and as secretary and senior program officer of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Earlier, he was at the National Endowment for the Humanities, successively as director of the Division of Education Programs and the Division of Research Programs; vice president and dean of Hiram College; and assistant to the provost at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He serves as a member of many boards, including those that provide guidance to the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the American Academic Leadership Institute.

​Rae Goldsmith is the chief marketing and communications officer at Southern Illinois University. She previously was vice president for advancement resources, and earlier vice president for communications and marketing, at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Before her work at CASE, Goldsmith led communications and marketing initiatives as associate vice president at the University of Louisville and Central Michigan University.

​Thu-Huong Ha is the books and culture reporter for Quartz. She also is an executive producer of the annual TEDxNewYork conference and the author of the young adult novel Hail Caesar. Previously, she was the context editor at TED and a Fulbright grantee in Aksaray, Turkey.

​Eric Hand is deputy editor for physical sciences news coverage at Science magazine. He joined Science as earth and planetary science reporter in 2014 after working seven years at Nature, first as physical sciences reporter and then as U.S. news editor. Previously, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a science reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

​Anemona Hartocollis is a national correspondent for the New York Times, covering higher education. She has been at the Times since 1997 and has written on a wide range of topics. Earlier, Hartocollis was a reporter and feature writer for the New York Daily News, New York Newsday, and Philadelphia Inquirer. She is the author of the book Seven Days of Possibilities: One Teacher, 24 Kids, and the Music That Changed Their Lives Forever.

​Kimberly Hefling is the senior education writer for Politico, which she joined in 2015. Previously, she was the national education writer for the Associated Press. During her 18-year career at the AP, Hefling covered diverse topics and served as an embedded reported with the 101st Airborne Division early in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

​Molly Hensley-Clancy has spent four years writing about the business of education for BuzzFeed News. She has covered the collapse of for-profit colleges, waste and abuse at nonprofit colleges, the student debt crisis, and the U.S. Department of Education. She now covers politics. Previously, she was an editorial assistant to Reuters Editor in Chief Stephen Adler.

​Rebecca Hersher is a journalist on NPR’s Science Desk, where she covers disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and environmental and health research. As a 2017 fellow of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting she wrote about sanitation systems in Haiti. Hersher shared a 2015 Edward R. Murrow Award for her work on the Ebola epidemic and was a finalist for the 2017 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize.

​Katie Hinman is an executive producer of special programming at CNN, where she works on developing new projects and contributes to the network’s signature debates, election nights, and town halls. She also launched and served as executive producer of State of the Union with Jake Tapper and was the supervising producer of The Lead with Jake Tapper. Before she joined CNN, Hinman spent nearly ten years at ABC News, most of them as a producer at Nightline. Her work has been honored with two Emmys, an Overseas Press Club award, an Edward R. Murrow award, and a Peabody award.

​Chris Howard is the eighth president of Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania. Previously, he was president of Hampden-Sydney College and vice president for leadership and strategic initiatives at the University of Oklahoma, following a successful corporate career at General Electric and Bristol-Myers Squibb. A retired Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel, Howard served as a helicopter pilot and then as an intelligence officer for the elite Joint Special Operations Command; he was called back to active duty during 2003 in Afghanistan and was awarded the Bronze Star for his service.

​Scott Jaschik is editor and cofounder of Inside Higher Ed. With Doug Lederman, he leads the site’s editorial operations and oversees news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs, and other features. Jaschik has published articles on higher education issues in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Salon, and elsewhere. From 1999 to 2003, he was editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

​Melissa Korn is a New York City-based higher education reporter for the Wall Street Journal’s U.S. news team. After joining Dow Jones in 2007, she moved to the Journal in 2011 to cover business schools, workplace issues, and the college-to-career pathway; she expanded her coverage to all of higher ed in 2014.

​Doug Lederman is editor and cofounder of Inside Higher Ed. With Scott Jaschik, he leads the site’s editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs, and other features. Lederman speaks widely about higher education, including on C-Span and National Public Radio, and his work has appeared in the New York Times and USA Today. Earlier in his career, he worked at The Chronicle of Higher Education in a variety of roles and was managing editor from 1999 to 2003.

​Chad Lorenz is news editor at Slate. Previously, he reported for Washingtonian magazine and the Washington Post.

​Bob Ludwig is assistant vice president for media relations at University of Maryland University College (UMUC), where he oversees social media and is managing editor of the UMUC Global Media Center. Previously, he served as the chief spokesperson for George Washington University and as a media officer for the National Academy of Sciences, and he led the global media operation for the Graduate Management Admission Council.

Susan Matthews is science editor at Slate, where she oversees the science section and contributes articles on occasion. Previously, she helped redesign and launch the National Audubon Society’s website, which was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the category of best website. Her writing has appeared in Popular Science, Scientific American, Bloomberg Businessweek, NBC, and Audubon Magazine.

​Justin Mattingly is education reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he covers higher education, K–12 schools, and statewide education issues. Previously, he covered health care for Bloomberg News in New York. At Syracuse University, he was the editor in chief of the Daily Orange, the independent student newspaper.

​Mary Carole McCauley is an arts writer specializing in books and visual arts at the Baltimore Sun. She joined the Sun in 2000 as the paper’s theater critic and assistant arts editor. She previously wrote for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Her writing has been recognized with a National Headliner Award and honored three times by the Society for Features Journalism.

​Liz McMillen became editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2011. She supervises a newsroom of 65 reporters, editors, data journalists, and designers who produce a daily website, weekly print edition, and several special supplements a year. In her career at The Chronicle, which began in 1984, she has served as a reporter covering faculty issues, research, and business, a section editor, and editor of The Chronicle Review. She is a frequent speaker at numerous higher-education conferences.

