The Creative Communication Learning Advisory Council (CCLAC) Advisory Board is comprised of individuals who recognize the importance of today’s new era in intergenerational communication.
(In alphabetical order by first name)
Brecken Chinn, Ph.D., serves as Director of Communication for CCLAC’s Generations Communication Centers project. Although she spent her first years of life in Germany, she grew up with a passion for Asia, driving her decision to major in International Political Economy with a minor in Far East Asian Studies at The Colorado College. She went on to earn her Master’s Degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and then her Doctorate in International Communication from the University of Maryland at College Park. Fluent in both Chinese and Japanese, Dr. Chinn worked as an award-winning television and radio producer in Washington DC for Tokyo Broadcasting System and the Mandarin Chinese Service of the Voice of America. Dr. Chinn has taught at the collegiate level for over twenty years, developing an interest in intergenerational communication during her time as an Associate Professor of Communication at Curry College, where she authored a textbook: Communicating Well: A Fundamental Toolkit (Cognella, 2014). Dr. Chinn went on to teach Business Communication at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, coaching a number of pitch teams to award-winning success, then was hired as CEO of Royal Senior Management Group’s Maytown USA project (aka The Canoa Project) in December 2017. Dr. Chinn came on board with the GCC project with a passion to help foster and deepen intergenerational communication between youth and seniors, using her broad toolkit of teaching, outreach, and organizational support.
Enrique C. Feldman is an Artist and Educator whose influence is felt worldwide. Mr. Feldman is the Founder and Director of Education of the Global Learning Foundation. Founded in 2000 with his mentor, Dr. Carroll Rinehart, the Global Learning Foundation (GLF), formerly the F.A.M.E. Foundation, is focused on changing the paradigm from education to learning, with an emphasis on creative, autonomous learners and using artistic approaches to engage meaningful learning. Having served over 120,000 children and families, GLF has acted locally and thought globally from its inception and been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, with its focus on early childhood education. Co-Author of the children’s book series “Sam the Ant,” author of “Living Like a Child,” and Creator of iBG (Intellectual Brainwave Games), Mr. Feldman has become a thought leader in artistic, creative and innovative professional development. He has presented numerous keynotes and workshops for organizations; from national entities such as ILA, NAEYC and NAFCC, many state and regional organizations such as NCAEYC, NYSAEYC, and thousands of local workshops for fathers, parents, and communities. Co-Producer and Performing Artist for theatrical show “The Inner Journey” and 2-Time Grammy Nominated Composer and Artist, Mr. Feldman, together with a team of world class educators and artists and their partner organizations, fosters sustainable, organic and research-based learning models which develop the potential of the learner with the intent of revealing purpose. As an artist, Mr. Feldman is a film composer, pianist and producer. He is an active performing artist on piano and vocals and sings with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus. Mr. Feldman is a former professor of music and education at the University of Arizona and the University of Wisconsin. His journey in life is interwoven with his wife and concert pianist Marie Sierra, their 19-year-old son Nick, and their 23-year-old daughter, Sam.
LaToya Hinton is a PhD Candidate in Language, Reading and Culture in Education, College of Education, University of Arizona . She holds a Master’s in Linguistics, also from the University of Arizona, and a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Georgia. Ms. Hinton has served as a Teacher, Researcher and Digital Activist on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, and as a Teacher and Curriculum Developer at Southwest Key Programs for Unaccompanied Minors from Central America. She worked as a Teaching and Research Assistant in the U of A’s College of Education and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and as an Instructor at Project SEED for Georgetown/USAID. Ms. Hinton has worked with mixed Latinx, Afro-latinx, and Indigenous communities from the United States, Mexico and Nicaragua on language and culture reclamation through multimedia design. She has worked as an instructor for the SEED program from the summer of 2010 to the Spring of 2014, where she trained bilingual teachers and teacher coaches from 15 different states in Mexico. She is the recipient of numerous small grants such as the Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS), Tinker, and Rising Voices: Microfondo Para Estudios en Activismo Digital. Ms. Hinton created her own curriculum for a course taught in Nicaragua called “Medios de Comunicación Digital,” where she designed instructional materials in Spanish, English, and Miskitu. “Medios de Comunicación Digital” also produced seven multilingual videos featuring local solutions to global youth conflicts such as Bullying, Sexually Transmitted Disease, Alcoholism and Domestic Abuse and Racial Discrimination. Through collaborations and permissions with local non-profit organizations and elders six of these videos are available to the public through Facebook and Youtube.com. Ms. Hinton is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona in the College of Education. Her dissertation study is entitled “Multiple Voices: A Study of Pluriliterate North Atlantic Coast Nicaraguan Youth’s Multimedia Design Practices in Classroom and Online Community Contexts.” Hinton hopes to defend her dissertation in the Fall Semester 2018. Her contributions to the CCLAC advisory board will be consultation on multimedia design curricula, youth and senior Latinx, Afro-latinx, and Indigenous community outreach and job training, as well as fostering collaborations with the University of Arizona College of Education to build new digital learning platforms for youth and adults in similar demographics.
