Mission
For a media-savvy youth.
For a more involved parent.
For a modern and innovative educator.
For a critical mass.
Critically engaged media makers and users are key to a thriving twenty-first century world. The LAMP works to achieve this by empowering youth, parents and educators throughout New York City with hands-on training and media fluency designed to build community, responsibility and activism across the media landscape.
Core values:
- • Process over product
- • Media literacy as a basic need
- • Freedom from censorship
- • Critical curiosity
- • Accessibility regardless of socioeconomics
Senior Staff
DC Vito
Co-founder, Executive Director
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D.C. Vito co-founded The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) in 2007 with Education Director Dr. Katherine Fry. Since that time, The LAMP has brought media literacy training to over 1,000 youth, parents and educators, transporting equipment and facilitators directly to communities in need of its services. Under Mr. Vito’s leadership as Executive Director, The LAMP’s programming capacity has grown tremendously from serving roughly 75 students in the 2010-2011 school year, to serving over 850 students in the 2011-2012 school year. Mr. Vito worked as a community organizer for many years prior to The LAMP, having served in the Peace Corps in Mali, managing campaigns for City Council, State Senate and Presidential candidates, and spent eight years acting as Chairman of the Youth Services and Education Committee on Brooklyn’s Community Board Six. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for the National Association for Media Literacy Educators (NAMLE). Mr. Vito holds a B.S. in International Affairs from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, three-legged border collie, German Shepherd puppy and lap-loving cat. (Photo by Colleen Katana)
Katherine Fry, Ph.D.
Co-founder, Education Director
Katherine is a professor of media studies in the Department of Television and Radio at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She earned her Ph.D. in Mass Media and Communication from Temple University in 1994, and brings to The LAMP many years of experience teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in media history, criticism, theory and research methods. She has an extensive background in curriculum development. In addition to her teaching, Dr. Fry’s publications include the following books: Constructing the Heartland: Television News and Natural Disaster (2003, Hampton Press); and Identities in Context: Media, Myth, Religion in Space and Time (2008, Hampton Press). She has also published articles and contributed to books about communication technology and psychological well-being, television news, advertising and popular culture and radio. Her current research is in the history of news and in the future of news from the audience perspective. Fry is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York State Communication Association, and holds memberships with, and regularly presents on panels for, the International Communication Association and the Media Ecology Association.
Emily Long
Director of Communications & Development
Emily earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University in 2006. While at Columbia, she edited and catalogued hundreds of interviews and transcripts for the Oral History Research Office, focusing primarily on their 9/11 Project. Ms. Long has been with The LAMP since 2008, managing grant writing, project development, internal and external communications, special events, branding, website development and social media strategy, plus curating the LAMPlit series of free resource guides and editing The LAMPpost blog. From 2006 to early 2009, she was also the Resident Dramaturg at Electric Pear Productions where she designed and facilitated their playwriting workshop, as well as production dramaturgy. Ms. Long has extensive experience with numerous media through her work with Columbia’s Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Atlantic Theater Company, Sesame Workshop and others. Her writing and media criticism has appeared in the Independent Film Channel’s Make Media Matter blog, the Village Voice online and HASTAC. (Photo by Colleen Katana)
Board of Directors
Felipe J. Alvarez; Founder, FJ Alvarez Advisors LLC.
John Banta; Research Director, Vanity Fair.
Gillian Cassell-Stiga (Board Vice Chair); Postgraduate Fellow, Center for Constitutional Rights.
Gregory Donovan; Corporate Banking Associate, RBC Capital Markets.
Rachel Dretzin; Executive Producer, Ark Media.
Anderson Duff (Board Secretary); Associate, Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C.
Lindsey Fielding; Workforce Strategy & Programs Professional, I.B.M.
Christopher Hickman (Board Chair); Assistant Corporation Counsel, New York City Law Department.
Mark Nyon; Founder, Grand Kru Technologies.
Joshua Teeple (Treasurer); Partner, Grobstein Teeple Financial Advisory Services, LLP.
Jared Yeater; Senior Producer for Visual Effects, Design and Animation, The Mill.
Advisory Board
Jennifer Proulx; Education Associate, StoryCorps.
Jorge L. Ramos; Senior Anchor, Telemundo New York.
Larry Smith; Founder, SMITH Magazine.
Junior Board
Emily Breitkopf; Graduate Student, Department of Psychology at The New School for Social Research.
Stacy China; freelance journalist.
Tom Gray; Executive Director, Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce; founder, ShopLocalOnlineNYC.com and RallyDowntown.org.
Hazel Gurland-Pooler; Co-producer, Ark Media.
Alexandra Kalmanofsky; freelance media educator.
Courtney Liddell; Senior Integrated Producer, Momentum Worldwide.
Benjamin Max; founder, DecideNYC.com.
Jeanette Neumann; Money & Investing reporter, The Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Rosalyn Plotzker; Obstetrics/Gynecology resident, North Shore Long Island Jewish Hospital.
John Randall; Program Manager, Telecommunications Equality Project at The Roosevelt Institute.
Yi Shan; Manager of Operations & Sales, DashBid.
Emma Stevens; Development Associate, The Rockefeller University.
Meghan Washington; Editorial Specialist, Weill Cornell Medical College.
Farah Zaman; Legal Fellow, NYC Office of Emergency Management, Mayor’s Office for International Affairs.
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