CPJ Staff

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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ann K. Cooper 
(212)465-9344 x104
acooper@cpj.org 

Ann K. Cooper worked as a reporter in the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Washington before joining CPJ. Her voice is well known to radio listeners in the United States from her nine years as a correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR). She has also reported for The Louisville Courier-Journal, the Capitol Hill News Service, Congressional Quarterly, The Baltimore Sun, and National Journal magazine.
     Appointed NPR's first Moscow bureau chief in 1987, Cooper spent five years covering superpower summits, Mikhail Gorbachev's economic and political policies, the rise of nationalist movements, the emergence of Boris Yeltsin, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Among her major stories were the Armenian earthquake of 1988, the first electoral experiment of 1989, the Soviet military crackdown in Lithuania in 1991, and the failed coup attempt in Moscow later that year. She co-edited a book of first-person accounts of that siege, Russia at the Barricades. NPR also sent her to Beijing to cover the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.
     Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 1992 to 1995, Cooper covered the end of apartheid, the first all-race elections in South Africa, and the country's first year of majority political rule -- coverage that won NPR a prestigious Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award in broadcast journalism. She traveled throughout Africa, writing features and analysis on a range of subjects, including the famine and international intervention in Somalia, the 1994 Rwandan refugee crisis, and the cholera epidemic in Zaire.
     Returning to the United States in 1995, she studied refugee policy issues as a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and also traveled in Kenya, Rwanda, Zaire, Bosnia and Haiti to produce a series on refugee policy for NPR. She has taught radio and international reporting at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and is herself a journalism graduate of Iowa State University. She lives in New York City with her son, Tom Keller.

 

PROGRAM AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Alice Chasan 
(212)465-9344 x108 
achasan@cpj.org

A journalist for 17 years before joining CPJ, Chasan was executive editor of The American Prospect and, most recently, of Tikkun magazine. Winner of numerous professional journalism awards for her investigative reporting and articles on politics and public policy, she has appeared as a panelist on public affairs television shows and served as a questioner in televised gubernatorial debates. She received a bachelor's degree in classical and Near Eastern archaeology from Bryn Mawr College and a master's degree in religious studies (specializing in modern Jewish social and intellectual history) from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught in the history department at Temple University, and in the religion departments at Penn and Princeton University.

 

ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Jesse T. Stone 
(212) 465-9344 x112 
jstone@cpj.org
Before joining CPJ Stone worked for the Associated Press in New York, and as a freelance writer and editor both domestically and abroad, including assignments for the Turkish Daily News and the United Nations Development Program in Ankara, Turkey. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from the State University of New York at Purchase, and earned Masters degrees in philosophy and in international affairs at Temple University and Columbia University, respectively. Stone has also taught both writing and philosophy as an adjunct college lecturer, and plays guitar passably well.

 

DIRECTOR OF MEDIA RELATIONS
Judith Leynse 
(212) 465-9344 x105 
jleynse@cpj.org 

Leynse joined CPJ in October 1996 as its first Director of Media Relations. She brings to the post career experience in journalism, public and international affairs and education. She was the Associate Director of Public Information at Columbia University for 17 years, where she specialized in cultural and international areas and oversaw the annual announcements of the Pulitzer Prizes, the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards in broadcast journalism, and the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes for inter-American understanding. Leynse worked as a reporter for The Chicago Daily News after earning a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She later served as a foreign service officer with the United States Information Agency in Korea. Subsequently, she helped produce two independent films for Oceania Productions, a feature-length dramatized work depicting the travails of life on Ullung-do, a remote island 200 miles east of Korea, and a documentary on Japan's Sumo wrestlers. She taught journalism and mass communications for nine years at Washington State University. She is a graduate of Cornell University and an alumna of The Cornell Daily Sun. 

 

FINANCIAL DIRECTOR
Lanny Mitchell 
(212)465-9344X116 
lmitchell@cpj.org

Lanny Mitchell graduated from Cal-State Los Angeles University with a B.A. in finance. He has been in the accounting field for more that 17 years. 

 

DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
Lucy Mayer Harrop 
(212)465-9344 x113 
lharrop@cpj.org 

Harrop joined CPJ as director of development in October 1996. She has more than 15 years of professional experience in fundraising, event management, and marketing, most recently for the United Nations Association of the United States of America. She has also worked for The Museum of Television and Radio and American Ballet Theatre, as well as a number of theatre companies including New York Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, and The Acting Company. Harrop has also worked in merchandising and research analysis for Saks Fifth Avenue. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, where she has also been a candidate in the M.A. program in administration of the performing arts. She holds an A.B. in film and drama from Vassar College, and is also a graduate of The Brearley School. 

 

DEVELOPMENT AND SPECIAL PROJECTS ASSISTANTS
Amy Bodow 
212-465-9344 x117 
abodow@cpj.org

Amy Bodow graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995 with a B.A. in history and American studies. She received an M.A. in Liberal Studies and a New York State Professional Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University in 1997. She worked as a marketing analyst for XCEL Computer Systems in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during summers as well as part-time during the academic year while at Penn. Before joining CPJ, she interned in the Education Department at the American Craft Museum.

