OUR MISSION (with hyperlink to lower down in the page)
WORLDMEETS.US is a nonprofit, nonpartisan journalism project
devoted to connecting Americans with the world. Our ultimate goal is to create
a wave of citizen diplomacy and a global community that promotes peace,
cross-cultural understanding, and enduring relationships between Americans and
people of other nations.
The mission of WORLDMEETS.US
is to inform, educate and inspire greater cooperation and dialogue between
Americans and the people of other nations.
We will provide news and opinion about the United States from outside the mainstream media bubble.
We will create a wave of citizen
diplomacy, where average people representing their nations come together to
share ideas. We will enhance cross-cultural understanding and cooperation by
harnessing the power of volunteerism and the latest technologies to connect the
public, Americans in particular, with people of other nations.
We will create a wave of citizen
diplomacy, where average people representing their nations come together to
share ideas. We will enhance cross-cultural understanding and cooperation by
harnessing the power of volunteerism and the latest technologies to connect the
public, Americans in particular, with people of other nations.
We will provide the tools for
overcoming the linguistic, geographic and cultural barriers between Americans
and people of other nations. We will harness the latest resources available,
online and offline, that provide Americans with ways to understand how others
perceive and discuss their nation.
We will provide a space, both
virtual and in person, for people of any nation to meet, interact and begin to
understand one another’s points of view and cultures. We will provide a space
for people to discover opportunities to travel, work and volunteer abroad.
We will provide ways for schools
and universities to connect with their counterparts abroad. We will promote
sister-class relationships and opportunities for students to meet virtually and
in person, and to practice language translation.
We will operate a Web site that
aggregates and translates news about America from other nations, and a database
of foreign newspapers and online translation tools. We will provide tools for
students and teachers to depart from static textbooks, and to study and
interact with foreign cultures and people in real time.
Through these efforts, WORLDMEETS.US
is building an international community that promotes peace, and respectful,
enduring relationships between Americans and people around the world.
William Kern, journalist, managing editor, executive director
Barry Messinger, Chairman
Barry is a media attorney who
began his career as counsel to the Motion Picture Association of America,
reporting to then-president Jack Valenti and general
counsel Louis Nizer. Barry has more than 30 years of
experience as an executive, agent and attorney in the entertainment industry.
He practices primarily in the field of transactional entertainment law
representing corporate and individual clients, including the leading producers
of programming for cable television, broadcast journalists, writers, and other
creative enterprises and talent.
During his time at the Motion
Picture Association of America, he dealt with trade practices, copyright,
legislative counseling and First Amendment matters. He then became a business
affairs executive with CBS News, dealing primarily with talent and program acquisition
contracts for its premier broadcasts, including The CBS Evening News (with
Walter Cronkite and with Dan Rather), 60 Minutes, Sunday Morning
(with Charles Kuralt), as well as for pilots,
specials and regular series, and was also involved with the operation of CBS
News’ overseas bureaus and the division’s relationship with industry unions and
guilds.
Since 1985 he has conducted a
general corporate and commercial law practice dealing with business formation
and operations, personal services contracts and real estate and related
matters, primarily with an entertainment industry-based clientele.
He graduated from the University
of Vermont with a B.A. in 1965 and from American University Washington College
of Law with a J.D. in 1968 and served on active duty as a 1LT with the US Army
from 1968 through 1969. He is a member of the bar of the State of New
York, the United States District Court (SDNY, EDNY), the United States Court of Appeals (2d Cir, DC Cir)
and the United States Supreme Court. He has periodically served as an
arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association and as a member of the US
Copyright Office’s Arbitration Royalty Panel, and has been active in New York
City, New York State and American Bar Association committees and professional
activities.
Ria
Gost, Treasurer
Ria has over 15 years of progressive experience in financial services compliance and operations management. Ria was the Chief Compliance and Operations Officer of a Broker Dealer and Registered Investment Adviser for over 10 years. She is currently Vice President of Policy Review at First Allied Securities, Inc. in San Diego, CA.
Ria has a longtime interest in
international affairs and journalism. In the late ’90s, she spent two years in
Taiwan working as copy editor for the Taipei Times. While there, for half a
year, she taught English to executives and employees of multinational
corporations. An American, she received a degree in international relations
from Claremont Colleges, Scripps, in Los Angeles and attended at semester at
Melbourne University in Victoria, Australia.
Marc
Steiner
Marc Steiner has hosted the
widely acclaimed public radio news and interview program, The Marc Steiner
Show, based out of Baltimore, Maryland, since 1993. Marc is also the
founder of the Center for Emerging Media, founded in 2000 as a 501(c) (3)
private non-profit corporation, with the mission to employ all forms of media –
including radio, video, and Internet – to produce unique programming to address
issues that affect our world.
The Marc Steiner Show airs on WEAA 88.9 FM, the NPR member station at
Morgan State University.
Earlier in his career, Steiner
founded a theater program in the Maryland state prison system, as well as the
Family Circle Theater, a company of teenagers that produced original
productions about adolescent issues. He also served for ten years on the
faculty of the Baltimore School for the Arts. Steiner was a therapeutic
counselor and director of counseling programs focusing on inner city
neighborhoods and prisons. He and Valerie live in the country just outside of
Baltimore. He has three children and five grandchildren.
Dr. Christopher A. Bonagura
Dr. Bonagura, is a research scientist and consultant in biophysics. With over 30 years of laboratory research experience focused on technological development in laboratory automation and protein crystallization, his efforts have contributed to several FDA approvals for human drugs over the last decade. He earned a Ph.D. in structural biology from the University of California Irvine in 1998, and a B.S. studying molecular and cellular biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1988.
Thanks in part to his 35-year association with William Kern, who introduced him the first publicly-available computer technologies in the early 1980s, Dr. Bonagura has a deep appreciation for Web-based information dissemination, and has helped guide the development of Worldmeets.US since its inception.
Ronald Fehd
Ronald is a programmer/analyst at a federal government agency. He is an internationally-known contributor to his computer-language user-group community and has published and presented over 40 papers in the past 15 years. In 1986 he graduated from U/HI-Manoa with a B.S. in Computer Science. Before entering his middle-age career as an IT specialist, he and his family taught English at Hunan University in Changsha, Hunan, PRC.
MANAGEMENT
William
Kern, Founder, Executive Director and Managing Editor
Will brings to the project a
decade of experience as a journalist and editor at some of the world’s top news
organizations. Before launching this project, he worked for the International
Herald Tribune in Paris and, prior to that, worked as the foreign desk
editor at the Taipei Times in Taiwan. Will also taught ESL for n years
in Taiwan. An award-winning newspaper designer and world traveler, Will has
focused his talents on this project for the past nine years. He and his team of
about 50 translators, editors and other volunteers worldwide launched this site
with the goal of building a nonprofit organization that would not just inform
Americans of global perceptions of their nation, but build a community that
would foster a movement of citizen diplomacy across the globe. Will’s interest
in global affairs was first sparked by an internship with the United Nations,
where he worked on global environmental challenges.
