The NPPA's Women in Visual Journalism conference is headed to Dallas, TX. Join us for the 3-day event, October 18-20, 2019. The speakers are some of the best in the business, and will be on hand for critiques. Television reporters, still and tv photojournalists, online journalists, freelancers, documentary filmmakers--this conference has something for every type of visual storyteller. There are so many ways to tell stories—this event embraces them all—because we are Better Together.
This conference sold out last year, so sign up early and get ready to learn. Look for updates on speakers and sessions on our Facebook page.
Registration Info
NPPA Members $65
Non Members $110
Students $25
Travel Details
Where: Dallas Morning News - 1954 Commerce St, Dallas, TX 75201
Hotel: There are plenty of nearby hotels and Airbnb options, but Hampton Inn gave us a great rate of $160/night (including tax). This hotel is a 3 minute walk from the conference location.
Hampton Inn & Suites Dallas Downtown
1700 Commerce, Dallas, TX 75201
Click here to book at the conference reate.
AC Hotel Dallas Downtown
Residence Inn Dallas Downtown
1712 Commerce, Dallas, TX 75201
Event Schedule
2019 Schedule will be announced soon
Questions?
For any event related questions please contact either Anne Herbst or Julia Robinson. For issues concerning registration contact [email protected].
Speakers
More speakers TBA!
Michelle Agins
Michelle V. Agins joined The New York Times as a photographer in June 1989. Prior to that, she had been a staff photographer for The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer since December 1987.
Ms. Agins began her career in photography as an intern for The Chicago Daily News and in less than a year became a sports photographer.
In 1975 and part of 1976, she became affiliated with Project Upward Bound and taught photography first at Loyola University and later, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. From 1976 to 1977, she worked briefly as a photojournalist for the South Shore Sentinel Newspaper in Chicago.
In 1977, Ms. Agins became a photographer and audio-visual specialist for the City of Chicago's Department of Human Services and in 1983 she switched to the mayor's press office where she became the mayor's office photographer, a position she held until 1987 when she joined The Charlotte Observer.
Ms. Agins' photographs have been widely exhibited. In 1981, in Chicago, she received the Mayor's Award for Photographic Excellence and staged a one-woman show titled "I Saw You." She exhibited in a show titled "Faces" at the 1987 National Black Journalists Conference in Miami, and in 1990 she was awarded citations by the New York Association of Black Journalists and the New York Associated Press.
Ms. Agins has received two Pulitzer Prize nominations, first in 1990 for her coverage of the Bensonhust protests and then again in 1995 for her work on the Times series “Another America: Life on 129th Street.” In 2001 Ms. Agins and her colleagues won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their series “How Race is Lived in America.”
Carly Danek
Carly had always wanted to be a veterinarian but one chapter of organic chemistry in high school biology changed everything. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a journalism degree and then ran away from home. She worked at stations in Eugene, OR and Tulsa, OK, before returning to Minneapolis to work at WCCO-TV. Three years ago, she started working at KARE-TV when they began a new show with the mission of challenging the conventions of local news. Ever since then, she has been encouraged to break all the rules and to experiment every day. When she's not working, Carly loves dive bars and karaoke and wants to know your 'go-to' karaoke song. She plays hockey and runs a lot. Her proudest achievement is getting 2nd place female at a 50k trail race for which she was given a ceramic fish that hangs in her kitchen.
Noelle Walker
I was telling stories long before I remember doing it. When my sister and I cleared out the attic of our childhood home years ago, we found a portfolio with my name on the outside and “reporter” notebooks -- actual reporter notebooks -- inside. The pages had notes and stories about our neighborhood and friends, all written in my unsteady childhood handwriting. I was either going to grow up to be your nosey neighbor, or a news reporter.
I've been a reporter at KXAS-TV, the NBC O&O in Dallas since 2016. Before that, I freelanced for NBC Network, and worked at stations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Santa Barbara. My first job was at KMIZ-TV in Columbia, MO as a weekend weather anchor/reporter. In my interview, I told the News Director, “The only thing I know about weather is if there are clouds, it might rain.” She asked if I could talk without a script. I could. I leave the weather forecasting to the professionals now.
I feel fortunate to have picked up a few awards for writing and reporting along the way. You donʼt see them on air or hear their names, but the photographers I work with are a big part of those awards. Storytelling is a team sport.
