Available Bios:
Marie Antoon
Deborah L. Linebarger, Ph.D.
Brigid Sullivan
Jim Barksdale
Judith Stoia
Chris Cerf 
Paula A. Kerger

Marie Antoon

In 2002, Marie Antoon was named the first female executive director of Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB). Under Antoon’s leadership, a new vision was created for the network, which included a re-organization to bring television, educational services, radio and other services under a single brand name for the first time in the history of the organization. This new vision also resulted in the network expanding its locally-produced programs and award-winning documentaries such as Blues Divas, BestSellers, Beyond Katrina, Writers, and The Singing River: Rhythms of Nature. In 2004, the station began partnering with WGBH-Boston and Sirius Thinking, Ltd. to produce the award-winning PBS children’s television program, Between the Lions, from its studio facilities in Jackson.

Antoon recently completed a three-year term on the Board of Directors of PBS, the private, nonprofit media enterprise that services the nation’s 349 public noncommercial television stations. As a PBS board member, she served on the committees for Nominating and Corporate Governance, Station Services, and National Policy.

Antoon has been recognized with a Special Merit Award from the Mississippi Wildlife Federation for her contribution to the station’s Emmy award-winning original documentary, The Singing River, and by the Southeast Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with the Board of Governor’s Award. In 2005, she was selected as one of Mississippi’s 50 Leading Business Women.

She currently serves on the boards of the National Educational Telecommunications Association, the Mississippi Council for Education Technology, the Mississippi Association of Partners in Education, the Mississippi Blues Commission, and serves as a co-chair of the nationally-acclaimed Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration. She serves as an ex-officio member of the Governor’s Early Childhood Services Interagency Council and as a charter member of the Management Board for Mississippi’s new and original early childhood program, Excel by Five.

Antoon also serves on advisory boards for the MidSouth Partnership for Rural Community Colleges, Jackson State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. She serves as the President and C.E.O. of Mississippi EDNET Institute, Inc., a consortium of public and private partners that provides educational programming through a statewide Educational Broadband Service system.

Antoon began her career in broadcasting in 1976 with the Alabama Public Television Network. She served as director of the Teleproductions Resource Center and as assistant director of Resource Development at The University of Mississippi. From 1994 to 2001, she served as director of academic technologies with the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning. A native Mississippian, Antoon holds a bachelor of arts degree in radio, television, and film from the University of Southern Mississippi and a master of social science degree from The University of Mississippi.

Deborah L. Linebarger, Ph.D.
Director, Children's Media Lab
Assistant Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Deborah L. Linebarger (Ph.D., 1998, University of Texas, Austin) is Assistant Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Linebarger is the director and principal investigator of the Children's Media Lab. Her research focuses on the relationships among children's developmental status, their use of media, and their larger social worlds. Her research combines descriptive work evaluating relationships between children's media use and their cognitive and social development; micro-level experimental work to detect the features used in media that elicit attention and contribute to comprehension of content; and macro-level program evaluation and intervention work that combines the knowledge gained through both descriptive and basic research and applies it in various real-world contexts. Her research has been presented at numerous conferences and published in psychology, communication, education, and pediatric medicine books and journals.


Brigid Sullivan
Vice President for Children's, Educational, and Interactive Programming, WGBH Boston

Brigid Sullivan is WGBH's vice president for Children's, Educational, and Interactive Programming. Under her leadership, WGBH has won every major award for children's television, educational programming, and new-media content. Sullivan joined WGBH in 1978 and was appointed Vice President in 1980.

WGBH is the single largest source of children's programs seen nationally on PBS, and Sullivan is responsible for the creation of such award-winning productions as Curious George, Arthur, Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman, Martha Speaks, Between the Lions, Design Squad, Postcards from Buster, Peep and the Big Wide World, and Zoom. She has overseen the production of the most popular telecourses of all time (French in Action, Destinos, Misunderstood Minds) and serves as executive producer of Justice: A Journey for Moral Reasoning (bringing author Michael Sandel's hugely popular Harvard University course to public television and the Web) and Poetry Everywhere (an innovative effort to bring poetry to a wider audience, both online and on TV).

WGBH is the largest supplier of content to pbs.org, one of the most popular dot-orgs in the world--the source of fully 30% of the site's traffic. Sullivan launched the department that creates these deep and rich sites, which extend the impact and longevity of WGBH's TV productions. She also initiated Teachers' Domain, a free online library of media resources from the best in public television, correlated to state and national standards.

Formerly also charged with overseeing WGBH's media access activities, Sullivan dramatically expanded WGBH's commitment to ensuring that the 36 million Americans with hearing or vision impairments have access to popular media on public and commercial television, on the Web, in movie theaters, and more.

Jim Barksdale
Jim Barksdale is Chairman of the Board and President of Barksdale Management Corporation, a philanthropic investment company.  He has over 35 years of operational experience.  Jim served as President & CEO of Netscape Communications Corp. from January 1995 until the company merged with America Online in March of 1999.  He was Director of Netscape from October 1994.  Upon completion of the merger with America Online, Jim joined Time Warner's Board of Directors.

Prior to Netscape, Jim worked at AT&T Wireless Services (formerly McCaw Cellular Communications) as their Chief Executive Officer.  From January 1992 to September 1994, he served as Chief Operating Officer of McCaw Cellular.  From April 1983 to January 1992, Jim served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Federal Express Corporation and prior to that, he served as their Chief Information Officer for four years.  Jim Barksdale also held various management positions, including Chief Information Officer with Cook Industries and started his career at IBM.

In January 2000, Jim and his late wife, Sally, gifted $100 million to the State of Mississippi to create a statewide reading institute, The Barksdale Reading Institute.  This is a joint venture with the Mississippi Department of Education and the state's seven public university schools of education.

