PCI-Media Impact Staff

Michael Castlen - Executive Director (New York)
Sean Southey - Director of Programs (New York)
Danforth Preston - Director of Development (New York)
Anthony Scala - Controller (New York)
Programs:
Brenda Campos - Programs Manager (New York)
Lindsey Wahlstrom - Program Coordinator (New York)
Javier Ampuero Albarracín - Programs Officer (Peru)
Sdenka Cespedes Gonzáles - Our Voice/ Programs Manager (Bolivia)
Alleyne Regis - My Island/My Community/Program Manager (St. Lucia)
Enriqueta Valdez-Curiel - Programs & Evaluation Consultant (Mexico)
Patricia Vegalara Rojas - Country Representative (Colombia)
Development:
Kari Reynolds - Development Officer (New York)
Sylvia Torres - Development Officer (New York)
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.

Sean Southey
Director of Programs

Sean comes to Media Impact from Rare Conservation where he was most recently Vice-President for Rare’s training program. In that role, Sean supported the design and implementation of 25 social marketing campaigns with partners in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Before joining Rare, Sean spent 5 years launching and managing the Equator Initiative at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in New York. The Equator Initiative recognizes and supports community initiatives that reduce poverty through the conversation and wise use of biodiversity. The program received the UNDP Administrator’s Award for Innovation and Commitment.

Sean is a dual Canadian and South African citizen and currently lives in Brooklyn. Before joining the United Nations in 1996, he held various positions in environmental policy and economics with the Canadian government. Sean holds a strong commitment to community-based planning and to a holistic approach to communications for development – integrating both environment and health issues.

Sean has lived and worked in 70 countries, having worked in India for AKRSP and in Malawi and Egypt for UNDP. He holds a MSC from the London School of Economics and a BA in Economics from University of British Columbia.

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 (based in New York City)

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 .

Lindsey Wahlstrom
Programs Associate (based in New York City)

Lindsey joined PCI-Media Impact in the winter of 2009. The Minnesota native holds degrees in International Relations and Journalism and has worked with a variety of social justice organizations. After receiving her undergraduate degrees from Boston University, she spent time in Ecuador and Bolivia researching the relationship between extractive industries and social movements. Additionally, she has spent time collaborating with indigenous populations in Navajo Nation, India, New Zealand, Mexico and Peru. Lindsey most recently worked with youth to promote educational equity in New York City public schools.

Claudia Sdenka Céspedes
Bolivia Programs Manager (based in La Paz, Bolivia)

Sdenka Céspedes has a broad experience in management, planning and implementation of behavior change communication (BCC) strategies for development. She joined PCI-Media Impact after working four years managing the Communication Unit at Save the Children Bolivia Country Office. During this period, she designed and implemented BCC strategies for Neonatal Health, Food Security and Sexual and Reproductive Health for Adolescents and Youth, including HIV and AIDS prevention.

Ms. Céspedes worked as the State Manager of Communication at the Health Services Department in Cochabamba (SEDES), and as Manager of Information, Education and Communication for the Integral Health Coordination Network (PROCOSI), and Communications Coordinator for the Maternal and Child Neonatal Project (JHPIEGO).

As a consultant, she has developed a set of education materials for sustainable development - Communitarian Forestall Certification - for WWF, and a bilingual Spanish-Quechua self-training guide for social participation in education with the Andean Center for Communication and Development (CENDA).

Sdenka is a graduate in Social Communication from the Universidad Católica Boliviana, has studies in anthropology and holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy. She firmly believes that the communication is the most powerful tool to achieve social change, and in order to respond to people’s needs it must come from them.

Enriqueta Valdez Curiel, MD, MS
Programs & Evaluation Officer, Mexico & Central America (based in Guadalajara, Mexico)

Ms. Valdez Curiel is a radio producer, medical doctor, and professor of research at the University of Guadalajara ( Guzmán City campus) in Mexico . Born in Ameca, Jalisco to Mexican migrant worker parents, Ms. Valdez Curiel earned a medical degree from the University of Guadalajara and later earned a master’s degree in Community Development at the University of California at Davis , where she focused on rural women’s health. During this period, she began conducting qualitative research on entertainment-education (EE) radio programs, and later worked as a consultant to Radio Bilingüe (Bilingual Radio) in Salinas , California . Since 1998, she has worked on a variety of projects involving research and entertainment-education. She currently directs the project Radio ADO, an EE radio program developed and produced for-youth, by youth to promote sexual education in the city of Morelia , Michoacán, México.

Javier Ampuero
Programs Officer, South America (based in Lima, Peru)

Social Communication Bachelor from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. He is a specialist on strategic design and media for citizen participation. He currently works as the director of the HIV project Acción oriented to develop the capacities and communication resources in Latin America and the Caribbean; he is co-director of Loma Luna, a radio program and EE radionovela about sexual and reproductive health; he is director of La Pizarra, a communication specialized magazine; he created the Youth Short Story Competition, initiative that mobilized the public creativity and expression of thousands of young people between 1993 and 2000. He is also director of Calandria Production Center in the area of strategic design and media. He has also being consultant in developing strategies for youth participation for initiatives from institutions such as UNESCO Peru, UNICEF Chile and Kellog Foundation in Latin America.

Patricia Vegalara Rojas
Country Representative - Colombia (Based in Bogota, 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.

Kari Reynolds
Development Officer

Kari joined the PCI-Media Impact Development and Communications team in February of 2010 as the Individual Giving Officer. She has a certificate in fundraising from New York University’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising and a marketing degree from Peirce College.

After a career in marketing, product development and international trade, Kari changed career paths and has been a fundraiser for over twelve years. She managed the annual fund for Citymeals-on-Wheels and individual giving for the Guttmacher Institute.

Kari has been a women’s health and human rights advocate for many years, serving as the Regional Representative to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and volunteering with Amnesty International, NOW, Planned Parenthood and the New York Abortion Access Fund.

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.

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