Ithaca College

In March 2019, the Park School will host its third annual Women in Media Month, in conjunction with International Women's History Month.

Highlighting this initiative is the presentation of the Jessica Savitch Breakthrough award on March 21 to Laura Zelenko, Bloomberg’s senior executive editor for diversity, talent, standards, and training.

Thursday, March 21
7:30pm
Park Auditorium 

Under Laura’s leadership, the percentage of women guests brought in as expert commentators on Bloomberg Television has climbed to 18 percent in the most recent month, up from 10 percent at the start of 2018, and the percentage of stories that quote or cite a woman expert on Bloomberg’s TOP, or front, pages has increased to almost 10 percent from about 2.5 percent in March and is growing at an average pace of 13 percent a week. Bloomberg began a push to increase the number of women in its content earlier this year and as part of that effort began a pilot program to train more women for media appearances in locations across the globe in order to further diversify content and talent.

The award presentation will immediately be followed by our Women In Media Panel, A Conversation on Women, Power, Leadership & Diversity.

The panel will feature women across the media industry spectrum who have made significant impacts on how women are represented, both in front of and behind the camera:

• Christine Vachon - Academy award-winning independent film producer and co-founder of Killer Films whose work includes the exploration of LGBTQ+ themes and characters in Hedwig and Boys Don’t Cry

• Stacy Smith, Ph.D. - Assoc Professor, Founder/Director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at USC Annenberg School whose work resulted in the creation of the inclusion rider in film contracts;

• Brooke Johnson, retired president of the Food Network, Cooking Channel, and Food Category for Scripps Networks who was one of the female pioneers in cable television management

The panel will be moderated by Park School instructor and PR entrepreneur Ann Marie Adams MS ’98 and Journalism senior Reesa Hylton. 

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact April Johanns at ajohanns@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-1789. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.