AMIA 2024 | Conference Navigators
Conferences can be an intimidating place, whether you’re planning on attending your first or your 25th conference. If you’re new, there’s probably a lot going on that may not be clear or may be unfamiliar. We want the conference to be more welcoming to everyone, and particularly to those who may be attending or presenting for the first time. With that in mind, we want to offer you a Conference 101 guide, a Newcomer’s Orientation on Tuesday, and a team of Conference Navigators.
The Navigators are all long-time conference attendees and active participants in AMIA. They are not only the official conference welcomers, but will be available all week to answer questions or lend a helping hand to anyone who might need a little help in navigating the conference. They’ll all be easily identifiable – and we’ve included their pictures here so you can get to know them. Please say hello, ask questions about the conference, about AMIA, or what they do when they aren’t Navigating!
__________________________________________________
CK Ming is a Media Conservation & Digitization Specialist for CAAMA. They work to inspect, digitize, and preserve CAAMA’s vast holdings of audiovisual material. Their interests include early African American silent film and independant African American cinema. They hold an M.A. from New York University in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation and a B.A. from American University in Film & Media Arts. They are the Advisory Board Chair for the Association of Moving Image Archivist’s Pathways Fellowship Program, they serve on the National Film Preservation Board and they are a core member of the Community Archiving Workshop group which assists small organizations in preserving their audiovisual materials.
Ruta Abolins is Director of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries. She has worked in moving image archives for the past 30 years. She currently manages a collection of over 350,000 analog audiovisual items and over 200,000 digital files with collections ranging from news to home movies to the Peabody Awards Collection. She has written and presented on the importance of local news content and the licensing of archival content for documentary use to help support archives.
Lee Shoulders is the Director of Content Partnerships at Getty Images, where she oversees relationships with prominent content partners including NBC News Archives, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, and Bloomberg. Lee began her career in 1992 with Archive Films, a company that was subsequently acquired by Getty Images. Initially responsible for managing the archival film library, she later transitioned to collaborating with larger content partners to optimize their success in delivering licensable content to Getty Images. An active member of the professional community, Lee has served multiple terms on the Board of AMIA.
Melissa Dollman earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in American Studies in 2021 and has a Master’s in Moving Image Archive Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has worked professionally as an audiovisual archivist, adjunct faculty, fellow, exhibit developer, and researcher for cultural heritage institutions including Women In Film Foundation, UCLA Film and Television Archive, Academy Film Archive, Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, State Archives of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, UNC and its Southern Oral History Program, Tribesourcing Southwest Film, and is co-founder and CFO of Deserted Films, a home movie archive in Palm Springs, CA. Between 2016 and 2020 she was a director of the board for the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). Her publications cover home movies, digital humanities, public access TV, and the intersection of women’s and PR history.
Andrea Leigh was Moving Image Processing Unit Head at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation until her recent retirement. Previously, she was a cataloger at the UCLA Film & Television Archive and held positions at the UCLA Library, Cal State University at Northridge, Walt Disney Company and Creative Artists Agency. A past AMIA Board member, she currently chairs the Elections Committee. She has an M.L.I.S in Information Studies and B.A. in Theatre Arts from UCLA.
Chase Schulte entered the realm of the moving image archivist over 20 years ago after many years inside the Post Production and International Distribution world of the Hollywood Studios and smaller distribution companies. “Finding the AMIA community when I did was a real eye opener for me. It was right at the time that many archives were moving from a very isolated place to be to suddenly being the prime focus of almost every department of a Studio. My AMIA membership opened a door and the conferences have opened that door to the world.” In his current role as Manager of Physical Archive Operations at NBCUniversal, Chase continues the work of shepherding the DreamWorks Animation family of assets (including the legendary Classic Media inventory of intellectual properties from THE LONE RANGER to HE-MAN and VOLTRON) into the NBCU library collection as well as curating the Universal Pictures 110-year old library and setting archival protocols via the Archive Management team.
Laura Drake Davis (she/her) is a Digital Project Specialist at the Library of Congress in the Moving Image Section. In this role, Laura processes born-digital moving image content received from Copyright deposits and gift collections, develops new processing workflows and develops strategies for metadata capture and transformation. Laura is an active participant in the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) Audio Visual Working Group, and the Recommended Formats Technical Teams for Moving Image Works and for Software and Video Games.
