Deadline Club Board of Governors for 2026
Approved by a membership vote on December 11, 2025
Officers
David A. Andelman, president, is executive director of The Red Lines Project and editor & publisher of SubStack’s Andelman Unleashed, a SubStack page dealing with global affairs, media and elections. His latest book, A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Could Still Happen, was published in 2021, along with its Evergreen podcast. On December 1, 2021, by decree of President Emmanuel Macron, he was decorated with the rank of chevalier (knight) in the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian decoration. A “Voices” columnist for CNNOpinion, he served for seven years as Editor & Publisher of World Policy Journal, following roles at Forbes, The New York Times, CBS News, CNBC, Bloomberg News and the New York Daily News. He is the author five books, and has traveled through and reported from 94 countries. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is President-emeritus of the Overseas Press Club of America and The Silurians Press Club, the oldest club in America for veteran journalists.
Julie Walker, vice president (awards contest), is an award-winning radio, television, and print journalist. She is a general assignment correspondent for The Associated Press, working for the radio division and contributing to print and TV. You can hear Julie on 1010 Wins Radio in New York and see her on Manhattan Neighborhood Network as a fill-in political show host and a contributor to Black History Month specials. Some of the recent stories covered for the AP include COVID-19, the George Floyd case, Derek Chauvin trial and Black Lives Matter. Her news coverage ranges from the 9/11 attacks to the Sandy Hook school shooting to the Coney Island hot dog eating contest. Julie began her career in Paris as an ABC News intern and cut her teeth in New York City, working for NY1 News. She has also held freelance positions at 1010 Wins, CNN Radio, NPR, WNYC and Newsweek-on-Air. Julie has been an adjunct Journalism Professor at Brooklyn College and Manhattan Marymount College. She is a graduate of Wellesley College. Julie was the president of the New York Association of Black Journalists from 2016-2019.
Claire Regan, vice president (awards dinner), has been an active member of the club’s board for more than 30 years, most recently as its three-term president from 2018 to 2020. She was elected to the national SPJ board as an at-large director in 2020, and as president-elect in 2021. She served as national SPJ president from 2022 to 2023. Regan is an assistant professor of journalism and faculty adviser to the student newspaper at Wagner College on Staten Island. She completed a year-long fellowship in journalism ethics and has been a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. Her editing and design work for the Staten Island Advance has been honored by the Associated Press, the New York Press Club and the Society for News Design. Three Rubes she earned from the Deadline Club for spot news presentation are prominently displayed in her office. In 2014, Regan received the Charles O’Malley Award for Teaching Excellence from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. She has been a board member and past president of the New York State Associated Press Association, a judging facilitator for the Society for News Design, and a frequent presenter at conferences for journalism students. She is also a founding board member of the Journalists Association of New York.
Alessandra Freitas, vice president (communications), is a multiple-award winning multimedia journalist currently working as an Associate Producer at CNN. Alessandra has previously worked at Dow Jones, ProPublica and HuffPost. She started her career as a reporter in Brazil, and has since produced remarkable multimedia reporting, working in the intersectionality of journalism, innovation & technology and business. She is skilled in video & audio production, investigative reporting, data journalism, and has developed groundbreaking projects with emerging platforms, such as the first news briefings for voice platforms for Barron’s and HuffPost. She has also published investigative pieces with CNN and ProPublica. Most notably, she co-reported on ProPublica’s Pulitzer finalist maternal mortality project, which won the George Polk Award and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. The investigation also sparked debates at government and high institution levels, fueling policy changes around the issue. Alessandra came to the U.S. in 2016 after being awarded a scholarship for the Studio 20 Master’s program program at NYU, where she studied innovation in journalism and multimedia storytelling. As a graduate student, she was the project manager and video lead for an interactive mini-documentary series that won a New York Emmy in 2018.
Jessica Seigel, vice president (events), joined the board as vice president of events in January 2013. She is an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University, with more than 20 years experience across media as a national correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, columnist for Glamour magazine, and the on-air “Countess of Culture” for NPR’s Day to Day. Her investigative work in science, health and culture has appeared in outlets including Marketplace public radio, The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler. She won the Front Page Award for a Lifetime exposé on the clothing industry and top honors from the American Society of Journalists and Authors for a Los Angeles Magazine diet scam investigation and Ms. Magazine science feature on ape and human politics. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she served as president of the SPJ student chapter.