When I’m not working, odds are pretty good you’ll find me on a dance floor somewhere; swing dancing, learning tango, or just dancing to the beat of my own drum.
Lindsey Seavert
While Lindsey Seavert is an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award winning reporter, her greatest successes do not sit on a shelf. She is most proud of unearthing untold stories that encourage understanding and bringing them to light.
Her parents were Minnesota public school teachers who gave her the gift of curiosity, so with a book and pencil often in hand, she began writing as a young child, and hasn't stopped since.
She graduated from Indiana University's Ernie Pyle School of Journalism and worked as a reporter at five news stations stretching from Northern Minnesota, Nevada, and Ohio before coming home to the Twin Cities. She's been a storyteller at KARE 11 since 2012, and in the past year, moved into a freelance role at the station to primarily focus on documentary work.
The legacy of teaching in her family inspires Lindsey to use stories as a vehicle to educate and serve the community. Her work often focuses on women, families and children, but she is most passionate about bringing a voice to underrepresented communities, which is how she discovered a story that led to the creation of the documentary Love Them First: Lessons from Lucy Laney Elementary. The film, which follows a principal’s philosophy of love, was awarded Best Documentary in the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in 2019.
Lindsey survives on large amounts of coffee, and when she’s not on deadline or keeping up with her kiddos, she enjoys mentoring young journalists, running, creative writing, reading and volunteering.
Alyssa Schukar
Alyssa Schukar is a Chicago-based documentary photographer, teacher, and workshop leader. In 2019, she and two colleagues launched Prism Photo Workshop, which provides resources and support for young photographers of diverse backgrounds.
In her personal work, she is most interested in documenting how the environment and public policies affect people. Recently she has focused on industrial communities, including in eastern Kentucky and northern Indiana. Some of this work was honored with Cliff Edom's "New America Award."
Alyssa is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. Her images have also appeared in the National Geographic magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic and TIME magazine. National commercial clients include US Bank, UPS, Chase and Glenmorangie.
Alyssa was a still photography judge for the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism competition this year. She served as a member of the Missouri Photo Workshop faculty in 2018 and will do so again in 2019. She has also taught photography workshops in New York City and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. And for several years, she developed curriculum and taught college courses at Columbia College Chicago and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International and the National Press Photographers Association have honored her work. She's participated in Review Santa Fe and the New York Times Portfolio Review. For two years running, she was named a Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Emerging Photographer.
Alyssa spent the first five years of her career on staff at a newspaper in the Great Plains. Alyssa has worked professionally in several countries outside of North America, including Afghanistan, India, Scotland, and France.
Tiffany Liou
Background in journalism? No.
Sequencing? PKG? Huh?
She did what?
With a business degree, Tiffany left a cushy corporate marketing job to pursue her curiosity of journalism. Turns out, she fell in love with this risky move.
In just over four years, she learned the industry hands-on in California, Louisiana, Iowa and Oklahoma before landing a job at WFAA in Dallas, Texas.
She’s proud to haul around her gear, turning down “reporter” positions for MMJ spots. Tiffany loves the whole process and believes it makes her a stronger journalist. She’s been able to tell stories around the world. Her most memorable experience was soloing in Haiti.
When Tiffany is not busy turning daily stories, you’ll find her on a plane/beach/mountain, with her dogs, holding a camera, or all of the above.
Marie D. De Jesus
Marie D. De Jesús is a staff photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle, producing still and moving images in the nation’s fourth-largest city.
She has concentrated on developing relationships with the city’s diverse immigrant and marginalized communities. Those connections have helped power some of the Chronicle’s strongest projects, including “Denied,” a six-month investigation that uncovered the systematic denial of special education services to children in Texas.
Another series, “Out of Time,” is chronicling the saga of Juan Rodríguez, a Salvadoran immigrant fighting to stay in the United States with his American family. De Jesús followed the story to El Salvador as an Adelante fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation.
De Jesús was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2017 and won the Scripps Howard Foundation’s Public Service Award that year.
She is native of Puerto Rico, and she developed her interest in multimedia journalism from her father, who has been a television camera director for 30 years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in photography from the University of Central Florida in 2008. De Jesús previously worked for the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., and the Victoria Advocate in Texas.