Jen O’Leary Hashida is the Manager of Restoration and Preservation at NBCUniversal where she manages projects including film digitization, tape migration, and feature restorations. She started as an intern at NBCU in 2015, and moved into Archive Management then in 2021 she applied for the manager role in Restoration and Preservation and has been leading the team ever since. She holds an MA in Moving Image Archive Studies from UCLA and is the Chair of AMIA’s Education Committee. She recently won the Rising Star award from the Digital Entertainment Group.
Mike Pogorzelski‘s tenure in the Academy Film Archive included roles as a Film Archivist (1996-1998), Preservation Officer (1998-2000) and Academy Film Archive Director (2000-2024). He supervised and co-supervised over 50 film preservation and restoration projects including Best Picture winners HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941), THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949), ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) and OLIVER! (1968) as well as Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON (1950), Edgar Ulmer’s DETOUR (1946), Peter Davis’ HEARTS AND MINDS (1974) and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger’s THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1943). His final project at the Academy Film Archive was a restoration of the original theatrical cut of Best Picture winner AMADEUS (1984).
Colleen Simpson is VP of Operations for Prasad Corporation. A long-time AMIA member, she has served on the Board, volunteered on committees, and is currently Trivia Master for AMIA’s Annual Trivia Night. When she isn’t managing preservation projects or writing trivia questions, she spends time playing softball, bowling, climbing mountains, and planning impossible road rallies. She is not currently working on a memoir.
April Rodriguez has a diverse work experience in the field of archival and media preservation. April started their career in 2009 as an Instructional Support Assistant, where they wore various hats and successfully coordinated departmental events and projects. In 2013, they gained experience as a Graduate Assistant at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and as an Archivist Intern at Pixar Animation Studios. April also worked as a Digital Preservation Intern at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in 2014. In 2015, they held roles as a Junior Fellow at the Library of Congress and as a Film Archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. April also worked as a Roselani Media Preservation Intern at the ʻUluʻulu: The Henry Kūʻualoha Giugni Moving Image Archive of Hawaiʻi. Currently, they are working as a Media Digitization Specialist at the Minnesota Historical Society. Throughout their career, April has gained hands-on experience in digitization, preservation, cataloguing, and archival administrative tasks.
Brianna Toth. I currently work for the Smithsonian Libraries & Archives Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI) as their Video Preservation Specialist. My experience with artist collections in the non-profit sector led to my work in audiovisual archives and instilled a deep commitment to retaining the integrity of analog media through conservation techniques and digital remediation. I have worked in a variety of roles — including large scale digitization initiatives, preservation and restoration projects, as well as collection management for community archives.
My research is concerned with the obsolescence of technical expertise in the related to the maintenance and preservation of analog video decks. I argue that without a platform for the exchange of cross-generational knowledge between AV archivists and technicians, these skills are an important part of our cultural heritage at risk of being lost. In tandem with this research, I worked as the AMIA’s Program Manager for Online Education and served as the Co-Chair of the Continuing Education Advisory (CEA) Task Force from 2021 – 2023.
I hold a Masters in Library Information Science with a focus on Media Archival Studies (MLIS MAS) from UCLA and B.A. in Art History from the University of the Pacific. As an undergraduate, I also studied at Goldsmiths College in London in their Visual Cultures Department.
Rachael Stoeltje established the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive in 2010 and has served as its director since the founding. She also writes about film; has co-created a global training and outreach program; and has planned and managed IU’s mass film digitization project. Rachael is President of AMIA.
Randal Luckow is the director of the Warner Bros. Discovery Archives, and in the past has been a Digital Archivist, and Sr. Director of Metadata & Media Services at Turner, and a Manager at DreamWorks, SKG Archives. In addition to serving on the AMIA Board, here’s a little known fact about Randal: he once painted art on a ceiling in a Milwaukee restaurant – it has been called Milwaukee’s own Sistine Chapel (yes, it’s still there at Sweet Joy).
Taylor McBride is the Multimedia Specialist for the Smithsonian Institution’s Digital Asset Management System, supporting DAMS users and workflows with a focus on video and digital preservation as well as SI’s Collections DAMS Integration System, which bridges the DAMS with Collections Information Systems across the Institution. Taylor has an MA in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation from NYU. She is also an AMIA board member, serving as Secretary for the past six years.
Director of the NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, Juana Suárez. came to MIAP with nearly 20 years of experience teaching, advising, and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. With a group of colleagues and alliances resulting from the MIAP Archival Exchange Program (APEX), she is working on arturita.net, a collaborative digital humanities project that aims to enhance the flow of media archival dialogue between Latin American countries, and Latin America and the world. Juana has served on the AMIA board for four years.