Building community is central to the Maynard Institute’s mission. In April we launched our Maynard Communities of Practice, a tuition-free initiative for all institute alumni. This new program serves as a hub for specialized instruction, peer learning, coaching, open conversations, networking and support across various cohorts. It strengthens the network of Maynard alumni across different programs and generations.

This resilient support system helps community members navigate their pivotal roles in newsrooms and media spaces, grounded in belonging. Modeled after the Maynard 200 Fellowship curriculum tracks, the program offers customized training and open conversations led by newsroom executives and subject matter experts. Some themes for discussion include leading through change, ethical editorial decision-making, entrepreneurial journalism, audience & community engagement, innovation and media sustainability.

Each cohort engages in skills-based instruction and expert coaching led by high-caliber faculty. Participants will take part in open dialogues, sharing of best practices, collaborative projects and a supportive network designed to accelerate career growth and leadership development.

In line with one of the key frameworks of the program – peer-to-peer learning, alumni will drive discussions and also lead some sessions, to ensure the communities have relevant, solutions-focused conversations.

Guided by our Maynard legacy and recent programming alumni, our initial meetings discussed their desired topics reflecting the main challenges our alumni face as frontline editors, mid-career managers, executives, storytellers in traditional and remote newsrooms; and as freelance journalists and media entrepreneurs.

Our Maynard Communities of Practice wanted to know:

  • How to adapt leadership to change
  • How to utilize AI tools in storytelling and management
  • How to lead difficult conversations
  • How to create a path to sustainability for media entrepreneurs
  • How stories can hold power to account
  • How to ensure career viability and growth amid industry shifts and volatility
  • How to structure teams to create multilingual content
  • How to manage up, down and across generations
  • How to manage time and projects effectively

Keeping up with the fast-changing world of digital journalism and the news needs of diverse communities, our Maynard alumni are incorporating new and trusted wisdom in team management, ethics & authenticity in storytelling, and audience engagement in their journalistic practices.

They’re also incorporating crisis management, newsroom and journalist safety, and community-centered story development while managing work/life balance and gender equity.

Embracing AI tools with guidance on ethics and a focus on dispelling misinformation in an increasingly social-media driven news environment, they’re examining the responsibility of media in current political climate and finding ways to rise to the occasion, cultivating media literacy while reporting the news.

Guided by our Maynard Communities of Practice Lead Advisors, those who have joined the Communities of Practice are adapting the skills they need to ensure career sustainability amid shifts in the journalism industry.

In continuing our Maynard Communities of Practice virtual gatherings, we will hold sessions in late May/early June, as well as in September and early December.

Registration for the Maynard Communities of Practice is open. If you are a Maynard Institute alum and have not signed up yet, please click on any of the links below. Alumni can be members of more than one community.

Meet the Communities of Practice Lead Advisors:

This year’s Maynard Communities lead advisors have served as former track executives-in-residence, track deputies, keynote speakers and mentors for the Maynard 200 Fellowship Program. They are respected newsroom leaders specializing in different journalism disciplines.

Maynard Media Entrepreneurs & Product Developers Community Co-Lead Advisors:

Dickson Louie - Principal, Dickson Louie Case Writing and Consulting (Dickson Louie & Associates). Visiting Assistant Professor and Lecturer, UC Davis Graduate School of Management. Board Treasurer, Maynard Institute.

Dickson is principal of Dickson Louie Case Writing and Consulting (Dickson Louie & Associates).a Bay Area consultancy providing strategic planning, competitive analysis and executive development services to startups, nonprofits and Fortune 500 companies.

He was a research associate at Harvard Business School, where he authored over 20 management case studies for the second-year MBA course.

He is an adjunct at UC Davis Graduate School of Management and the Executive MBA Program at San Francisco State. He has a bachelor’s in business administration from California State University, East Bay, and an MBA in finance, marketing and statistics from the University of Chicago. He also serves on the board of the Maynard Institute.

Linda Lloyd da Silva - Brand, Marketing & Communications Strategist. Former Maynard 200 Track Deputy, Media Entrepreneurs & Product Developers Track.

Linda is a marketing and communications strategist whose career spans private and public sectors across diverse areas including media, consumer technology, and international development.

She began her career at the Los Angeles Times as a financial planning department analyst helping the times wrestle with major strategic decisions such as market expansion and new product development.

Linda previously worked for Gemstar TV Guide, marketing products that helped shape the way consumers interact with screen-based content. Later, she directed her interests back to global development and joined World Vision, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations, and the World Intellectual Property Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations.

She currently works as a Senior Consultant for Greater Life Communications, a communications firm serving nonprofit and humanitarian organizations.

Maynard Managers Community Lead Advisor:

Maria Carrillo - Consultant and Coach

Maria is a former enterprise editor at the Tampa Bay Times and The Houston Chronicle and, before that, managing editor at The Virginian-Pilot. She has edited dozens of award-winning projects, frequently lectures on narrative journalism, co-hosts a podcast (WriteLane) about craft and has been a Pulitzer Prize juror six times.