Lisa Nutt has over 25 years’ experience in both the public and private sectors with an emphasis on degree and non-degree program/project development and implementation, government/community relations, intercultural communication, economic development, community/civic engagement and instruction. She has been selected twice as one of an important group of educators in the U.S. for NAFSA’s Connecting Our World Grassroots Leadership Program and been invited to the White House on two occasions as a result of her projects—the first worked to better integrate international students into the campus and greater community through service and the second resulted in an Immigrant Leadership Program in Pittsburgh. Ms. Nutt earned her undergraduate degree in Business/Management and MBA in Global Management. She is a native Spanish speaker, conversant in two other languages, bicultural and grew up as the daughter of an immigrant in an interracial marriage in Douglas. She has owned and operated two businesses, and her work and personal interests have taken her through 15 countries and dozens of cities on four continents thus far. Ms. Nutt operates from a strengths-based, culturally responsive perspective and actively engages and recognizes the value of the people and places around her.
Maddy Urken, currently an independent information management consultant, has been an industrial information manager, project manager, chemistry teacher, and technical writer. She is the granddaughter of immigrants, a daughter, parent, and grandparent. In all of these roles, her experience has consistently revealed the importance of being able to use all available electronic, print, and spoken language tools in order to communicate compassionately, respectfully, and effectively while completing projects, working toward personal and professional goals, and resolving conflicts and misunderstandings. Maddy recognizes that, during the last several decades, the communications tools most frequently used by many people in school and in the workforce, while exceedingly useful, reward extreme brevity (often at the expense of complete explanations or expressions of understanding), rapid response (the need for speed often winning over the need to fully explain ideas), the use of images instead of words (sometimes encouraging a lack of specificity and precision), and impersonal contact (faceless and voiceless communication). Maddy strongly supports CCLAC’s programs that bring people of different generations together so they can enhance their own and each others’ communication and interaction skills.
Mike Rohrbach As CEO of CCLAC Inc., Mr. Rohrbach is building a team to take him to the next level of his insight into character development of youth through their unique abilities to building their skills. Today’s form of digital communication is just the latest of the digital divides that Mr. Rohrbach has experienced in his professional and nonprofit activities. As a product marketing and sales specialist in information systems on both sides of the Atlantic, he became aware of the impending communication gaps as his career shifted from mainframe computers to the announcement of the IBM PC in 1982. He co-directed the second largest IBM PC Users Group as a way of informing and instructing the public on its vast liberating and communication possibilities of this instrument. This was a start of many entrepreneurial ventures, creation of independent ventures and an eventual disaggregation of the workforce from physical locations. Mixing this realization with his linguistic skills allowed him to experience these changes in multiple cultures and various languages. Over the past many years of his retirement, Mr. Rohrbach was able to create computer use in regions where the economic standing of the communities was such that they could not afford new computers. Through the creation of Digital Libraries based on refurbished second hand computers in rural underserved areas, he also observed the inverted skill level of young versus the adult. As early as Y2K he collaborated with engineering students of the Tecnologico de Cananea in Sonora MX who taught 250 … 6th grade candidates how to refurbish, install software and use those used personal computers. The students were then able to take those computers and bring them to their new teacher to instruct them on computer usage. This is the model that became the Reciprocal Training platform, mentor and mentee trading skills. It was during the ensuing years that Mr. Rohrbach became aware of the possibility of inverse mentoring of working adults demonstrating the computer as a communications tool. This has led to the creation of the Social Communication Center ℠ concept for intergenerational communication. Adults are more comfortable learning these navigation skills from a youth. As society recognizes these communication gaps, empowering youth to become capacity builders for previous generations, their limited spoken communication skills are expanded in dialog with adults and seniors, a worthwhile human experience.
PABlo Bley serves as CTO for CCLAC and is the Director of Information Technology for the Canoa Project in Tucson and its projects worldwide. Mr. Bley has years of experience designing, developing, speaking, and writing about building high quality websites and online communities. He is a multidisciplinary artist, specializing in web and graphic design, with an emphasis on interactive UI, web accessibility and UX (user experience). Having spent years as Executive Director of Digital Marketing & Managing Partner of The3rdParty.co Digital Agency, he has been responsible for “Full Stack” design and development of both Front-End and Back-End for web platforms, which includes the provisioning of server-based and Cloud-based hosting of apps, databases, etc. Mr. Bley is the creator of Incubator.org, an Educational Online Community platform, on behalf of CCLAC. This innovative communications portal and research tool will serve as a hub of the GCC community network and provide the world’s largest source of qualitative data about the success of intergenerational interactions. Mr. Bley is a prolific blogger, writing for a number of online e-zine and learning provider outlets, where he contributes business-oriented content and shares his expertise in co-marketing, cyber security, and thought leadership. He is also a concert pianist and composer, patented inventor, gemologist, 3D designer, and polymath bringing together the arts, sciences, and social sciences into an extraordinarily multi-faceted matrix of human evolution.
Zachary Brooks, Ph.D., earned his doctorate from the University of Arizona, graduating from the College of Science and the College of Humanities in 2016. During his graduate studies, he served as the Graduate and Professional Student President for four years, increasing funding for childcare, research, and travel by more than a half million dollars. Dr. Brooks currently serves as a Trustee for the World Transplant Games Federation, and in the 2017 he was accepted into the prestigious Flinn-Brown Civic Leadership Training Program. Dr. Brooks previously worked at two Silicon Valley startups, has acted in Hollywood, and has taught subjects as diverse as ESL, psychology, and film editing at UCLA, UA, and community colleges such as Pima. He speaks four languages, including advanced Spanish, and he enjoys learning, leading, and traveling. Dr. Brooks is happy to be invited to serve on the CCLAC Advisory Board in order to connect human technologies across cultures and generations.