Senior Editor and Literary Ombudsman Steven Lewis is a columnist at Talking Writing, a member of the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute faculty, and a longtime freelancer whose work has been published widely, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Ploughshares, Spirituality & Health and many others. The author of several fiction and nonfiction books, he lives, writes, and kayaks in New York’s Hudson River Valley and North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Board President and Chief Technology Officer Sara Marrone specializes in repurposing and formatting content across mediums to diverse audiences. Sara incorporates online digital platforms and graphic assets to deliver targeted, effective branding. When not working on websites, audio / video productions or social media content, she's outside taking in the wonderment of all that nature has to offer.

Co-founder and Executive Producer Richard Kollath is an artist and designer who created design features for national magazines including Better Homes & Gardens, House Beautiful, Good Housekeeping and others. A longtime contributing editor at Country Living and the author of several published books, Richard appeared frequently on network television as well as Lifetime, Discovery, and QVC. For over twenty years, Richard and Ed have produced books, magazine features, TV segments, and events from their studio and office in New York’s Hudson River Valley.

Production Director Kevin O'Connor, Senior Engineer for Digital Systems & Reliability for NBC / Universal, seeks to be on the cutting edge of internet video streaming and cloud-based broadcasting with an emphasis on top-quality service for clients such as Amazon, A&E Networks, Philo, and others. His interests include media production, data science, and library science, and he’s passionate about human rights, equality, and climate change. A graduate of the Digital Media Production program at the SUNY New Paltz, he also mentors Writers Read’s Digital Media Production interns.

Board Secretary Ann Levin is a writer, editor and journalist. Her articles, essays and book reviews have been published by The Associated Press, USA Today, and dozens of other newspapers and magazines. She she served as national news editor at the AP and before that was a reporter for newspapers in Texas and California. After leaving her job as a full-time journalist, Ann worked as a freelance editor for various institutions, including Columbia University and the UN Population Fund, and began to write personal essays and memoir.

Board Treasurer Deborah Francis is president and owner of Integra Accounting and Bookkeeping Services, a firm specializing in services to nonprofits, small to medium sized businesses, and individuals. With more than 30 years of experience working in the private and public sectors as an accountant, consultant, and coach, Deborah helps nonprofit organizations build their capacity and strive for successful implementation of their mission (she volunteers to serve as treasurer for select nonprofits, and is an adjunct professor of accounting at SUNY Ulster). • Years served: 1

Marketing Committee Co-chair Alison Gragnano is Executive Creative Director at The New School/Parsons, a position she says she obtained by way of a brutal, yet thrilling 30-some-odd-year career in advertising, with over a decade alone split between the agencies Saatchi and Saatchi and Ogilvy and Mather.  Alison leads an in-house agency in the development of all marketing and communications for the university, collaborating with a team of talented and passionate creatives to share the vision and mission of The New School, a place for fearless progress and a university that includes: Parsons School of Design, the #1 design school in the U.S. Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, College of Performing Arts, The New School for Social Research, Schools of Public Engagement, Parsons Paris, and Continuing & Professional Education.

Marketing Committee Co-chair Debra Fried lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and just-post-college-twins, and is very happy when she’s reading, baking or riding a bike on a boardwalk. She’s spent the past 25 years working in advertising as a creative director.  The work she’s most known for (and most proud of) is the launch of Dove’s award-winning “Campaign For Real Beauty.” In addition to widening the parameters of beauty, she’s done her part to widen America’s hips, and put baubles onto its wrists, with advertising for clients that run the gamut from Hellmann’s Mayonnaise to Tiffany & Co.  Debra has a newsletter on Substack, where she writes about “clothing and life, but not in that order,” and has been published by The New York Times.

Marketing Committee member Brad Mislow is a New York-based writer whose on-camera commentary has been seen on CBS Sunday Morning. His humor pieces appear in the Jewish Review of Books, and within the copy of many national TV commercials. He's grown a following on LinkedIn with #stayingpositivewithbrad which offers readers an unconventional point of view of being unemployed. He shares his home with his two adult-ish children and Rosie, a misunderstood pitbull mix.