Frank Posillico, vice president (student affairs), is an Emmy and Murrow Award-winning documentary producer, cinematographer, and journalist based in New York City. He is currently a freelance producer, cinematographer, and editor, with clients that include INC. Magazine, Morning Brew, Northwell Health, and the New York Post. Previously, Frank was a Senior Producer at Cheddar News and Altice USA, where he developed and showran more than 50 half-hour television episodes across two original documentary series: NYC Revealed and Ready4Work.
Alex Tarquinio, vice president (special projects), is a resident correspondent at the United Nations in New York and the host of The Delegates Lounge podcast, offering insightful conversations with government ministers, high-level diplomats, and other influencers. Her reporting has appeared in prestigious outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The New York Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the International Herald Tribune. She is a German Marshall Fund journalism fellowship recipient and a past national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Mariana Castro, secretary, is an award-winning multimedia journalist and producer, currently working as a video producer at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She has worked with The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, 44 Blue Productions, VICE, Vox, Jigsaw Productions, and Voice of America. Mariana’s passion for reporting and visual storytelling has allowed her the experience to work on a variety of important projects in different mediums. She is skilled in video production, investigative reporting, audio, and data journalism. Some of her work includes Emmy-nominated series “Glad You Asked,” a year-long investigation into the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the region’s main development financier, and Emmy-nominated feature documentary “The Inventor,” about Elisabeth Holmes and biotech company Theranos. She was born and raised in Brazil, but moved to the US in 2015 to pursue her undergraduate studies in journalism and political science at New York University. She also holds a master’s degree from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she attended as a Maria Moors Cabot scholar and Lemann Fellow.
Gloria Wood, treasurer, joined the board in January 2019. During the 1990s and 2000s she managed editorial content for two marketing industry subscription services accessed by thousands of media companies. She was one of three founders of a startup marketing newsletter called Sales-Fax (renamed AdNation News), where she was editorial director managing its team of writers for 7 years. Until 2014 she was SVP, Editorial Director/GM for Advertising Database—a marketing industry news resource and research firm. Previously she was an executive on the account management team at ad agency Scali, McCabe, Sloves primarily on the Volvo business for 13 years. Before to moving to NYC, she worked on automotive accounts at Detroit ad agencies including Y&R, Campbell-Ewald and McCann-Erickson. Currently as President of Wood Consulting, LLC, she is developing marketing and sales materials for several start-up businesses including an online sports marketing/management school.
Brennan LaBrie, assistant treasurer, is a Manhattan-based multimedia journalist who originally hails from Washington State. He began reporting in elementary school, when he published a handwritten weekly paper covering local news for three years, and reported on events like the 2010 Winter Olympics for TIME For Kids. He returned to journalism in college, reporting for the school paper and his hometown newspaper during summer breaks. He also co-directed three feature documentaries, one of which received a 2021 College Emmy. He moved to New York City in 2022, and, following a stint as a server in fine dining restaurants, began freelancing for publications around the city. His favorite topics to cover are urban development, housing, education and environmental issues, and his work can be found in The Rockaway Wave and the BK Reader.
Executive Council
Peter Szekely, chair as immediate past president, is a veteran reporter and former president of The NewsGuild of New York who retired from Reuters in December 2021. In addition to his 2023 term as Deadline Club president, he led the club from 2014 to 2015. Szekely joined Reuters in late 1978 as a commodities and energy reporter in New York before moving to the Washington bureau, where he was a general assignment reporter after covering an array of beats that included securities regulation, the economy and labor. Starting in 1995, he served for 12 years in the rank-and-file positions of New York Guild chair and regional vice president of its parent union, The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America. From 2007 to 2017, he took a leave from Reuters to become a full-time New York Guild officer, first as secretary-treasurer and later as president. He returned to Reuters in 2017 for a five- year stint as a New York-based national correspondent. Szekely served on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2023 and continues to serve on its Finance Committee and on the board of the SPJ Foundation.
Victoria Bert, a media professional and accomplished news producer with over three decades of experience, has carved her career path at renowned media institutions such as CBS, MSNBC, WNYW, WPIX, News12, BBC Productions, Paramount Television, 20th Century Fox, Comedy Central, and King World. Presently, she is senior executive producer at NY1, where she oversees weekend programming. In addition to her distinguished career, she is an active member of esteemed organizations such as the Producers Guild of America, NYWIFT, Women in Media, NYWIFT: New York Women in Film and Television, the National Association of Black Journalists, and the NYABJ. Her professional commitment extends beyond the confines of the control room, as she harbors a deep passion for addressing critical issues such as food insecurity and homelessness in New York City. This commitment is exemplified by her dedicated involvement on the board of the Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter.