 

REGIONAL PROGRAMS


PROGRAM COORDINATOR
AFRICA

Kakuna Kerina 
(212) 465-9344 x103 
kkerina@cpj.org 

Since joining CPJ as its Africa program coordinator in 1995, Kerina has launched two media campaigns to draw international attention to the plight of independent journalists in Nigeria and Zambia who are targets of harassment by government leaders intent on silencing opposition. Kerina's efforts to free imprisoned Nigerian editor Nosa Igiebor resulted in his release in June 1996, and she continues to highlight the plight of Zambian editor Fred M'membe, who faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted on charges leveled against him for his reporting.
     Kerina's report Clampdown in Addis: Ethiopia's Journalists at Risk, about her mission to Ethiopia in May 1996, brought about a change in official U.S. policy toward the media during U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher's 1996 visit to Ethiopia. An editor, author, and award-winning documentary filmmaker, Kerina has lived and studied in Ghana and Botswana and traveled throughout Africa. She speaks French and has a bachelor's degree in sociology and anthropology from Amherst College. 

 

PROGRAM COORDINATOR
THE AMERICAS
Joel Simon 
(212)465-9344X108 
jsimon@cpj.org 

Before joining CPJ, Joel Simon worked as the Mexico City-based free-lance correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle . He is the author of Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge , published by Sierra Club Books. His work on Latin America has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Stanford University.

 

RESEARCH ASSISTANT
THE AMERICAS 
Marylene Smeets 
(212)465-9344X107 
msmeets@cpj.org 

Marylene Smeets studied law at the University of Amsterdam, where she specialized in human rights in Latin America, and international relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Relations of the Johns Hopkins University. She interned with the Dutch Development Corporation Cebemo, the International Commission of Jurists, and the UN Center for Human Rights. From November 1994 until January 1997, she worked with the U.N. Mission for the Verification of Human Rights in Guatemala.

 

PROGRAM COORDINATOR
ASIA 
A. Lin Neumann 
(212) 465-9344X140 
lneumann@cpj.org 

Neumann, a journalist for 15 years, has been involved with Asian issues for his entire career. As a foreign correspondent based in the Philippines from 1983 to 1989, he covered the overthrow of the Marcos regime and the rise of Corazon Aquino for The San Francisco Examiner, NBC News, the London Sunday Times, and other organizations. Neumann has traveled widely in the region, covering stories in Korea, Burma, Thailand, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. He co-wrote the book, Bayan Ko: Images of the Philippine Revolt. He is also a past president of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines. Neumann was the award-winning editor in chief of the Sacramento News & Review from 1991 to 1993. In recent years he has been a freelance writer on topics ranging from criminal justice to technology and business. His recent work on Asian business, culture, and politics has appeared in Wired, The Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia Inc., Reader1s Digest, and the San Francisco Examiner Magazine. Neumann is a graduate of American University with a degree in international relations. 

 

RESEARCH ASSISTANT
ASIA

Kavita Menon 
(212) 465-9344 x115
kmenon@cpj.org

 

PROGRAM COORDINATOR
CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE REPUBLICS OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

Chrystyna Lapychak 
(212)465-9344 x101 
clapychak@cpj.org 

Before joining CPJ in March 1997, Lapychak worked for two years as a research analyst with the Open Media Research Institute in Prague, where she contributed to the institute's publications, including OMRI Daily Digest and Transition magazine. Previously, Lapychak was a free-lance correspondent in Kiev, Ukraine, primarily for The Christian Science Monitor. While in Kiev, she also contributed to such publications as Current History, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Times. Prior to that, Lapychak served as an associate editor at the New Jersey-based Ukrainian Weekly newspaper. She has a B.A. in English, with a concentration in journalism, from Rutgers University and speaks Ukrainian and Russian. 

RESEARCH ASSISTANT
CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE REPUBLICS OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
Irina Faion
(212) 465-9344 x117
ifaion@cpj.org

 

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA 
PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Joel Campagna 
(212) 465-9344 x120 
jcampagna@cpj.org 

Campagna was a consultant to Human Rights Watch from 1993-96, and traveled to Egypt and Lebanon as part of fact-finding missions in 1994, 1995, and 1996. He is co-author of Egypt: Hostage-taking and Intimidation by Security Forces, a Human Rights Watch report (January 1995), based on field research conducted in June; and Confrontation: The Muslim Brotherhood in the Mubarak Years, published in the Journal of International Affairs (1996). Campagna has lived and studied in Egypt and has also worked as a researcher for the Cairo-based Center for Human Rights Legal Aid. He has a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, with a specialization in Middle East studies and human rights and humanitarian affairs. Campagna earned a B.A. at Fordham, where he majored in political science. 

 

OFFICE MANAGER
Shermaine Craigwell
(212)465-9344 x100 
scraigwell@cpj.org