​Javier Miyares is president of University of Maryland University College, a constituent institution of the University System of Maryland. Since his appointment in 2012, he has expanded access and opportunities for adult learners and has been in the forefront of leveraging “big data” and analytics to fuel advances in learning science. Miyares serves on the boards of directors of the American Council on Education and of Achieving the Dream, on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Advisory Committee on Education, and as a commissioner of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

​Kaitlin Mulhere is special projects editor at Money magazine, where she writes about the intersection of personal finance and higher education and produces the magazine’s college rankings. She previously wrote for Inside Higher Ed and covered education at the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire. Her work has been recognized by the New Hampshire Press Association and the New England Newspaper & Press Association.

​Kevin Myers is the director of strategic communications at Reed College. He is the former director of marketing and communications at University of Alaska Southeast. Previously, Myers was the general manager of the Capital City Weekly in Juneau, Alaska, and the first editor of ConcordMonitor.com in Concord, New Hampshire.

​S. Georgia Nugent is president emerita of Kenyon College, former interim president of the College of Wooster, and senior fellow of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC). Prior to the presidency of Kenyon, she served as assistant to the president, associate provost, and dean of the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Center for Teaching and Learning at Princeton University and as professor of classics at Princeton and Brown universities. She is a past chair of the CIC Board of Directors and led CIC’s award-winning campaign, Securing America’s Future: The Power of Liberal Arts Education.

Erica Palan is digital opinion editor for Philadelphia Media Network (PMN), home of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and philly.com. She currently edits op-eds, commentary, and columns, and she focuses on expanding and diversifying voices and storyforms on the Opinion pages. Previously, she was senior editor of audience development and social media at PMN.

​Lynn Pasquerella is president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Previously, she served as president of Mount Holyoke College from 2010 to 2016 and as provost of the University of Hartford from 2008 to 2010. She began her career as a faculty member in the department of philosophy at the University of Rhode Island and later served as vice provost for academic affairs and dean of the graduate school. Pasquerella is a senator and vice president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a member of the boards of the Lingnan Foundation and the National Humanities Alliance, and sits on the advisory board of the Newman’s Own Foundation. In addition, she is the host of Northeast Public Radio’s The Academic Minute.

​Kaitlin Pitsker is a staff writer at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, where she covers higher education and works on Kiplinger’s annual college rankings. She also covers household technology and other personal finance topics. Previously, she wrote for the Post-Standard newspaper and Chronogram magazine in New York.

​Jonathan Potts is vice president for public relations and marketing at Robert Morris University in suburban Pittsburgh. Previously, he worked as the director of media relations for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and as a reporter and editor for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

​Jennifer Ruark is deputy managing editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education, where she works with writers and editors on The Chronicle Review, Commentary, Advice, and special sections about the academic workplace, diversity, innovation, and trends. She has been with The Chronicle since 1996 in various roles, including as features editor and editor of the research section. Her work has earned an investigative reporting prize from the Education Writers Association and has made headlines on the PBS NewsHour, public radio, and the Atlantic.

​Sarah Schneider is education reporter for 90.5 WESA, a Pittsburgh NPR affiliate, where she examines how local and national decisions affect access to education and policy. She also is a local fill-in host for Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Schneider previously was a reporting fellow at WESA for two years by way of an Americorps affiliated program, Pittsburgh Urban Leadership Service Experience (PULSE). Earlier, she interned with newspapers in Illinois, Idaho, and Pennsylvania.

​Andrew Shaw is the director of enrollment communications and operations at York College of Pennsylvania, where he has helped increase enrollment and revamp the college’s admissions communications, has overseen a website redesign as well as the launch of several social media channels, and has developed the college’s first campus-wide social media guide for staff and students. Shaw came to higher ed after nearly a decade as an education beat newspaper reporter.

​Jennifer Shaw is an opinions editor at Hechinger Report. She is a writer and editor who has worked on the staff of the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Daily Beast, Reuters, and the New York Post. She also has written for Better Homes and Gardens. She is a past co-winner of the New York Press Club and New York State AP Best Feature awards.

​Abby Simmons has served as associate director of media relations at Carnegie Mellon University since 2013. She joined the university in 2007 and previously served as a senior media relations specialist. Earlier, she was an analyst for the Hill Group, Inc.

​Michael Smart, president of MichaelSmart PR, will share fresh approaches and solid research to help communicators create media pitches that will get results.

Michael Smart has trained more than 9,000 PR professionals on how to boost their communications results. As national news director at Brigham Young University, Smart had a 14-year career in higher education public relations and placed positive stories on the front pages of the nation’s largest papers and on the highest-rated morning shows. A former newspaper journalist, Smart has won national and regional awards for news release and feature writing.

​Karen Travers joined ABC News in 2000 and is a Washington-based correspondent, reporting for ABC News Radio and ABC NewsOne, the network’s affiliate news service. She is currently based at the White House covering all aspects of the Trump Administration. Her work can be seen across the 200 ABC News affiliate stations and her radio reports can be heard on 1,650 radio stations and multiple digital distributors. Travers was part of the ABC News team that received an Emmy Award for its coverage of President Obama’s inauguration.

​Jaclyn Vetrano is online marketing and social media manager at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, she served as social media coordinator at Skidmore College, where she developed the college’s social media strategy. Vetrano also created and produced the bi-weekly Higher Ed Social Podcast, co-hosting conversations with higher education leaders with Belmont University. She is editor and contributor to Link: The Journal of Higher Education Web Professionals and founder of ConnectEDU Network.

​Jamal Watson is the executive editor of Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. An award-winning writer and lecturer, his writing has appeared in publications including the Baltimore Sun, USA Today, Washington City Paper, and Boston Globe.