Jill Shepherd will highlight events from her family’s early history in Alaska.  She also will tell how it came to be that, at age 47, she realized a 30-year-old dream when she landed a job at Alaska magazine.  Shepherd worked at the magazine for the next 23 years, retiring in 2004.

Jill Shepherd

Fran Ulmer is currently the chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, where she has served since being appointed by President Obama in March 2011. In June 2010, President Obama appointed her to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. From 2007 to 2011, Ms. Ulmer was chancellor of Alaska’s largest public university, the University of Alaska Anchorage. Before that, she was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at UAA. She is a member of the Global Board of the Nature Conservancy and on the Board of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Ms. Ulmer served as an elected official for 18 years as the mayor of Juneau, a state representative, and as Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. She previously worked as legal counsel to the Alaska Legislature, legislative assistant to Governor Jay Hammond, and Director of Policy Development for the state. In addition, she was the first Chair of the Alaska Coastal Policy Council and served more than 10 years on the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission. She earned a J.D. cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School, and has been a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government.

Fran Ulmer

Journalist Mark Trahant  serves as the 20th Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The position brings nationally known journalists to teach courses and speak to students, journalists and the public in Alaska.Trahant was recently awarded a fellowship to the Rockefeller Bellagio Center in Italy and for the past three years, he was an editor in residence at the University of Idaho, School of Journalism and Mass Media. In 2009, he was awarded a Kaiser Media Fellowship and wrote about health care reform, focusing on its impact in Indian Country. He also reported for PBS’ Frontline series, featuring a program titled “The Silence,” a piece about sexual abuse committed by priests in an Alaska native village.

Trahant is the former editor of the editorial page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he chaired the daily editorial board, directed a staff of writers, editors and a cartoonist. He has been chairman and chief executive officer at the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and a former columnist at The Seattle Times. He has been publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho; executive news editor of The Salt Lake Tribune; a reporter at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix; and has worked at several tribal newspapers.

“This is an exciting time for a young person to begin a career in journalism today,” Trahant said. “I look forward to working with the students at the University of Alaska Anchorage to help shape that future.”

Trahant will teach Information Gathering and Global Media and Communications Systems this fall and Multimedia Journalism and Enterprise Reporting in the spring.

The Atwood Chair of Journalism is among the nation’s most prestigious endowed journalism chairs. Anchorage Times publisher Robert B. Atwood established the Atwood Chair at the University of Alaska Anchorage in 1979. Among the many positive contributions Bob and Evangeline Atwood made to Alaska’s civic life, the Atwood Chair of Journalism has helped educate the state’s next generation of journalists.

Learn more about the 2014 Atwood Chair.

Trahant is an editor, reporter, columnist, television correspondent and the author of several books. A member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and former president of the Native American Journalists Association, he has been reporting on Native American issues since the 1970s. Trahant’s most recent book “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” is about Sen. Henry M. Jackson. He also publishes a daily poem about the news to Twitter @newsrimes4lines.

Mark Trahant

Rick Goodfellow – President / Programming Director / Grand Puh-bah –Rick is the heart and soul of KLEF. He hand selects all the music, manages the station, and is one of the voice talents on the station. He is also the newest inductee into the ABA Hall of Fame, as well as the Guide for the Ghost Tours of Anchorage.

Jan Ingram – Children’s Programming Director / Voice Talent (KLEF Notes)– Jan is one of the voice talents on KLEF. She is the Children’s Programming Director. She is co-owner with her husband, Rick.

Rick and Jan will talk about their radio station, KLEF (which just has its 25th anniversary), the Ghost Tours of Anchorage, and a new talk show – the Ghost Show – on KFQD.

Rick Goodfellow and Jan Ingram

President of The Growth Company, Inc., a management consulting, training, human resources and organizational strategy firm, Lynne Curry brings her clients a track record in management consulting; Board, manager and employee training; human resources and organizational strategy consulting.

Training and facilitation

Curry provides dynamic, professional, results-oriented training sessions in more than 200 areas including: leadership; management and supervision; Board of Directors’ work; training, presentations, facilitation and mediation; coaching; marketing, sales and customer service; personal and professional development; memory; time and stress management; team-building; diversity; GenX/Y; media; ethics; communications, conflict management and negotiation; motivation and change management. Curry has been awarded the Trainer of the Year award multiple times by the Anchorage chapter of the American Society of Training and Development. Curry teaches facilitators and also provides facilitation, meeting management and team-building for a large variety of organizations.

Lynne Curry

Polly Smith’s interest and passion for adult literacy began many years ago as a volunteer tutor and teacher, and she has never looked back.  She has worked with learners of all ages, from preschool in family-literacy programs to adults in college and the workforce. Polly has been awarded the Alaska Adult Education Association Administrator’s Award and the Alaska Adult Educations Association’s  John L. Hulbert Award for outstanding long-term contributions to adult learning in the state of Alaska.

Polly is a teacher, trainer and administrator for the Alaska Literacy Program, a volunteer-based nonprofit providing literacy instruction to adults and families with young children. She has a Master’s degree in Education, Learning Disabilities. She serves on the board of the Commission of Adult Basic Education and as secretary for the ProLiteracy Council of State Organizations. She is an ardent admirer of all things Alaskan, realizing her childhood dream of becoming an Alaskan in 1987.

Polly Smith

Michael Carey was born and raised in Fairbanks. He graduated from Lathrop High School in 1963 and attended Ithaca College (BA 1967) and Duke University where he took graduate courses without completing his degree. For most of the late Sixties and into the Seventies he lived around New York City before returning to Alaska and entering the newspaper business. He was a member of the Anchorage Daily News editorial page stuff before becoming a columnist. For the last decade, he has been the host of public broadcasting’s “Alaska Edition,” a political analysis show. He lives in Anchorage.

Michael Carey