Board of Directors

Dr. John A. Lent is a faculty member of the Mass Media & Communications Program of the School of Communication and Theater at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. In 2000, he was Rogers Distinguished Professor of Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and from 2002-2005 was guest professor at Shanghai University. Dr. Lent still acts as professor/advisor to doctoral candidates at the Animation School of the Communication University of China. Dr. Lent’s publications on mass communications include 70 books and monographs as author or editor. He is also the founder and editor of the International Journal of Comic Art.

Patrick Gathara is a strategic communications consultant, writer and award-winning political cartoonist in Kenya. He has worked as a professional cartoonist for 20 years and was the General Secretary of the Association of East African Cartoonists for nearly a decade starting in 2001.  He has published several collections of Kenyan cartoons as well as a study on the history and impact of political cartooning in Kenya. His writing has appeared in The Star (Kenya), The Washington Post, The Guardian and Al-Jazeera. He co-curates The Elephant, a Pan-African commentary platform “engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society.”

Cynthia P. Schneider, Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, teaches, publishes, and organizes initiatives in the field of cultural diplomacy, with a focus on relations with the Muslim world.  Ambassador Schneider co-directs the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown, as well as the Los Angeles-based MOST Resource (Muslims on Screen and Television).  Additionally, she co-directs the Timbuktu Renaissance project which grew out of her work leading the Arts and Culture Dialogue Initiative within Brookings’ Center for Middle East Policy.  From 1998-2001 she served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands, during which time she led initiatives in cultural diplomacy, biotechnology, cyber security, and education.  From 1984-1998 Prof. Schneider taught art history at Georgetown, and published on seventeenth century Dutch art. Dr. Schneider has a PhD and BA from Harvard University.

Nasreen Sultana Mitu began cartooning in the Bangladeshi satirical magazine UNMAD and currently is an associate editor there; her political cartoons have also appeared in bdnews24.com and New Age and she has won numerous of awards over a decade and a half of cartooning. Besides this she held an assistant professor post at the Institute of Education and Research, University of Rajshahi until October 2018, developing cartoon-based science educational resources. With a view to popularizing science beyond formal classrooms, she founded her own organization Project Tiktaalik which aims to develop printed and web-based science learning materials in cartoon and comic formats. Currently she is a national consultant for UNICEF Bangladesh, working closely with the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) of Bangladesh.