In 1997, Netscape received the "Entrepreneurial Company of the Year" award from both Stanford and Harvard Business School alumni groups.  Computer Reseller News named Barksdale "#1 Executive of the Year," PC Magazine named him "Person of the Year," and at the 1997 ETRE Conference in Budapest he received the "Executive of the Year" award.  Jim has also received awards such as the BEAR Award from Brown University for citizenship, the Headwave Award from the State of Mississippi, and a NetDay Hero Award for his work for education. He has also been inducted into the University of Mississippi Hall of Fame, the Mississippi Business Hall of Fame and the Memphis Society of Entrepreneurs.

Jim sits on the boards of several companies and foundations, including Time Warner; Federal Express; Mayo Clinic; Sun Microsystems, Inc., and TechNet.  Jim was also appointed to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by President George W. Bush.  He is also a Strategic Limited Partner for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.  He is also served as co-chair of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, which published their reports, "Protecting America's Freedom in the Information Age", "Creating a Trusted Information Network for Homeland Security”, and “Mobilizing Information to Prevent Terrorism.”  Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Jim was asked by Governor Haley Barbour to chair the Governor’s Commission on the Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal of Mississippi.

Jim received his B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Mississippi.


Judith Stoia
Executive Producer, WGBH Boston

Judith Stoia is a Boston and New York media veteran with a background in journalism, drama and children’s programming.  She began her career as a radio reporter for WGBH FM and switched to WGBH Television as a reporter during the turbulent days of court-ordered busing in Boston.  She won numerous awards for her coverage and went on to write The Hardest Lesson, an account of those years published by Little, Brown.  It won the prestigious Christopher Medal for non-fiction.
 
After a year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, Stoia joined WCVB TV, the ABC affiliate in Boston.  There, she was a creator of Chronicle, a nightly news magazine, widely considered the most successful local series in Boston.  As Executive Producer, Stoia oversaw documentaries, presidential debates, a children’s series and AfterSchool specials for ABC.
 
Stoia returned to WGBH as Executive Producer for The AIDS Quarterly with Peter Jennings and went on to produce drama for PBS and ABC, local and national documentaries, a comedy series, public affairs specials, election night coverage and, most recently, the highly-acclaimed PBS children’s series, Between the Lions. The program has won six national Emmys, the Parents Choice Award, a rare endorsement from the National Educational Association and twice was named Best Children’s Program by the Television Critics Association.  In addition, Stoia has won numerous awards including Emmys, Gabriels, Cine Golden Eagles, New York Film Festivals, Robert F. Kennedys and Peabodys.


Chris Cerf
Co-Executive Producer, Between the Lions

Christopher Cerf is an author, record and television producer, composer-lyricist, editor, humorist, and co-founder and president of the educational television production company, Sirius Thinking, Ltd., where he serves as Co-Executive Producer of the multiple award-winning children’s literacy show, Between the Lions, now in its eight season on PBS, and of Lomax, The Hound of Music, the new music series for preschoolers which premiered on public televison late in 2008.
 
Cerf has won three Emmys and two Grammys for his musical contributions to Sesame Street; was a senior editor at Random House, where he worked with such diverse authors as George Plimpton, Andy Warhol, and Dr. Seuss; and was a charter contributing editor of National Lampoon.
 
Cerf recently won his third Grammy for Thanks & Giving All Year Long, the album he co-produced with Marlo Thomas for the benefit of St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Cerf also co-edited the book version of Thanks & Giving All Year Long, and co-produced Marlo Thomas & Friends’ Free to Be...A Family book, album and television special.

Paula A. Kerger

Paula A. Kerger is president and chief executive officer of PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, the nation’s largest non-commercial media organization with 356 member stations throughout the country.

Ms. Kerger joined PBS as its sixth president and chief executive in March 2006. Since her arrival, Ms. Kerger’s commitment to high-quality content, education, diversity, and the use of new technology to bring public service media into the lives of all Americans has resulted in a broad range of initiatives. Among her accomplishments are Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s “The War,” which earned the highest rating of any PBS series in the last 10 years; the debut of such acclaimed children’s programs as “Curious George” (the number one show for children ages 2-5 since 2006), “Word World,” “Super Why!,” “Martha Speaks,” and “Sid the Science Kid”; new primetime science and arts series; and comprehensive online sites for parents and caregivers -- PBS Parents -- and for educators -- PBS Teachers. In the past year, PBS programs have been honored with 33 Emmys, including ten News and Documentary Emmys and nine Primetime Emmys; eight George Foster Peabody awards; and one Academy Award (for best animated short film). Innovative partnerships with such companies as iTunes, YouTube, Microsoft’s Xbox, Netflix, Amazon’s Video on Demand, Hulu, and Vuze ensure that PBS programming is accessible across more than one platform and, increasingly, to a global audience.

In addition to leading PBS, Ms. Kerger is president of the PBS Foundation, an independent organization that raises private sector funding for PBS, and a director of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. For the past three years, the Hollywood Reporter has included Ms. Kerger in the “Women in Entertainment Power 100,” an annual survey of the nation’s top women executives in media. In 2008, she received the Woman of Achievement Award from Women in Development, New York.

Prior to joining PBS, Ms. Kerger served for more than a decade at Educational Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), the parent company of Thirteen/WNET and WLIW New York, where her ultimate position was executive vice president and COO. Her tenure boasts many achievements, including WNET’s completion in 1997 of the largest successful endowment campaign ever undertaken by a public television station.

Ms. Kerger received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Baltimore, where she serves on the Merrick School of Business Dean’s Advisory Council. In addition, she is a member of the board of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Ms. Kerger and her husband Joseph Kerger live in Washington, D.C.