Wanda
Garner Cash teaches journalism at the University
of Texas at Austin, where she is a clinical professor and
fellow to the S. Griffin Singer Professorship.
Previously,
she was editor and publisher of The Baytown Sun,
executive editor of The Brazosport Facts and also
managed newsrooms in Galveston and Kerrville. She
is a past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation
of Texas.
Laura
Lee Prather is a partner in the law firm of Sedgwick,
Detert, Moran, & Arnold, LLP. Her practice is concentrated
at the trial and appellate level in First Amendment litigation,
pre-publication review and clearance work, copyright and
trademark litigation, open government issues and privacy
concerns.
In addition
to her law practice, Prather was appointed by the Governor
of Texas to serve on the state's Personal Privacy Task Force.
She also serves as an adjunct professor at the University
of Texas School of Law in Media & Entertainment Law.
Prather is currently
the treasurer of the Freedom of Information Foundation of
Texas. She works on open government efforts as a member
of the Texas Association of Broadcasters' Legislative Task
Force and the Legislative Advisory Committee of the Texas
Daily Newspaper Association and the Texas Press Association.
State
Rep. Mark Strama is a native Texan who has divided
his career between public service and private business,
always fighting to empower voters and make government more
responsive to every American.
After graduating
from Brown University, he worked on Ann Richards' successful
1990 campaign for governor, and later became chief of staff
for State Senator Rodney Ellis. In 1995, he left government
to become director of programs at Rock the Vote, where he
helped register more than a million new voters.
Strama returned
to Austin to found a company that helped bring the economy,
efficiency, and convenience of new technology to the democratic
process. His company's technology enabled over 700,000
Americans to fill out voter registration forms online in
the 2000 election cycle.
Strama has served
on the board of directors of KidsVoting USA, a national
non-profit organization that develops civics education programs
for K-12 students. He was a founding board member
of Hope Street Group, a non-partisan organization of young
business leaders that seeks to achieve equality of opportunity
in a high growth economy. He is a member of the Pflugerville
Chamber of Commerce and the Pflugerville Council of Neighborhood
Associations.
Keven Willey
began her journalism career at The Associated
Press in Phoenix and later in 1980 joined The Arizona
Republic. She spent 1987-88 covering the presidential
campaign. Willey became The Republic's political
columnist in 1989 and was named editorial page editor in
1998. Under Willey's direction The Republic's
editorial pages twice were finalists for the Pulitzer
Prize – for commentary published in 2000 advocating
redistricting reform and in 2002 for a variety of topics,
including immigration policy and judicial reform.
Willey
became vice president and editorial page editor at The
Dallas Morning News in November 2002. Since
she came to The News, the Viewpoints page has
twice won “Best of” honors by the National Association of
Opinion Page Editors. The Dallas Morning News
editorials won the 2004 Scripps Howard Foundation
National Journalism Award for Distinguished Service to the
First Amendment for a series urging the Texas Legislature
to publicly record their votes.
Willey is the
2006-2007 president of the Texas Associated Press Managing
Editors, a member of the National Conference of Editorial
Writers, and a member of the American Press Institute's
News/Editorial Advisory Board.
Willey has won
many awards for news writing, column writing and editorial
writing – including National Headliners honors from
the Press Club of Atlantic City and from The Associated
Press Managing Editors association. She was named
Journalist of the Year in 2004 by both the state and Dallas
chapters of the American Board of Trial Advocates.
She is a former president of the First Amendment Coalition
of Arizona and a founding board member of First Amendment
Funding Inc.
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