PCI-Media Impact Staff - New York

Michael Castlen - Executive Director
Natalia Vaccarezza - Programs Director
Danforth Preston - Director of Development
Anthony Scala - Controller

Programs:
Brenda Campos - Program Manager
Mark Waters - Program Coordinator
Alexander Amezquita Ochoa - Latin America Regional Coordinator
Patricia Vegalara Rojas - Country Representative - Colombia
Namir Hadad Nava Mireles - Communication Specialist - Latin America

Development:
Sylvia Torres - Development Officer

Michael Tatu Castlen
Executive Director

Mike is passionate about sustainable development and empowering local communities to help themselves. He believes PCI-Media Impact's unique approach is well suited to providing individuals and communities with life changing information empowering them to improve their livelihoods.

Mike became Executive Director of PCI-Media Impact in July 2005, after three years as the organization's Executive Vice President. Prior to coming to PCI-Media Impact, Mike spent three years as Vice President at the United Nations Association of the United States of America. Mike has more than 15 years experience building organizational capacity in non-profit organizations, specifically those involved in international development. As Chief Operating Officer at the Foundation for a Civil Society, he worked with NGOs in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to strengthen civil society organizations and nurture local corporate philanthropy. At Holt International he worked in Romania on strengthening child-welfare and with Church World Service he resettled refugees from throughout the world. His work has given him the opportunity to live and work in Romania, Kenya, Sudan, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Mike is a graduate of Macalester College, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and has an MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Although he has called New York City home for the past 16 years, he still considers himself an Oregonian.

Natalia Vaccarezza
Programs Director - My Community and Latin America

Natalia Vaccarezza
Programs Director

Natalia joined PCI-Media Impact in 2004. As Programs Director, she specializes in the design, implementation, and evaluation of behavior change communications (BCC) and social media strategies worldwide. At PCI-MI, she has directed a diverse portfolio of over 40 programs on issues of women’s rights, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, democracy, livelihoods, and the environment. Her responsibilities include program design, financial management, staffing, BCC story and script development, community outreach, and media advocacy. She has conducted trainings and presentations in the U.S. and abroad on international human rights, social marketing, and entertainment-education. Prior to joining to PCI-MI , she worked at Columbia University, Moxie Firecracker Films, and the William Morris Agency in the Motion Pictures division. She began her career as a litigation consultant and project manager in San Francisco. Natalia holds a master's degree in Human Rights from Columbia University, and a bachelor's degree from Stanford University. She is the producer of a documentary film on HIV and youth in New York City. She has been a juror for the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Emmy Awards and UNICEF's International Children's Day of Broadcasting Award. Natalia lives in New York City.

Danforth Preston
Director of Development

Throughout his career, Dan has experienced the power of education to change the trajectory of people’s lives. Dan believes that PCI-Media Impact’s innovative use of broadcasting to educate and empower individuals to change their behavior to improve their lives is a critical component of giving us an opportunity to realize the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Serving as the Director of Development since June 2008, Dan brings more than 14 years of nonprofit fundraising experience. He has successfully developed strategies and built relationships to assist a variety of social, educational and historic non-profit institutions fulfill their critical missions, including Urban Education Exchange, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. He also served as Vice President of the Board of Directors of The Workshop Theater Company. Mr. Preston received his B.A. from Yale University.

Anthony M. Scala
Controller

Anthony joined PCI-Media Impact in December 1997. He is responsible for handling some of PCI-Media Impact's accounting records and daily bookkeeping functions, including payment of invoices and processing payroll. He helps to produce financial reports for PCI-Media Impact's board meetings. He also assists in coordinating the year-end audit of PCI-Media Impact's financial records. Prior to joining PCI-Media Impact Anthony worked for one year as an outside auditor and for ten years as the accountant for a facilities management corporation.

Brenda Campos
Program Manager

Brenda was born in Mexico City. She graduated from Communication Sciences in ITESO University . Her experience in media production includes direction, production, photography, editing and art direction, for short films, experimental, promotional and documentary videos for independent production companies such as Parachute Pictures and commercial stations such as Telemundo. She has experience collaborating with non-profit organizations such as Asociacion Tepeyac de New York, Community Response to Trafficking and Esperanza del Barrio.  For almost two years she coordinated and produced, on a volunteer basis, Tepeyac Television Service, a documentary and education project with and about Mexican Immigrants in New York City that aired biweekly at Manhattan Neighborhood Network. As a video artist, Brenda's work was included in the Queens International 2004 exhibition organized and curated by the Queens Museum of Art. Her work has been selected for several festivals such as Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia, Rooftop Films, and one of her works, Mexican Link, won an award at the Hometown Video Festival .

Mark Waters
Program Coordinator

Mark Waters graduated from the University of Texas, with a double major in the Social Sciences and Spanish Language. Speaking both fluent Spanish and conversational Portuguese, Mark has chosen to focus on issues faced in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. Current projects include International Independent Community radio planning, as well as Educational and Social Development radio programming within Spanish speaking communities.  He has worked and traveled extensively throughout Spain and South America.