Pamela Hamilton has turned to the executive council after being a member of the Professional Council since 2013 and a year on the executive council prior. As founder of PLH Media LLC, she serves as a producer, journalist and media consultant, shedding light on significant figures, events and issues in America. A seasoned television producer and on-air reporter, she earned her credentials at NBC News where she served on staff for nearly fifteen years and covered some of the world’s most notable news stories of the 21st Century, including 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing, the war in Iraq, presidential elections, major natural disasters, and Hollywood Awards. She has produced stories on politics, the environment, health, women’s issues, and much more, and coordinated the entertainment unit of Weekend Today. As an on-air reporter, she has interviewed iconic figures in music, film, and business for NBC’s Today Show, Weekend, and WNBC’s Today in New York. Her film work includes producer of Grateful Dawg (Sony Classics), winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Newport International Film Festival, and The Empire State Building’s Return to Glory.
Sheryl Huggins Salomon is a veteran journalist who is the advisory board chair for the politics news outlet City & State New York and the director of strategic communications at the NYU Silver School of Social Work. She is a former editorial leader of digital news outlets such as The Root, AOL Black Voices, NewsOne.com and FSB.com (Fortune Small Business), as well as a former contributing writer for Everyday Health and Livestrong.com.
Julia Harte is a National Affairs correspondent for Reuters, where over the past decade she has covered topics including the U.S. Justice Department, violent extremism, civil rights, U.S. foreign policy, and more. Her first book, a transnational history of American radicalism, is due to be published in 2026. Her long-form articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, and The Center for Public Integrity, among others, and her reporting has received various honors including a 2017 Sidney Hillman Foundation award for her investigation into potentially unconstitutional payments to Donald Trump-owned properties. Her Master’s degree at the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University was made possible in part by a Deadline Club scholarship. Until returning to the U.S. for graduate school in August 2013, she was based in Istanbul for three years as a freelance journalist. Her reporting on political and environmental issues in the Middle East appeared in National Geographic, Foreign Policy, The World Policy Journal, and Inside Climate News. In 2013, she received a National Geographic Young Explorer grant to travel along the Tigris River from Southern Iraq to Southeastern Turkey, documenting the downstream and upstream impacts of a Turkish hydroelectric dam.
Kristen Saloomey is an award-winning correspondent
Gaby Vinick is an award-winning journalist at ABC News. Her primary role is with the Visual Verification team, where her work ranges from covering extreme weather events to immigration enforcement and international conflicts. She sources viral video, interviews eyewitnesses and uses open-source intelligence (OSINT) to report breaking news and pursue visual investigations for all ABC platforms and affiliates. Vinick won a Peabody award as part of the Visual Verification team for her work covering the 2025 wildfires in Southern California. Prior to ABC News, she freelanced for News Not Noise and reported for Wisconsin Public Radio on the general assignment desk as the Lee Ester fellow. In 2023, she won a gold Milwaukee Press Club award for her story on a “Girls Rock” camp that empowers children to express themselves through music. Her reporting has also appeared in POLITICO, PBS Wisconsin, Wisconsin Watch and Madison Magazine. Vinick graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2022 with degrees in political science and journalism.
Advisory Council (Past Presidents)
Colin DeVries is assistant director of media relations at NYU Langone Health. Prior he worked over nine years as a newspaper editor and reporter for the New York Daily News, the News Corp-owned TimesLedger Newspapers group in Queens and daily and weekly papers in upstate New York. He has served on the board since 2012, first as assistant treasurer, then treasurer and various vice president positions. He was national chair of the SPJ Membership Committee from April 2019 to September 2020. He has a master’s degree in communication and media from Rutgers University, an advanced certificate in public health from CUNY School of Public Health, an advanced certificate in nonprofit management from NYU Wagner, and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University at Albany, where his journalism career began writing for the Albany Student Press. He also teaches public relations at Hunter College.
Steve Dunlop serves on the advisory council and served as president in 1992. He was morning news editor and writer for WOR Radio in the late 1970’s, a street reporter and anchor for New York’s Ten O’Clock News (WNYW-TV) in the 1980’s, as well as field correspondent for WNBC-TV’s Today in New York in the mid-1990’s. In 1999, following reporting stints at Fox and Reuters, Dunlop was named a correspondent for CBS News, where he was assigned to the network’s Bulletin Center. He was responsible for special reports as well as breaking news updates to the CBS Evening News. Currently, he is the president of Dunlop Media, Inc., a New York-based communications training firm.