She is a board member of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism. Carrillo was born in Washington, D.C., two years after her parents left Cuba in exile. She now lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., with her husband, and they have two grown children.

Maynard Executive Leaders Community Lead Advisor:

Virgil Smith - Principal, Smith Edwards Group, LLC. Author, The Keys to Effective Leadership. Board Member, Maynard Institute.

Virgil, principal of the Smith Edwards Group, LLC, started the consulting firm in October 2015 after retiring from the Gannett company, where he worked for 24 years as a president and publisher at The Record in Stockton, California, and the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Before joining Gannett, Smith spent 20 years with the McClatchy company, where he held several executive positions, including director of consumer marketing and chief labor negotiator.

He continues involvement with diversity and leadership issues, serving on the Fox News Workplace Professionalism and Inclusion Council, as a consultant and career coach for the Asian American Journalists Association Executive Leadership Program, the WAN-IFRA World Newspaper Congress and as executive-in-residence for the Maynard 200 Advanced Leadership Program.

Maynard Storytellers Community Co-Lead Advisors:

Tom Huang - Asst. Managing Editor, The Dallas Morning News. Adjunct Faculty, The Poynter Institute.

Tom Huang is the Assistant Managing Editor for the The Dallas Morning News and Adjunct Faculty at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Tom is Assistant Managing Editor for Journalism Initiatives atThe Dallas Morning News, where he edits enterprise stories,oversees the newsroom’s internship program and leads the newsroom’s community-funded journalism initiative, which seeks philanthropic support of public service journalism.

Since 2020, he has helped launch The News’ Education Lab, which has expanded education reporting with the support of local foundations; Arts Access, a partnership with KERA that covers arts and culture through an equity lens; and the Dallas Media Collaborative, an alliance of news outlets and universities focused on solutions-based reporting on affordable housing.

As an adjunct faculty member of The Poynter Institute, he organizes seminars for professional journalists on writing, reporting and editing. For the past six years, he has served as a coach in the Poynter Table Stakes program, which helps newsrooms make the transition to sustainable digital publishing.

Monique O. Madan – Award-Winning Investigative Journalist

Monique O. Madan is an award-winning investigative journalist with over 17 years of experience at legacy publications across the country. Throughout her career, Madan has tackled complex issues at the intersection of social justice, criminal justice, government accountability, immigration and technology. As an investigative reporter for CalMatters and The Markup, she uncovered pivotal stories on these topics. While at USA TODAY, she led a groundbreaking investigation, “Left to Rot,” revealing botched construction and evidence of money laundering in the tragic collapse of the Surfside condominium in South Florida.

Earlier in her career, Madan covered immigration for the Miami Herald, earning accolades for her in-depth series, “Immigration Pandemic.” Her investigative work has been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and El Nuevo Herald and The Dallas Morning News. Her reporting was instrumental in the release of a man who had been held in solitary confinement in ICE detention for an astounding 11 years, and she also exposed coercive self-deportation tactics and significant flaws in immigration policies.

In 2019, she was selected as a fellow at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Madan is a graduate of both Harvard University and Emerson College.

Aaron Glantz - Annenberg Fellow at Stanford University, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

Aaron Glantz served as Executive-in-Residence for the Maynard 200 Fellowship’s Investigative Storytelling Track in 2023.

He served as California bureau chief and a senior editor at The Fuller Project, the global newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking reporting that catalyzes positive change for women.

Aaron is a two-time Peabody Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, who produces journalism with impact. His work has sparked dozens of Congressional hearings and investigations by the FBI, DEA, Pentagon inspector general, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary execution. One project prompted the second largest redlining settlement in Justice Department history, against Warren Buffett’s mortgage companies.

In 2024 Aaron joined Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University, as a fellow.

Maynard Frontline Editors Community Lead Advisor:

P. Kim Bui - Media Consultant. Founder, Quen Media.

P. Kim Bui is a digital journalist and consultant who’s spent her career exploring new ways to tell stories and helping newsrooms become more inclusive and supportive. She runs Quen Media, where she works with news organizations on audience strategy, editorial workflows, and leadership development. She was most recently a 2023–24 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford. In past roles, she led product and audience innovation at the Arizona Republic, was editor-at-large at NowThis News, and helped shape social reporting at reported.ly (http://reported.ly/).

Originally from Iowa, she was part of the first cohort of CUNY’s Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership. She’s spoken around the world on journalism, equity, and newsroom culture, and her writing on empathy and power in journalism has been published in a range of research outlets.

Questions?

For more information about the Maynard Regional Training Series, please reach out to: Maynard Regional Training Series Director, Odette Alcazaren-Keeley at okeeley@mije.org.