Dr. Hina Talib, MD

Dr. Hina Talib, MD (She/Her) is a board certified Pediatrician and Adolescent Medicine specialist, writer, and teen media creative based in New York City and Bridgehampton. She cares for teens & families at her new practice within the Atria Institute. She is the co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Thread Health, the first digital health service bringing skilled adolescent health care into the hands of teens and their families. Her clinical focus includes all things teen health, mental health, wellness and gynecology. Dr. Talib is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology & Women’s Health at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, where she worked for 11 years in Bronx, NY until 2022. Building on her passion as an educator, she directed the Adolescent Medicine fellowship training program at Montefiore, training future teen health experts from 2015-2022. Dr. Talib edited a textbook Adolescent Gynecology in 2018 and has published research in the field.

Dr. Talib is a media spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and has contributed writing to the New York Times, Thrive Global, & US News & World Report. She is frequently featured in media to discuss teen health news and tips and consults with teen or parent-facing organizations, schools, professionals, & companies to guide their care for tweens to young adults. As a teen media-buff, Dr. Talib works with creatives on podcasts, shows or other teen-facing media. Dr. Talib is a teen health advocate at heart and leads a popular community on Instagram @teenhealthdoc, where you will find her most timely tips and stories.

David S. Byer

David Byer is a longtime business and public policy executive in Washington, D.C., with a 40-year history of working across the public, nonprofit, and corporate sectors to improve education and workforce opportunity. From 2000-2022, he led worldwide education advocacy at Apple, where he was responsible for managing the company’s U.S. and global education and workforce development policy efforts and strategic relationships with education, industry, and policy leaders. Prior to Apple, he was tapped by Congress to direct the U.S. Web-Based Education Commission, a bipartisan, bicameral national commission authorized to develop federal and state policies to improve the use of and access to the internet for learning. He earlier served as vice president of government affairs at the Software and Information Industry Association and held advocacy positions with the American Society for Training and Development, National School Boards Association, and National Association of College and University Business Officers. Byer began his career as an assistant to U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island.

Byer has served on several education- and workforce-related boards including the International Society for Technology in Education, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and Workcred. He is a founder and former chair of the National Coalition for Technology in Education and Training and is currently a trustee of the Education Development Center. He holds BA and MBA degrees from the George Washington University.

 

Sherrie Rollins Westin

Sherrie Westin is CEO of Sesame Workshop, the global impact nonprofit behind Sesame Street. Westin directs the Workshop’s efforts to provide impactful early learning through a broad variety of media as well as targeted social impact and research initiatives that address a wide range of critical issues facing children and families around the world. She also serves as Sesame Workshop’s chief mission ambassador, raising awareness, developing strategic partnerships, and cultivating philanthropic support to further the Workshop’s mission to help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder.

Westin spearheaded a partnership with the International Rescue Committee to bring critical early education to children in the Middle East, which was awarded the MacArthur Foundation’s first ever $100 million grant, creating the largest early childhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response. This work has expanded to reach children affected by crisis in Bangladesh, East Africa, Latin America, and those who have been forcibly displaced from Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Westin has held leadership positions in media, nonprofit, and public service. She served as Assistant to the President for Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs for President George H.W. Bush, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and held senior positions at the ABC Television Network and U.S. News & World Report. Since joining the Workshop in 1998, Westin has led key organizational efforts spanning programming, licensing, research, education, and brand strategy, harnessing the power of media to reach children at scale.

Named a “Leading Global Thinker” by Foreign Policy Magazine, one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” and to Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list, Westin was also recognized with the Smithsonian’s “American Ingenuity Award” and the Thomas Jefferson Medal for Citizen Leadership. A staunch advocate for addressing children’s needs, she regularly appears on major media outlets to highlight the value of investing in early childhood development, especially for the most vulnerable children.

Westin serves on the Sesame Workshop Board of Trustees and chairs the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, an independent research and innovation lab named for Sesame Street’s founder. She also serves on the boards of directors of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and Vital Voices Global Partnership and is a member of the Executive Leadership Council of the Early Childhood Development Action Network. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Afghan Women’s Council.

Westin is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Concordia College in New York.

 

Esteban Sosnik

Esteban Sosnik is a Managing Partner at Reach Capital, which he joined at its founding in 2015. Previously he was executive director of co.lab, a learning game accelerator. Esteban was co-founder and CEO of social game developer Atakama Labs, which was acquired by DeNA, where he became VP with roles in studios, corporate development, and alliances. He was also co-founder and CEO of Wanako Games, developer of console games. Learning and growing has always been Esteban’s life motivator that brought him from Buenos Aires to the University of Virginia and from studying Foreign Affairs and Economics to becoming an entrepreneur and investor. He has been a member of the National Advisory Board of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center since 2018.

Lloyd N. Morrisett, PhD

Lloyd N. Morrisett was co-founder of Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street  and over 50 years’ of  award-winning television programs and other educational media for children. After thirty years as Chairman of the Workshop’s Board of Trustees, he became a Lifetime Honorary Trustee.

From 1969 to 1998, Morrisett served as President of the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, where he initiated the Foundation’s program in communications and information technology. Before going to Markle, Morrisett was Vice President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Morrisett was a Director of Tucows (an international Internet services provider) and a member of the Board of Trustees of Public Agenda (a public opinion research and engagement organization dealing with public policy issues). He was also a board member of the RAND Corporation (a research institute dealing with domestic public policy and national security issues) for thirty years and Chairman of the Board from 1986-1995. He was a trustee for many years of Oberlin College and was Chairman of the Board from 1975 to 1981.

Dr. Morrisett received his B.A. at Oberlin College, did graduate work in psychology at U.C.L.A., and earned his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at Yale University.

 

Ellen Ann Wartella, PhD

Ellen Wartella is an internationally recognized scholar of the influence of media and technology on children’s health and development. She has authored or coauthored more than 200 publications in this area and has received various awards for her work including at Northwestern University the Ver Steeg career award, a Career Productivity Award from the International Communication Association where she is also a Fellow, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association, a Distinguished  Alumni Award from the University of Minnesota, and an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from St. Vincent College. She was a member of the Sesame Workshop Board of Trustees and Chair of the Education Committee from 1996 to 2006 and from 2007 to 2017.

Joan Ganz Cooney

Joan Ganz Cooney co-founded the Children’s Television Workshop (since renamed Sesame Workshop) in 1968 and has created children’s programming, including Sesame Street, The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, and Dragon Tales, for more than three decades. She served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Sesame Workshop until 1990 and is currently Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Workshop’s board.

Mrs. Cooney has received numerous awards, including a Daytime Emmy for Lifetime Achievement in 1989 and, in 1990, was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame and received the Founders Award from the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 1995, Mrs. Cooney was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and, in 1998, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Mrs. Cooney was honored with the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s award for Distinguished Contribution to Children and Television, and, most recently, she was honored with the National Endowment for the Humanities Award by President Bush.

Mrs. Cooney is a trustee of the Museum of Television and Radio and The New York Presbyterian Hospital and is a lifetime trustee of WNET Channel 13/Educational Broadcasting Corporation and of the National Child Labor Committee. Among her many honorary degrees are those from Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Barnard, New York University, Smith, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Oberlin, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, and her alma mater, the University of Arizona, from which she received the Centennial Medallion Award in 1989.