Beth Courtney
Board President

President and CEO of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Beth Courtney is also a prominent leader in public broadcasting. Since 1985 Courtney has lead the statewide public media enterprise, which serves as Louisiana's educational technology resource center and supplies cultural and educational programming for public television nationwide. A former news correspondent and program producer, Courtney helped create and is co-host of Louisiana Public Square, a monthly public affairs program. On the national stage, she is vice-chair of the board of directors for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and serves on the boards of the Organization of State Broadcasting Executives and the National Educational Telecommunications Association. She is past chair of the Association of Public Television Stations board and a former vice-chair of the PBS board.

Ruth Friendly
Board Secretary

Ruth Friendly is vice president and senior editorial director of the Fred Friendly Seminars. See staff bio.

Tom Conway
Board Treasureer

A media consultant and veteran television executive with more than thirty years of financial planning and administration within the broadcast and cable industries, Tom Conway was chief financial officer of Educational Broadcasting Corporation, licensee of Thirteen/WNET and WLIW New York, from 1995 to 2009. Conway previously held senior financial management positions at the Madison Square Garden Corporation, the Entertainment Channel, and the ABC network where he was chief financial officer of ESPN.

Tom Bettag

Tom Bettag, executive producer of The Koppel Group, is an award-winning television producer who is the recipient of 30 Emmy Awards, six DuPont-Columbia University Silver Batons, and many other accolades. The long-time executive producer of ABC News Nightline with Ted Koppel, Bettag joined ABC News in 1991 after 22 years at CBS News. He served as executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather from 1986 to 1991.

Walter Fields

Walter Fields is vice president of government relations and public affairs at the Community Service Society, a non-profit organization that engages in advocacy, research and direct service to champion better job opportunities for low-income people, particularly people of color. He is also the co-founder and executive editor of NorthStarNews.com, a national online news service about Black America. Fields has been a consultant to both Democratic and Republican political campaigns and served as director of public affairs for the New York State Trial Lawyers Association. He has also had a distinguished career as a journalist and contributor to a variety of national radio and cable television news programs.

Richard Kilberg

Richard Kilberg is president and executive producer of the Fred Friendly Seminars. See staff bio.

Lee Levine

A partner at the law firm of Levine, Sullivan, Koch & Schulz, Lee Levine has represented media clients in libel, invasion of privacy, copyright and related First Amendment cases for 25 years, litigating in the courts of more than 20 states, the District of Columbia, and most federal courts of appeal. He is an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught media law since 1989. Lee has served as chair of the American Bar Association's Forum on Communications Law, as president of the Defense Counsel Section of the Media Law Resource Center, and as chair of both the Media Law Committee and the Publications Committee of the District of Columbia Bar. He is the author, along with C. Thomas Dienes and Robert Lind, of Newsgathering and the Law

Arthur R. Miller

University Professor at New York University School of Law, Arthur Miller has moderated Fred Friendly Seminars for over thirty years. See moderator bio.

Daniel R. Stern

Daniel Stern manages business development for Stern + Associates and provides high-level corporate and marketing strategy to the firm's clients. He joined the firm in 2002 after 24 years in the lecture industry. In his career at the Leigh Bureau and as its president for 10 years, Stern signed, managed and represented many of the great authorities and speakers on business issues of our era. In 1984, Stern was a prime mover in expanding Fred Friendly's Media and Society Seminars into new markets to reach new audiences.