Media Messages (ePub)

Linda Holtzman, Professor Emeritus at Webster University, has been a leader in media and diversity program development and teaching for 25 years. A weekly guest on the St Louis NBC affiliate, she has reviewed diversity messages in film and television and received grants for her work in the U.S., Israel and Palestine; analyzing media misinformation, stereotypes, and human rights activism. She serves as an anti-racism facilitator for local and national organizations and school districts and has received numerous awards for her work, including the Martin Luther King Award presented personally by Coretta Scott King.

Leon Sharpe is an adjunct professor at the Webster University School of Communications where he teaches courses that examine the role of film and other media in establishing and reinforcing patterns of social power. He is also founder and principal of The Praxis Group, a strategic consulting firm that specializes in building organizational capacity, developing effective leaders, training high-performance teams, leveraging workforce diversity, and managing institutional change. He has successfully designed and implemented employee efficacy and process improvement programs for a broad range of corporations, universities, school districts, government agencies, charitable foundations, social service providers, and community-based groups.

Joseph Farand Gardner, also know as J. Owl Farand, is a writer and Black Media Analyst for Owl's Asylum and operates the design agency J. Farand, LLC. Mr Gardner attended Ranken technical College in St. Louis where he obtained an Associates Degree of Science in Web Development and graduated from St. Louis' Webster University, earning a Bachelor's of Arts Degree in Media Communications and serving as a Research Assistant to Professor Linda Holtzman.