Meet the 2020 CatchLight Visual Leadership Fellowship Jury January 21, 2020

CatchLight is pleased to announce the jury for the 2020 $30,000 CatchLight Visual Leadership Fellowship. Now in its fourth year, CatchLight continues to search for innovative visual storytellers and leaders committed to advancing and growing the field of visual storytelling.

OM MALIK, PARTNER AT TRUE VENTURES; FOUNDER AND A FORMER SENIOR WRITER FOR GIGAOM

Journalist Om Malik founded technology blog Gigaom in 2001. With seed funding from True Ventures, he turned the one-man blog into a media company and research firm. Not long thereafter, Om became a venture partner at True Ventures. In 2014, he graduated to partner at True where he continues to invest in promising networking and internet infrastructure technologies.

Om regularly writes for The New Yorker and provides commentary on tech trends to broadcast channels including Bloomberg West, NPR, and BBC television and radio. Om started writing about tech in the early 1990s at Quick Nikkei News before joining the founding team at Forbes.com. After a short stint at H&Q Asia Pacific as an investment manager, he then returned to the media world as a senior writer for Red Herring and later at Business 2.0. He published his first book, Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist, in 2003. Born and raised in New Delhi, he is now happily situated in Northern California.

ILLA DONWAHI, PRESIDENT AND CEO / FONDATION DONWAHI FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

Art collector, I. G. Donwahi started in 2008 In Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, the Fondation Donwahi for Contemporary Art, a non-profit cultural center, to promote and support contemporary creativity at home and abroad.

Through various programs the Fondation Donwahi creates conditions and activities to give an intelligent and sensible perspective of the African continent by opening its residency programs to all artists, and collaborating to panafrican and international cultural initiatives. (Past collaborations includes, the program AtWork_Abidjan 02 with the Moleskine Foundation, African Spirits with the Dokolo Foundation, Illa G. Donwahi has been invited as a curator or speaker on different programs at the Dakar Biennial, the Art Paris Art Fair, and AKAA Art Fair in Paris, and as a key speaker at the opening of the 2018 Cape Town Art Fair.

LIV ASTRID SVERDRUP, DIRECTOR OF EXHIBITIONS AT NOBEL PEACE CENTER

Liv Astrid Sverdrup is Director of Exhibitions at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. Since the opening of the Center in 2005, Liv Astrid has been responsible for more than 80 exhibitions on war, peace, conflict resolution and civil liberties. Her aim as a cultural leader is to combine the highest artistic quality with societal debate on burning issues.

Sverdrup initiated and curates the annual Nobel Peace Prize exhibition, where a photographer is commissioned to portray the work of the most recent Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Since 2005, this has included Lynsey Addario, Jonas Bendiksen, Marcus Bleasdale, Anton Corbijn, Paolo Pellegrin, Mads Nissen, Espen Rasmussen, Sim Chi Yin, Christina de Middel and Finbarr O’Reilly, to mention a few. The most recent exhibitions at the Nobel Peace Center feature Lauren Greenfield’s “Generation Wealth”, Rune Eraker “Tell the World About Us”, “Climate Lab”, “The Body as the Battlefield” and “Ethiopian Crossroads”.

Liv Astrid combines her extensive experience as a curator with deep societal insights from previous work as a researcher and policy maker in the field of international relations and sustainability. She aims to combine different art forms in her work, and she is currently on the board of Scandinavia´s largest literature festival: The Norwegian Festival of Literature.

BRIDGET HARRIS, HEAD OF PHOTOGRAPHY, AIRBNB CREATIVE

Bridget Harris is the Head of Photography for Airbnb Creative, responsible for overseeing the visual, strategic, and executional approach to brand imagery globally.

After studying at Wellesley College, Bridget relocated to New York and spent a decade producing commercial and editorial projects for clients ranging from The New York Times, Vogue, and Vanity Fair, to Estee Lauder, Absolut, Coca- Cola, and Reebok. Before joining Airbnb, she was a Senior Photography Producer at TIME Magazine and contributor to TIME Lightbox.There she produced special projects including photography for the annual TIME 100 issues, and 100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time.

In her five years building the photography program at Airbnb, Bridget has been recognized for setting a new standard in the way commercial brands partner with imagemakers, placing a non-negotiable emphasis on discovery, mentorship, and empowerment of diverse, socially conscious imagemakers to produce compelling, authentic, and honest visual communications.

BAHIA SHEHAB, MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST, DESIGNER AND ART HISTORIAN

Bahia Shehab is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and art historian. She is Professor of design and founder of the graphic design program at The American University in Cairo where she developed a full design curriculum focused on the visual culture of the Arab world.

Her artwork is concerned with identity and preserving cultural heritage. Through investigating Islamic art history she reinterprets contemporary Arab politics, feminist discourse and social issues. Her work has been on display in exhibitions, galleries and streets internationally. The documentary Nefertiti’s Daughters featuring her street artwork during the Egyptian uprising was released in 2015.

Her work has received a number of international recognitions and awards some of which are BBC 100 Women list (2013), a TED Senior fellowship (2016), and a Prince Claus Award (2016). She is the first Arab woman to receive the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture. Shehab holds a PhD from Leiden University in The Netherlands. Her publications include “A Thousand Times NO: The Visual History of Lam-Alif” (Khatt 2010), “At The Corner of a Dream” (Gingko Library 2019) and a co-authored book “A History of Arab Graphic Design” (AUC Press 2020).

WAYEE CHU, GENERAL PARTNER AT REACH CAPITAL

Wayee is a General Partner at Reach Capital, a venture fund focused on early stage education technology start-ups. Prior to Reach, Wayee was the co-founder of the NewSchools Seed Fund; a fund focused on early stage education technology companies with potential for a big impact in K-12 education. Wayee worked as an equity research analyst at Merrill Lynch in New York, where she covered the financial services sector. She started her career in 1997 as a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Wayee also supports several Bay Area education non-profits. Wayee graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science.

JOHN FLEETWOOD, DIRECTOR OF PHOTO: John Fleetwood is a photography curator, educator and director of Photo:; a platform that develops and promotes photography projects and photographers. As a curator and educator he is interested in the developing modes of documentary, questions of representation and positionality, and visual cultures.

Fleetwood has curated numerous exhibitions, including ‘Five Photographers: A tribute to ’ (, Maputo, Maseru, Makhanda, Durban; 2018-2019); ‘Of traps and tropes’ (Kerkennah, ; 2018); ‘Against time’ (; 2015); ‘A Return to Elsewhere’(Johannesburg, Brighton Photo Biennale; 2014); ‘Transition’ (Johannesburg, Arles; 2012-2013). In 2017, he was guest editor for Aperture’s ‘Platform Africa’ edition.

He closely works with the Centres of Learning for Photography in Africa and other institutions of learning and mentorship.

STACY-MARIE ISHMAEL, GALAVANT MEDIA

Stacy-Marie Ishmael has spent two decades working at the intersection of technology and media with a career that includes senior leadership roles at Apple, BuzzFeed News, and the Financial Times. She is on the board of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and writes regularly about issues related to journalism, technology, and user experience.

CATCHLIGHT VISUAL LEADERSHIP FELLOWSHIP NOW OPEN The CatchLight Visual Leadership Fellowship serves as an incubator — a place for innovative leaders in the visual storytelling field to receive financial support, unlock individual potential, grow and leverage partnerships. The Fellowship cultivates a vibrant community of creative thought leaders whose work will be enhanced by collaboration, mentorship, and networking.

The CatchLight Visual Leadership Fellowship Applications can be submitted here and are due by 11:59pm PST February 4, 2020.