Category: Speakers

Nicaraguan-born María Peña has lived in the United States since 1978, and she has worked as a bilingual journalist in Washington for close to 30 years. Throughout her career, she has interviewed celebrities as well as local, state, and national leaders, including President Barack Obama, both as a candidate in 2008 and just prior to his reelection in 2012.

Maria has also interviewed foreign dignitaries, and she has covered international summits and various NGO events. Recently, she covered the move of the US and Guatemalan embassies in Israel, and in the Spring of 2016, she covered President Obama’s historic visit to Cuba. Later that year, she covered a world summit of mayors and regional leaders in Bogotá, Colombia.

She’s currently the Washington Senior Political Correspondent for La Opinion/Impremedia, covering all issues impacting the thriving Latino community in the US, including immigration, trade, foreign policy, education, housing, and electoral politics.

As part of her immigration coverage, she has traveled extensively throughout the southern border, visiting communities on both sides, and interviewing politicians and regular folks.

She has chronicled the deployment of the “Minutemen”, the congressional gridlock on immigration reform, the plight of undocumented workers at risk for deportation and, currently, the unprecedented activism in the immigrant community against president Donald Trump’s policies.

In the past, she has also worked for EFE, UPI, NBC Canal de Noticias, Univision, and Telemundo.
Maria is a regular panelist at prestigious TV talk shows, including Voice of America, Univisión’s “Al Punto”, CGTN America, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), CNN’s “Choque de Opiniones”, and Colombian NTN24’s “Club de Prensa”.

She also frequently participates in workshops, panels, media roundtables, and briefings organized by congressional committees, universities, NGOs, think tanks, and the State Department.

Maria is an active member of the White House Correspondents Association, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Her work got national recognition from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 2016.
She holds a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in French from the American University (CAS ’90), where she has occasionally done graduate courses in human rights and conflict resolution.

She lives with her husband and two teenage daughters in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Her hobbies include reading, music, art, cooking, gardening, and other outdoor activities.

Director of Strategic Communications, George Mason University

Michael Sandler is the Director of Strategic Communications. He oversees external and internal communication for the university and leads a team that handles news, media relations, internal communications and crisis communications. Prior to joining Mason in 2014, Sandler spent nearly two decades as a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., and Florida, covering government, politics, and policy. He has been a reporter or editor at the Associated Press, Congressional Quarterly, The Hill, the Tampa Bay Times (formerly St. Petersburg Times) and The Washington Post.

Adjunct Professor, George Mason University

Jack Curry has held leadership positions in the newsrooms of many of the nation’s largest circulation publications: USA Today, The New York Daily News, and TV Guide. He has written for many media outlets ranging from The Washington Post and Washingtonian Magazine to Cosmopolitan and Playbill. Curry also serves as a Writing Coach at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and teaches English as a Second Language at Northern Virginia Community College. Curry received his MA in Journalism from the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. He received his BA at the Jesuit institution, LeMoyne College. Curry lives in Arlington now but has also called Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Norway, Switzerland and Long Island home.

Fareeha Rehman served as Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Fourth Estate from fall 2017 to spring 2018. Prior to that, she was the Online Editor and started as a staff writer in 2016. While working with the newspaper, she also served as President of the Society of Professional Journalists, which won Region 2 Chapter of the Year during her term. She graduated from George Mason University in May 2018 with a B.A. in Communication (Journalism concentration) and is currently an intern with On Tap Magazine.

Director, Global Media Partnerships, Ashoka

Laxmi Parthasarathy is the Director of Global Media Partnerships for Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, She is also a Media Development Professional and Vice Chair of the board of Crossroads International, a Canadian international development organization.

Laxmi is also the author of “The Bottom-Up Media Revolution: How Social Entrepreneurs Are Building Trust Between Communities and the Media,” a report published by the University of Michigan.

Prior to Ashoka, Laxmi worked in Swaziland as the communications leader for the country’s only gender-based violence prevention NGO, where she developed and executed a national media campaign and co-produced a national radio program.

In 2007, Laxmi founded MY ROOTS, a Toronto based newspaper distributed in North East Scarborough. She has worked on media and development projects in Canada, Swaziland, India, Rwanda, Mexico, Spain, and the UK. Laxmi has delivered lectures on Social Entrepreneurship, Media Development and the Future of Journalism at Harvard University, Skoll World Forum, and Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum.

Laxmi received a BA from Carleton University and an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science where she assessed the effectiveness of rural community radio for development in Southern India.  In 2008 she was awarded Top 20 Under 20 in Canada and currently lives in Washington, D.C.