Board of Directors

Jay Harris

President

Jay has been the publisher of Mother Jones since 1991. Previously he was general manager of Newsweek's Pacific edition, based in Hong Kong; publisher of Travel & Leisure/Asia; and director of international special projects for Newsweek International. He is a member of the board of IMAG, the independent magazine group of the Magazine Publishers Association, a board member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a member of the Social Venture Network.

Sara Frankel

Secretary

Sara has worked in media companies since starting her first job as a Mother Jones intern in 1986. She subsequently spent six years as a journalist, working as an editor, feature writer, and documentary film producer. In 1994, after completing an MBA, she began working as a media executive in digital media companies, founding her first Internet company in 1998. She has since founded or bought several entrepreneurial companies, most recently an e-commerce company focused on children's toys made from natural materials. She is currently working as an entrepreneur and business consultant in New York.

Mark North

Treasurer

Mark is a San Francisco Bay Area-based writer, transportation business consultant, and philanthropist. Mark's business background is in international container shipping and freight transportation. He began in the finance/leasing sector of the industry but in 1983 established and for 11 years served as the executive secretary of an international trade association representing the interests of transportation equipment repair companies. In 1988 Mark founded a corporation that established a standards-based transaction-processing network for global tracking of containers. After selling the business to Sterling Commerce, a division of SBC Corporation, in 1999, he led Sterling's US West Coast Strategic Sales team for 18 months before leaving to pursue opportunities in writing and publishing. Over the past four years, Mark has been involved with several Bay Area nonprofits, including Sports for Kids, The East Bay Community Foundation, Destiny Arts Center, Youth Speaks, and East Oakland Boxing Association. In 2005, Mark began publishing (the now-dormant) Old Trout magazine, “a satirical journal of political delusions, truthiness, celebrity antics, and cultural nonsense.”

Harriet Barlow

Harriet is the director of the HKH Foundation, which makes grants in areas relating to the environment, the arms race, and civil liberties, and is also director of the Blue Mountain Center, an upstate New York workplace for artists, writers, and activists. Ms. Barlow has also founded and cofounded 12 public interest organizations and has been a member of the board of directors of more than 50 nonprofits.

Jane Butcher

Jane is cochair of the Conference on World Affairs, chair of the Dean's Advisory Committee for Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado, is on the Advisory Board of the Autry National Center, and also on the Biotech Advisory Board at the University of Colorado. She is the founder of the consulting firm Conventional Wisdom, Ltd.

Erik Hanisch

Erik is a cofounder and president of the Seattle-based Quixote Foundation. The Quixote Foundation was founded in 1997 by Erik's father, Arthur, to advance progressive causes through the action, education, and policy work of dynamic nonprofit groups. Erik's wife, Lenore, is the executive director of the Quixote Foundation.

Adam Hochschild

Adam is a writer and was one of the cofounders of Mother Jones. He is the author of six books: Half the Way Home: a Memoir of Father and Son; The Mirror at Midnight: a South African Journey; The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin; Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels; King Leopold's Ghost: a Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa; and Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. In 1997-98, he spent five months as a Fulbright lecturer in India, and he teaches a writing class at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

Robert McKay

Rob is president of the McKay Foundation, a San Francisco-based funder that supports voter engagement, community organizing, and institution building efforts in low-income communities. Rob is a founding board member of America Coming Together and has been active in electoral initiatives at both the state and federal level. He also operates a venture capital fund specializing in emerging media and consumer products companies. He served six years as cochair of the FNP Board.

Richard Melcher

Rick is a founding principal of Melcher+Tucker Consultants, a Chicago-based strategic marketing and communications firm advising small and midsize companies and not-for-profit organizations. Rick has helped clients with strategic planning, media and capital campaigns, and in building strategic alliances. Prior to cofounding Melcher+Tucker, he served as bureau chief of BusinessWeek magazine's London and Chicago bureaus, where he managed regional offices and reported on such topics as economics and finance, politics, management, and social issues. At BusinessWeek, he helped build the International Edition. His reporting was recognized by the Overseas Press Club and the Deadline Club of New York for outstanding journalism. After leaving BusinessWeek, Rick served as vice president of content development and syndication at one of the Internet's leading news and public interest websites.

Hope Morrissett

Hope received a BA from the University of Colorado in a combined major in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, chemistry, and economics. She returned to academics to pursue a PhD in molecular, cellular and developmental biology when she became pregnant with her first child, who was born with a severe genetic problem and died as a three-month-old. Based on an experiential playgroup, she founded a school, which is now turning 20 years old and has 170 children attending from preschool through fifth grade. The school now has an intern program in association with a master's program at the University of Denver, which trains teachers in the school's methods and philosophy.

Carolyn Mugar

Carolyn is and has been for 20 years the executive director of Farm Aid. Previous to that, she was an organizer with the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers International Union. Both unions have since merged several times. She also founded the Armenia Tree Project based in Watertown, Massachusetts, and Yerevan, Armenia, and is very active on Armenian issues, traveling to Armenia several times a year. She likes to bike a lot. She walked the whole Camino in Spain over four years ago. She went to college and received a higher education.

Jon Pageler

Jon has been a vice president of Diageo, the world's leading premium drinks company, since 2003 and is currently responsible for marketing communications. From 2000 to 2003, Jon worked for the crisis management and strategic communications firm Westhill Partners. Jon came to Westhill from his role as scheduler and, ultimately, trip director on the Bill Bradley for President campaign, where he served for two years. From 1995 through 1998, Jon held positions on several political campaigns including as the scheduler for Charles Schumer's successful bid to unseat US Senator Al Damato and as campaign manager for Charlie King's unsuccessful bid for New York state lieutenant governor. Prior to that Mr. Pageler worked for the American Red Cross as a communications specialist and as an investigator for the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, a nonprofit criminal defense firm based on 125th Street in Manhattan.

Christina Platt

Christina is a senior portfolio manager specializing in socially responsible investing with the Berkeley office of Smith Barney. She was one of the original directors of the Massachusetts Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation, served on the Governor's Energy Advisory Task Force, and was a founder of The New England Small Farm Institute and Community Self-Reliance.

Susan Pritzker

Susan has been active in the arts, education, civil rights, and women's issues for most of her life. She is a former chair of the board of Pitzer College, on which she has served since 1990. She is also former chair of the board of directors of Chicago-based Urban Gateways: Center for the Arts in Education, the largest arts-in-education organization in Cook County, Illinois. Urban Gateways reinforces the arts curriculum in Chicago public and parochial schools by sponsoring artists to teach visual arts, dance, theater, and music. Susan is also chair of the board of directors of the Chicago Foundation for Women, whose goal is to increase philanthropic giving by women for a variety of causes, including shelters for abused women and girls and programs on domestic violence and sexual assault. Susan is married to Nick Pritzker, whose family are owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain.

Paul Ryan

Paul is the CEO and cofounder of Ryan Associates. Paul earned a degree in philosophy from Santa Clara University and studied humanities at San Francisco State. He has volunteered for several nonprofits over the years, including four terms as chair of the Board of Trustees at Headlands Center for the Arts. He is currently serving on the board of the DiRosa Preserve, an art center in Napa Valley.

Daniel Schulman

Dan started as Mother Jones' DC investigative reporter, producing groundbreaking stories that led to his becoming the DC bureau's associate editor in 2007. A former assistant editor at Columbia Journalism Review, he has written for the Boston Globe and the Village Voice, among other publications.

Kevin Simmons