President and Creative Director of Kid Scoop, the weekly youth feature, has been publishing for 30 years in newspapers in 42 states. Whiting trains newspaper publishing staff in transformational selling that captures year-round sponsorships of the Kid Scoop youth feature page and the companion Kid Scoop Junior for preschool children – very popular with parents. Vicki created the Kid Scoop features to give newspapers a direct connection to young readers so they begin reading the newspaper as they develop their reading skills in elementary grades and even younger. The weekly Kid Scoop page (available in different sizes) presents lively reading activities that are not only fun for children and families but adhere to required education standards. Hundreds of thousands of classroom teachers rely on Kid Scoop to motivate reluctant readers and bring all students up to grade-level reading – essential to succeeding in high school and avoiding dropping out. This is a reading challenge for all teachers since the Covid pandemic reduced reading scores across the nation by two-12 years. Parents use Kid Scoop at home to increase reading time for their children, crucial for vocabulary acquisition. In addition, ten years ago Whiting created Kid Scoop News, a monthly 24-page tabloid newspaper that is now given to more than 100,000 children in four states. This publication is growing nationally through partnerships with press associations and publishers. Kid Scoop publications are designed to help newspapers build readership now and into the future. See free marketing materials and articles about Kid Scoop’s use in newspapers around the nation at https://www.kidscoop.com/.

Dan Lyon (b. 1991) is a visual storyteller, editor and educator based in Syracuse, New York. He recently worked as the photo editor for Chalkbeat, a nonprofit newsroom telling the story of education in the United States, taught photographic storytelling as a part-time instructor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, and works as a freelance photojournalist for The Wall Street Journal in Upstate New York. Dan received his B.S. in photojournalism from Syracuse University in 2020 and attended the 2022 Kalish Workshop for visual storytelling and editing.

His experience as a soldier in the U.S. Army for over eight years has made him passionate about the intersection of safety and journalism. He is also a student of visual media ethics, examining the history of photography, and is a fierce advocate for working photojournalists. In his free time, you can find Dan listening to weird music or watching bad reality television.

Laura Koch is the senior graphic designer at Metro Creative Graphics. She holds a BA in Communication but followed her artistic passion to start her career as a graphic designer for two newspapers in her hometown of Buffalo, NY. In 2008 she relocated to NYC and landed a graphic design position at Metro, a company she utilized in her previous design work at the Buffalo News. Laura has been with Metro for 12 years now, continually helping the company anticipate and meet the evolving needs of the newspaper industry. She has a great appreciation for what designers on a small staff with tight deadlines can create. Laura puts her passion for layout and design to work in producing ads, section covers, art headings, infographics and editorial layouts, which she hopes will inspire her fellow artists and give them a jumping-off point in their own designs.

Karen Ager is Director of Communications for the Endowment for Health. In that capacity, she oversees strategic message development for both internal and external stakeholders, including key opinion leaders and the media.

Karen is a seasoned communication professional. Prior to joining the Endowment, she served as manager of corporate communications for Fisher Scientific International, a global provider of health care, research and scientific technology. Other past positions included C-suite messaging at Staples Worldwide, Bank of America (formerly BankBoston), and Boston Edison. Karen spent several years as managing partner at Public Image Corporation, a public relations firm with offices in downtown Boston and Newburyport. She is a former president of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC Yankee Chapter, Boston) and the Public Relations Society of America. She is a graduate of Leadership NH, Class of 2011. Karen has a Bachelor of Science in mass communications from Emerson College, Boston.

Gregory V. Sullivan has served as General Counsel for the Union Leader Corporation for the past 34 years. He also currently serves on the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s Committee on the Judiciary and the Media, as well as the Committee for Public Access to Courts, and is President of the Hingham, Mass.-based media law firm, Malloy & Sullivan.

Mr. Sullivan has argued before the New Hampshire Supreme Court in several landmark First Amendment and public access cases. Recently, he appeared with media and First Amendment experts on a special “New Media” television segment for WSBE, Rhode Island’s PBS station. He is also an instructor at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications in Manchester, N.H. and a faculty member of Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Mass, where he teaches First Amendment and media law.

Nina Sachdev brings more than 20 years of journalism, news editing and marketing experience to her role as a communications director for Media Impact Funders (MIF). Nina served as MIF’s communications director for more than five years before joining the Rita Allen Foundation to lead communications there. After a brief stint, Nina re-joined MIF in February 2022. Nina cut her teeth in journalism at The Dallas Morning News, where—as an intern on the copy desk—she was tasked with editing the obituaries of famous people who hadn’t yet died. Since then, Nina has worked at The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, The Philadelphia Daily News and The Philadelphia Weekly in almost every editorial capacity imaginable, including senior editor, A1 editor (when that used to be a thing) and slot (does anyone remember that being a thing?). Nina is the creator and editor of the award-winning The Survivors Project: Telling the Truth About Life After Sexual Abuse, which exposes the reality of healing from the effects of sexual abuse. Nina holds an M.A. in journalism from Temple University. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Steve Leone joined the Monitor as editor in April of 2014 and served through 2020, when he became publisher and vice president of news for the Newspapers of New England. He’s worked for the Newport Daily News in Newport, RI, the News & Advance in Lynchburg, Va., the Portland Press Herald in Portland, Maine, the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif., and most recently was the editor of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in Peterborough. He lives in Concord with his wife and two children.