John C. Long is a 49-year SPJ member; a former Louisville, Kentucky, chapter president; and currently also a member of the Columbus-based Central Ohio Pro chapter, for which he hosts an annual First Amendment program. He was a writer, editor and executive at The Courier-Journal in Louisville for 30 years and an editor at The Wall Street Journal for 10, sharing in a staff Pulitzer at each paper. He teaches journalism at St. John’s and Hofstra universities; is a founder and the director of the Main Street Free Press Museum, a First Amendment center in Fredericktown, Ohio; and in 1961-66 served on the founding staff of the Peace Corps.
Professional Council (Non-voting)
Betsy Ashton served as president in both 1994 and 2000, and was co-chair of the SPJ National Convention that the Deadline Club hosted in New York City in 2004. She was the first woman to serve as president of the Washington, D.C. chapter of SPJ in 1979. She also served as vice chairwoman of the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, and won the 2007 Wells Memorial Key for outstanding service to the national society. Betsy was a radio and television news reporter and anchorwoman in Washington, D.C., for ten years before coming to New York as consumer reporter for WCBS-TV and the CBS Morning News in 1982. Betsy Ashton’s Guide to Living On Your Own, was published by Little, Brown in 1988. She has written for numerous publications but now works full time as a portrait artist, and serves on the board of directors of the Friends of Thirteen/WNET-TV, New York’s Public Television station. She is also a professional and highly successful portrait artist.
George Bodarky is the news and public affairs director at WFUV FM, an NPR affiliate station, based on the Rose Hill campus of Fordham University in the Bronx. Bodarky is a past president and current board member of Public Radio News Directors, Inc. and a past president and current board member of the New York State Associated Press Association. Bodarky is an award-winning journalist who trains undergraduate and graduate students at Fordham University in multiplatform journalism. He is also an adjunct professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and has taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is widely known for his vocal coaching and journalism training. Over the years his students have won countless awards and have secured employment as anchors, reporters, writers and producers in commercial and public television and radio outlets across the nation. Prior to working at WFUV, Bodarky spent many years as an anchor, reporter and news manager in commercial radio and television.
Allan Chernoff is CEO of Chernoff Communications, which provides writing, video production, media training and media strategy services. He is author of The Tailors of Tomaszow, a communal memoir and history of Holocaust survivors. For 11 years Allan Chernoff was a CNN senior correspondent, reporting for all CNN networks as well as writing for CNN.com and CNNMoney.com. Previously, he was senior correspondent for CNBC where he reported for both CNBC and NBC News for a decade. Allan’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. His honors include six Deadline Club Awards, two National Headliner Awards, three Peabody Awards, and a DuPont Award. Allan is a graduate of Brown University. He tweets from @allanchernoff.
Keith Kelly is editor-in-chief of the Straus Media newspaper group, including its four papers and websites covering Manhattan: Our Town, West Side Spirit, Chelsea News and Our Town Downtown. Prior to that, he was freelancing for a variety of publications including the New York Post, Crain’s New York Business, the Daily Mail and the Village Sun following a 23-year run as the “Media Ink” columnist for the New York Post (July 1998 to July 2021). Keith also served as media columnist at the New York Daily News under Pete Hamill from March 1997 to July 1998, senior editor at Advertising Age from 1994 to 1997, editor of Folio: First Day from 1992 to 1994 and editorial director of MagazineWeek from 1988 to 1992. Earlier, he worked at McGraw-Hill Publications, freelanced out of Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1980 and started his journalism career at the Smithtown News and the Northport Observer.
Katina Paron, MJE works at the intersection of teens and journalism. For 25+ years she’s helped create byline opportunities for young reporters and training to journalism teachers. She is the manager of Teach for Chicago Journalism at Medill (Northwestern University); editor of Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s Dateline: CUNY and Ms. magazine’s The Future is Ms. teen-written column; and an adjunct associate professor at Hunter College. She was the senior project editor on The Trace’s award-winning national youth media gun violence reporting project, “Since Parkland” and founding editor of Teen Voices, a global girl news site at Women’s eNews. As the former managing director of the youth news agency, Children’s PressLine, she has worked with thousands of teens to develop professional quality media that has been published in the Daily News, Newsday, Metro, Ebony, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and ESPN.com, among other places. She’s written about youth journalism for The New York Times, The Daily News, WNYC SchoolBook and more. She is the author of the comic book-style high school textbook, “A NewsHound’s Guide to Student Journalism” (McFarland). You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.
