The Daily Panel is proud to list the following people on our advisory board.

Clareann Grimaldi is a researcher and systems developer with more than 20 years of experience in education and social policy. Most recently, Clareann served as the Business Development Director for CitySpan, with responsibility for marketing strategy and client relations. Prior to joining Cityspan, Clareann worked at MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization, where she was director of systems development for a national study of afterschool programs. Clareann holds a doctorate in Education and Technology from Columbia University.

Nila Gopaul is the Editor and Publisher of The Westcoast Reader. Her background is in Communications, Education, Leadership and Management. Nila holds two teaching certificates and a Master’s Degree in Education (Curriculum Development and Instruction). She has taught at several post-secondary institutions in Canada. In the U.S. she was a valued faculty member at Harvard University Institute for English Language Programs. Her international teaching experience includes contracts in Qatar, the UAE, China and Japan. For over 10 years, Nila operated her own English language school and tutoring service. She enjoyed working with high school students and adults and misses being in the classroom. She is a news and fitness junkie, loves travelling, CBC radio and reading books.

Ann Kammerer has worked in the Washington, DC, area for 17 years as a graphic designer, production manager, and website designer primarily for non-profit trade associations and labor unions such as TESOL, National Association of Secondary School Principals, Teamsters, SEIU, and UNITE HERE. After 11 years designing newsletters, annual reports, brochures, books, logos, magazines, and collateral material, Ann began working on websites, developing brand design, information architecture, and site-specific content management solutions. Ann joined UNITE HERE in 2005 and is currently their Web Development Manager.

Alexandra Lescaze is the Executive Director of the Sydney Hillman Foundation. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, her first film, Where Do You Stand? Stories from An American Mill, told the story of the 25-year effort of North Carolina textile workers to organize a union in the face of modernization and globalization. Her latest film, All of Me, about a group of women who undergo weight-loss surgery, premiered on PBS Independent Lens in 2014.

As the Director of Educational Services at Teaching Matters, Jennifer Murtha leads a team of 40 educational consultants with high expectations to achieve the mission critical goals of over 200 education clients. She oversees the implementation of Teaching Matters professional development services and programs. She started with Teaching Matters as a Senior Educational Consultant, supporting schools with implementing the Common Core standards, using common assessments to track student progress, and developing Professional Learning Communities to build capacity within schools. Before joining Teaching Matters, Ms. Murtha served as Director of Curriculum and Instruction for a public school in the Bronx, where her leadership lead to an increase from 69% to 90% student proficiency on the NY State ELA exam. She also has served as a teacher, trainer, curriculum writer, and Director of Strategic Initiatives at Readworks. She received her Masters in Elementary Education from the University of Central Florida and her Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

After serving an apprenticeship with the IBEW, Matthew Taylor joined the organizing team of the National AFL-CIO in 1976 where he organized health care workers in NM, Texas and Colorado. In 1995, he moved into the political work of the National office till he retired in 2004. In the fall of 2004, a group of labor activists asked him to lead a project that would make a web-based member communication tool available to the labor movement in California. Matthew facilitated the development of Activist Central and is currently managing the latest upgrade to the software. Matthew has also managed the development of other software that has help unions with dues collection, benefits management and data management. Matthew is a 1993 graduate of the Labor College and a member of the IBEW and AFM 1000 as well as a retired member of CWA-Guild.