The People Who Make PEACETALKS Happen

HOST

Walter Cronkite has been named the Most Trusted Man in America for more than half a century.

In his more than 65 years of journalism he has covered virtually every major news event of the twentieth century, beginning in WWII as a UP correspondent, followed by the Nuremberg Trials and then, Moscow, where he served as Bureau Chief from 1946-48.

In 1950 he joined CBS in Washington, D.C. and moved to New York in 1954 where he pioneered the first evening news broadcast as Anchorman, and later, Managing Editor, for the CBS Evening News.  For the next three decades he covered such history-making events as the U.S. Space Program; the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy; the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, to name a few.  He interviewed every U.S. President since FDR and the major Heads of State before stepping down from his Anchor desk in 1981 to assume his current role as Special Correspondent for CBS News.

He is the author of six books, including his autobiography, A Reporter's Life; hosts and narrates numerous documentaries for PBS and the Discovery Channel; maintains an active international lecture schedule; and most recently, began writing a nationally syndicated newspaper column for more than 165 newspapers around the country.

HOST

Actress Blair Brown most recently starred in John Caird's production of Humble Boy with Jared Harris for the Manhattan Theatre Club. In the past year she has played Prospera in The Tempest directed by Emily Mann at the McCarter Theatre and starred in the acclaimed revival of Stephen Sondheimís A Little Night Music. Ms. Brown won the Tony Award for her performance in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen in 2000.

Blair Brown is now appearing in Lars Von Trier's film Dogville starring Nicole Kidman. Favorite film credits are Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys; Victor Nunez's A Flash of Green with Ed Harris and Richard Jordan; The Astonautís Wife with Johnny Depp; and Ken Russell's Altered States with William Hurt, to name just a few. She just completed filming Loverboy directed by Kevin Bacon.

In television she is best known for the title role in The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd created by Jay Tarses for NBC and Lifetime Television for which she received 4 Emmy nominations and the Cable Ace Award. Recently she was seen on the WB series Smallville with John Glover, the CBS drama CSI:Miami and the NBC drama Law & Order.

Ms. Brown is on the board of People for the American Way and served with Christopher Reeve as co-president of The Creative Coalition, an educational and advocacy group made up of people in the entertainment industry.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Barbara Simmons, founder and executive producer of PEACETALKS, is an instructor at Arcadia University's International Peace and Conflict Resolution Master of Arts program, where she teaches International Mediation.

Simmons served as director of The Peace Center for several years, an educational organization dedicated to addressing conflict and violence, and continues to work at the Center.

Simmons has been traveling to study conflict in other parts of the world such as the Middle East, South Africa and Northern Ireland. She has been on ther front lines of conflict resolution activism for more than 20 years and has a formidable reputation for standing her intellectual ground no matter who the opponent.

PRODUCER

Melaina Spitzer is a radio producer and conflict resolution practitioner with a degree in History of Divided Societies from Brown University.  Melaina began her freelance radio career in Nicosia, Cyprus where she reported on the Cyprus conflict and reconciliation between the divided Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot populations. Before coming to PEACETALKS, Melaina led international peacebuilding programs for Northern Irish and Cypriot youth at the School for International Training.  In 2004 she was awarded the C.V. Starr National Service Fellowship to work with youth in Cyprus.  Melaina studied conflict resolution at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and political science at the University of Bologna in Italy. Melaina is also a photographer and video editor: Her multi-media exhibit "Rejuvenating the Peace Process," is now touring the U.S. Melaina is currently producing stories for PEACETALKS on the potential for the Olympic Games to build peace, and on the reintegration of Hutus and Tutsis in the Great Lakes region of Africa. 

PRODUCER

Reese Erlich's history in journalism goes back 35 years. He first worked as a staff writer and research editor for Ramparts, an investigative reporting magazine published in San Francisco from 1963 to 1975. Today he works as a full-time print and broadcast, freelance reporter. He reports regularly for National Public Radio, CBC, ABC (Australia), Radio Deutsche Welle and The World. He is a contract correspondent for Common Ground, the weekly program of international news aired on over 120 public radio stations Erlich's book, Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You co-authored with Norman Solomon, became a best seller in 2003. His article about the U.S. use of depleted uranium ammunition was voted the eighth most censored story in America for 2003 by Project Censored at Sonoma State University. In 2002 his radio documentary, The Russia Project, hosted by Walter Cronkite, won the depth reporting prize for broadcast journalism awarded by the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

PRODUCER

Sarah Lilley has spent her career focusing on music and sound.  A graduate in Music at the University of California at Berkeley, Lilley moved to New York City in 1990 and over the following decade worked in production at the American Composers Orchestra, the Bang on a Can Festival, Nonesuch Records and RCA Victor, before embarking on a freelance career in radio.  A regular contributor of arts features to PRI's Studio 360, Lilley has also produced pieces for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and WNYC New York Public Radio.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and three dogs.

PRODUCER

Independent Producer, Laura Jackson, is an instructor of radio documentary production at Arcadia University, and a former instructor at Swarthmore College. Three of her documentaries were Emmy finalists and one series ó Beyond Beijing: Women and Economic Justice ó was a winner. Her work has received Gold, Silver, and Bronze Apple awards at the National Educational Film and Video Festival.  Jacksonís major areas of interest are womenís history, literature and stories of social change. She recently won an award from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters for her radio documentary The Roads We've Traveled: Stories of Women over 80. Jackson runs her own company, Nightingale Productions in Philadelphia. She recently won an award from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters for her radio documentary The Roads We've Traveled: Stories of Women over 80. Jackson produced PEACETALKSí first three, one-hour documentaries.

PRODUCER

Peter Clowney is currently an editor at Marketplace, public radio's daily magazine about money and people's lives. This program is generally considered to be one of the best researched and most reliable programs being broadcast in America.

Before that, he edited PRI's Studio 360 and was one of the original producers of This American Life with Ira Glass.

Peter and his wife Julia live in Los Angeles with their son Owen, who can be ogled at www.flyinbaby.com

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER

Erin Galbally is Rochester Bureau Chief for Minnesota Public Radio. Previously she worked as a freelancer for Public Radio International, as a Producer of Radio Times for WHYY in Philadelphia, and as a production assistant for Nightingale Productions. Erin has her master's degree from Columbia University School of Journalism, where she was awarded the Wylie Scholarship and the National Magazine Scholarship. Erin was a member of the Honors Program during her undergraduate studies in Literature and History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER

Anu Yadav is a playwright, actor and writer based in Washington, DC. She was a 2000-01 Watson Fellow in which she studied theatre towards social change in Brazil, India and South Africa. She is currently at work on a solo performance exploring issues of redevelopment and gentrification, based on interviews with public housing residents in Washington, DC.

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER

Ian Chillag is an Associate Producer for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.  He moonlights as a frequent contributor to other public radio shows, including Marketplace, Only a Game, and Studio 360.  He graduated with a degree in Sociology & Anthropology and Fine Arts from Swarthmore College, and studied documentary photography at the Salt Institute for Documentary Field Studies.  He's still trying to get his head around the fact that his bio appears on the same page as Walter Cronkite's.