Alexander Amezquita Ochoa
Field Coordinator for My Community in Latin America - Quito, Ecuador

Alexander is an anthropologist interested in storytelling, media, and community empowerment. Originally from Colombia, he now lives in Quito, Ecuador. In 2005, he joined the Association of Latin American Educational Radio Broadcasters (ALER) in the Training and Research department. At ALER, Alexander has helped produce interactive resource materials for radio, specializing in sustainability, radio broadcast production, and communications research. Other projects have included trainings for the Kiechwa Satellite Network (RKS), a network of indigenous radio broadcasters from Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, and evaluation of the ELFO, a team of Latin American trainers specialized in sustainability, aesthetics and incidence for community radios and communication networks. Alexander also participated in planning and launching a cross-cultural journalism workshop in December 2006, and coordinated ALER's Communication and Development meeting in September 2006. Prior to ALER, he worked at the Institute of International Relations and Political Studies at the Universidad Nacional.

Alexander is currently pursuing a master degree in Anthropology at FLACSO in Quito. He also holds degrees in Sociology from Universidad Nacional, and in Mathematics from Konrad Lorenz University (FUKL) in Colombia. His most recent project focuses on social movements and alternative media in Latin America, with field work in El Salvador. Alexander is fluent in Spanish and English.

Patricia Vegalara Rojas
Country Representative - Colombia

Patricia Vegalara has served for over twenty years in a variety of financial and administrative positions for the Vegalara Group of Companies, before becoming its Chief Operating Officer in 1992. In this capacity, Ms. Vegalara oversaw the performance of the Group’s financial, leasing, commercial, insurance and automotive and equipment sales companies, which operated in six major cities in Colombia.

Ms. Vegalara served as Consul at Colombian Consulate in New York from 2003 to 2005. Ms. Vegalara returned to Colombia in 2006 to serve as the Treasurer for President Uribe’s re-election campaign.

Ms. Vegalara also has long been committed to social, educational and humanitarian activities in Colombia. She has worked for many years with the Vegalara Group of Companies to fund a scholarship program in memory of her father, Gabriel Vegalara, at the Universidad de Los Andes, one of the premier Colombian universities. She has also worked with Red Pan de Fundaciones de Nutricion, a foundation devoted to provide food to impoverished school age children.

Ms. Vegalara is enthusiastic about continuing to promote the work of PCI Media Impact in Colombia.

Namir Hadad Nava Mireles
Communication Specialist

Namir is an Entertainment-Education specialist from Michoacan, Mexico. He has broad experience as a scriptwriter, producer, trainer, and activist focusing on issues of human rights, sexual and reproductive health, and sustainable development.

Namir has provided training and technical assistance to Entertainment-Education projects in seven countries, and has participated in over 20 international forums in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. In his role at the Mexican Ministry of Health’s National Center for Control and Prevention of HIV/AIDS (CENSIDA), he designs information, education, and communications strategies to reach vulnerable populations. Prior to this, he spent four years as coordinator for Radio ADO, an Entertainment-Education radio serial drama and capacity building project in Morelia, Michoacan and Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco, Mexico. Namir is also a member of the Youth Leadership Team of the Earth Charter Youth Initiative, and co-representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Namir holds a degree in Communication Sciences from the Universidad Latina de America. His communications and activism work has been awarded by the Mexican Institute of Youth, Mexican Institute of Radio, and the National Institute for Women. Namir speaks Spanish, English, and French. He lives in Mexico City, Mexico.

Sylvia Torres
Development Officer

Sylvia is part of the Development and Communication department, managing both the individual giving and the communication strategies for PCI-Media Impact. Sylvia joined PCI-Media Impact as a scholar researcher in the summer of 2007 as part of her Masters degree in Sustainable Development at the School for International Training. She is doing a case study focused on the monitoring and evaluation system implemented in PCI-Media Impact’s project in Honduras.

Sylvia has a Bachelors degree in Communication for Social Change – Journalism. She has work experience in Honduras, Costa Rica and Colombia. As part of an environmental project funded by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), she participated creating a communication strategy in the Pacific coast of Colombia. Also in Colombia, Sylvia was involved in the production of a video documentary, based on personal interviews, about the musical history of her home town Cali. In Costa Rica she joined the department of Communication and Education at the National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) to ensure scientific information was disseminated at different public levels; and in Honduras, Sylvia supported local NGO’s with communication strategies.

Alexandra Hernandez
Development Associate

Alexandra joined PCI-Media Impact Summer 2007. As Development Associate she is responsible for managing our donor database and is also part of our direct mail marketing team. Alexandra graduated from Fordham University with a Bachelor in Science and is pursuing an M.D. degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She has a wealth of experience in youth mentoring programs in science.

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