Board of Directors
Board of Directors >


Chris Fager
Chairman & CFO		 Chris is currently the President of TuTv, a joint venture of leading Spanish-language television companies Univision and Televisa, distributing Spanish-language programming in the United States. He was a member of the team that launched the E! Entertainment Television network. A lawyer by training, Chris has been a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow and in that capacity, with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, was the first Executive Director of the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C. Chris also led the Committee to Revive the Newspaper at Dorsey High School.
Frances Seghers
Vice-Chair		 Frances is Executive Vice President, Worldwide Government Affairs, Sony Pictures Entertainment. Her responsibilities include supervision of government affairs at all levels, and developing legislative and regulatory agendas that support the company’s businesses. Before joining Sony, Frances worked for the Motion Picture Association of America in Washington, D.C., where she was responsible for Executive Branch issues. Prior to her years in government relations, she spent fifteen years as a journalist, writing for Business Week and other publications. A native of New Orleans, Frances graduated cum laude with a B.A. in journalism from Louisiana State University.
Johnny Duda
President & Board Secretary		 Johnny Duda brings entrepreneurial non-profit and education experience to SVP. Since graduating from Harvard in 1999, Johnny has been actively involved in the non-profit community as a board member, advisor, and founder of several non-profits. Johnny has taught humanities and creative writing in public and private school settings, and is currently finishing his doctorate in Education Leadership at UCLA, studying the positive effect of journalism studies on overall academic achievement, specifically in relation to students of poverty. In 2006, Johnny co-founded the CASA Foundation (with Bill Bryan, the father of a former student) in an effort to leverage his research in the creation of new programs that address the widening "achievement gap" in inner city public schools. Under the banner of the CASA Foundation, Johnny spent several years doing primary research on the “prime movers” of effective education reform from the perspective of theory and the latest “best practices;” the Student Voice Project is a product of that research.
Jonathan W. Biddle Biddle is a partner in his own law firm, the Law Offices of Jonathan W. Biddle, established in 1982. Biddle is a practicing lawyer, arbitrator and mediator specializing in labor and employment law issues.

Before 1982, Biddle was the Chief Labor Counsel for Hughes Aircraft Corporation and was a Government Relations Manager and Labor Counsel for Union Oil Company.

Biddle has lectured extensively about his specialty in employment law and is a member of the California State Bar, Los Angeles County Bar Association and the American Arbitration Association Labor and Employment Panel of Arbitrators. Biddle earned his under graduate degree in International Relations from the University of Colorado in 1969. In 1975, Biddle earned a Juris Doctorate Degree from Southwestern University School of Law.
Mark Campbell Mark received his Bachelor of Liberal Studies from Antioch University Los Angeles, and his Master of Education from UCLA. He currently teaches English full-time at the Los Angeles Leadership Academy. Mark taught previously at Susan Miller Dorsey High School and at Hawthorne High School. While at Dorsey, Mark created a journalism program and was faculty advisor for the re-introduction into print of the Dorsey Gram, a school newspaper that had been out of publication for over five years. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Chase, and their twelve-year old son, Nick.
Lindsay A. Gardner

Gardner is a partner with two New York-based financial institutions:  MediaTech Capital LLC a financier of media- and technology-based companies, and  GTI Group, a private equity firm focused on late venture and growth equity buyout opportunities.

Before 2007, Gardner was President of Sales and Marketing for Fox Cable Networks, leading the organization that markets and distributes Fox’s 31 cable networks, 35 local television stations, plus HD and VOD content.  Gardner oversaw distribution, negotiations, marketing, technology adoption and deployment strategies for many of the US’ most successful networks, including:  FX, Fox Sports, National Geographic Channel and Speed Channel.

Gardner joined Fox in 1999 after six years at Atlanta-based Cox Communications, the nation’s fourth-largest cable operator, where he was Executive Director of Programming Ventures. He has been named to the annual “CableFAX 100” list of most influential industry executives seven times.  In May 2007 he was inducted into the Cable Pioneers Society.

Gardner holds leadership roles in numerous industry associations; among them, he Chaired the T. Howard Foundation, an organization developed to promote diversity in media and entertainment companies. 

Gardner earned his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1982.  At Brandeis, he was Editor of the weekly campus newspaper.  In 1989 Gardner earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Roger Lowenstein Roger was a student journalist in high school, at the University of Michigan, and at Harvard Law School. As a practicing attorney, Roger litigated First Amendment issues for media clients. As a law professor at Seton Hall Law School, he created the Media Law program. For ten years he interrupted his law career to write one-hour dramas for television. As founder of Los Angeles Leadership Academy, a charter middle school and high school serving over 450 inner city students at two campuses, Roger is committed to expanding literacy across the entire secondary school curriculum.
Sanford Panitch Sanford Panitch is President of Fox International Productions, a division of 20th Century Fox that produces and acquires local language films all over the world. Fox International Productions has produced and distributed some of the highest grossing local language films of all time in Russia, Brazil, India, Spain, Germany and China.

Sanford Panitch was previously the President of Filmed Entertainment for New Regency Enterprises, a News Corp partner in film and television, where he served in that role since 1999. Prior, Mr. Panitch was Executive Vice President of Production at 20th Century Fox where among the many films he supervised was one of the highest grossing movies of all time: TITANIC. During his tenures he has supervised over 75 films.

Mr. Panitch is a member of the Dean's Advisory Council at Tulane University, the Santa Monica Civic Association, the Curator’s Council for the LA Art Organization, and is a member of the Motion Picture Academy.

During his Undergraduate studies, Sanford was an editor on the College Newspaper, The Tulane Hullabaloo. He also serves as a Visiting Adjunct Professor at Tulane teaching a class within the English department that introduces a new approach to creative writing relying on filmic references.
Richard Siklos Richard Siklos is the Los Angeles-based editor-at-large at Fortune magazine. Previously, he was a corporate media correspondent and columnist for the New York Times; the U.S. business columnist for Canada's Globe and Mail and the London Sunday Telegraph. Siklos is the author of Shades of Black: Conrad Black and the World's Fastest Growing Press Empire (1995) and its sequel, Conrad Black, His Rise and Fall (2004). He served from 2001 to 2007 as an adjunct professor at New York University's Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. Siklos is a graduate of the journalism program at Ryerson University in his native Toronto, where he co-edited the school newspaper and, before that, helped start a newspaper at his high school.
Amit Thakkar Thakkar is the founder and principal of Thakkar Strategic Relations, an independent public affairs and political consulting firm. He executes coalition building, media relations and strategic messaging campaigns to earn support for his client’s large-scale public endeavors. His practice currently concentrates on the environmental, technology and financial sectors. Previously, Thakkar worked as a political campaign consultant and lobbyist for Cerrell Associates in Los Angeles, focusing on local government relations and statewide initiative campaigns. Prior to his years as a consultant, Thakkar served as a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs.

Thakkar found his passion for politics and news media as a student journalist in high school and college, and later as a columnist for the Irvine World News. He credits much of his career to his involvement with journalism.

Thakkar earned his undergraduate degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Pomona College where he was Editor-in-Chief of the weekly campus newspaper. He earned an M.B.A. from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.