| |
|
|
David Lerner has over twenty years of hands-on experience in media advocacy for human rights and social justice causes. From advising clients on the best strategy to implementing multi-dimensional communications campaigns, Lerner is one of the top publicists in his field.
Prior to founding Riptide with poet and writer Kathy Engel, Lerner served as press representative for the Center for Constitutional Rights, promoting the Center's cutting-edge litigation and public education campaigns. Working with leading civil rights lawyers he developed expertise in litigation publicity.
Lerner has extensive contacts in both the human rights and social justice communities around the world. He grew up as a political activist, attending many anti-war and civil rights rallies as a teenager. As a student at the innovative Friends World College, he traveled extensively, living abroad in both Europe and Latin America, including several months working with street children in Bogotá, Colombia. He is proficient in Spanish and harbors a dream of learning Greek, or at least mastering the alphabet! |
 |
|
| Ateqah Khaki is Riptide newest publicist. Khaki joined Riptide in 2005, and has since worked with a range of clients, including the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights and Minority Rights Group International. Recently, Khaki worked with a coalition of over 70 grassroots environmental justice organizations around the nation as a part of the Environmental Justice for All Tour '06 - a national effort to highlight the devastating impacts of environmental racism and injustice in communities around the U.S. Among her current clients is Military Families Speak Out, a national organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq with loved ones in the military.
Prior to joining Riptide, Khaki spent time working with the EastWest Institute, where she was integral to an initiative to educate Americans about Islam and Muslims. She has also worked with Chaya, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization serving South Asian women in times of crisis, organizing a 3-day Peaceful Families Conference, to raise awareness about domestic violence in the Muslim community. She is a graduate of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, with a degree in sociology. |
 |
 |
| Shonna Carter has been with Riptide Communications since 2001 and has worked with The Restaurant Opportunities Center to publicize abusive labor practices in the restaurant industry, as well as the opening of COLORS Restaurant, a cooperative restaurant owned collectively by its employees. She has also worked with Bread and Roses, the cultural wing of Union 1199 on their innovative photo project and book by Harper Collins, unseenamerica, which taught workers the art of photography as a means for documenting their lives.
Prior to joining Riptide, Carter worked with investigative reporter Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, wrote for InterPress Service, and was a Community Affairs Reporter and Art section Editor for Global Information Network (GIN), a daily news service covering events in developing countries. Carter recently took a year off to pursue a master’s degree at The Journalism School at Columbia University where she concentrated in newspaper journalism. Carter also has a degree from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she majored in Journalism, Arts and Politics. |
|
|
| Mahdis Keshavarz has been a publicist for nearly ten years. As the Vice President of Riptide Communications, Keshavarz worked primarily on post-9/11 backlash against the South Asian, Arab, and Muslim communities in the United States, and other parts of the world. For nearly six years she served as press adviser for the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights, working with nearly 300 attorneys representing detainees incarcerated at Guantánamo. In 2006, Keshavarz traveled to the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela where she acted as press adviser to the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. Additionally she has promoted the Arab American Comedy Festival, the Iranian American Alliances Across Borders, numerous film festivals and events addressing the Mid-East community both in the United States and abroad. Keshavarz has placed hundreds of news stories and op-eds with media outlets ranging from The New York Times to Al Jazeera for her clients. She has written for Slate and appeared as a commentator on Democracy Now! and the BBC. A graduate of the University of Washington, Ms. Keshavarz is fluent in Farsi and English and proficient in both German and Spanish. |
 |
 |
| Karmen Ross has worked as a communications professional in the public interest law sector since 1993. She directed the Emmy award-winning documentary film, Calling the Ghosts, which chronicles the lives of two women survivors of detention camps and systematic rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She was a communications consultant to the Permanent Mission of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations for their International Court of Justice proceedings against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) for violations of the Genocide Convention. She also served as a consultant to the Center for Constitutional Rights for Doe v. Karadzic, a federal civil action against the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, which received a record judgment of $4.5 billion in the year 2000. Ross has also worked as an independent journalist with 60 Minutes, 20/20, and The Boston Globe, covering stories of war criminal living at large both in the United States and Europe. She was the first communications director for the International Center for Transitional Justice based in New York. |
 |
 |
| Bronx native Gloria Bransky has been working at Riptide for over ten years as a full-charge bookkeeper and overall financial wizard. She also keeps a keen eye on Riptide's administrative procedures. Prior to joining Riptide, Bransky worked at Associated Camps and Jay Gold Films. She is also a strong advocate for environmental health and safety in her community of Co-Op City. |
| |
|
|
|