Anastasiya Bolton
Being a journalist of Russian descent has always inspired jokes. The drinking ones. Good news -with recent world developments the jokes have been diversified and I’ve been able to take advantage of the situation to break the ice during tough-to-start interviews.
Tough-to-start interviews, or difficult-to-get ones, somehow became my specialty during 12 years at KUSA/9NEWS in Denver.
The walking to school up hill in snow both ways- was certainly the training ground.
See what I did there?
But seriously, somewhere during my time at 9NEWS I was assigned to cover crime and courts. My official title was “Crime and Justice Reporter.” I fought that assignment, it seemed like it would be a lot of sadness. And it was. But it also was also about giving victims voices, giving them their power back and finding ways to cover crime that made the community care. I’ve done some investigative stories that’s made a difference. Lesson there was – trust my boss, (sometimes) because she could see what I am good at when I didn’t.
Covering crime also taught me the importance of self-care, which I talk about any chance I get. I don’t think we do that enough as a profession. No one certainly taught me that in journalism school. And with the growing number of mass tragedies we all cover, self-care is more important than ever.
Working with great journalists at the best station leads to some awards. That’s what you’re supposed to mention in the bio. So here, I did.
Over my near 20-year journalism career, I’ve covered the plight of orphans in Siberia, Olympics in Russia, too many difficult stories to count. But as hard, frustrating, cuss-across-the-newsroom as this job is – this nosy, loud, curious ex-Russian, can’t imagine doing anything else.
Hannah Davis
Hannah Davis is a host, reporter, and content creator at WFAA in Dallas. She specializes in stories that uplift and teach viewers how to move through life in an inspired way.
Hannah shoots, edits and writes stories for television and social media, always focusing on engaging the audience in meaningful conversation.
Hannah started her career in Wichita Kansas as a producer then made the transition to on air. She reported and anchored for several years in Wichita, traveling the country covering NCAA March madness tournaments and the World Series.
Since arriving in Dallas Hannah has created her own series, Rise and Shiners, where she goes undercover to produce surprise stories on every day heroes to make the world a better place.
It’s not all work... Hannah is also a foodie, spending half her paychecks on delicious meals. You can also find her on hiking trails with her dog Tobias and sweating it out at hot yoga.
Ashley Landis
Ashley Landis grew up in Plano, Texas, and earned her BA in Photojournalism from the University of North Texas. She spent the first four years of her career as a staff writer and photographer at the San Marcos Daily Record. There, she learned all about what it means to work for a small-town newspaper, and gained a deep appreciation for rural Texas, high school sports and the outdoors.
From there, she spent five years as a full-time freelance photojournalist based in central Texas. The freelance life is where she felt most comfortable, but goals of covering professional sports and working with a team of advanced photojournalists were always on her mind.
In December 2014, she moved back to north Texas to be a staff photojournalist at The Dallas Morning News. There, she covers her favorite team - the Dallas Cowboys - and other sports at every level. She was part of the team who told the story of the July 7th shootings downtown, which was awarded a runner up for a Pulitzer Prize. She was named TDMN Photographer of the Year in 2018 and 2019.
Currently, her favorite projects are her Rural Royalty project that tells the stories of small town Texas festival queens, and her personal work on the canoe/kayak ultra marathon - Texas Water Safari.
Anne Herbst
I’m the director of the NPPA Women in Visual Journalism Conference, the Director of Visual Journalism at KUSA-TV in Denver, and the director of my 7th grade play about hippies living in Wisconsin. Don’t ask.
When I’m not directing things, I write/shoot/edit/produce stories at KUSA that take me all around the state of Colorado—or as I call it—ColoRADo. Totally different pronunciations. I believe local news can make viewers proud to live in their state, and I try to do that with every story I report and shoot.
Here’s the annoying awards section. I have four national Murrows, a bunch of regional Emmys, I’ve been NPPA regional POY several times, national NPPA POY runner up, NPPA Solo Journalist of the year, and a lot of ribbons from my competitive swimming days. My hair occasionally emits phantom chlorine smells.
The important stuff comes now. I love telling stories, hiking with my husband Steve and dog Stella, the San Juan mountains of ColoRADo, craft beer, travel, laughing loudly with my friends, and cleaning up my cat’s barf. Wait. That last one does not belong. But I still love both my cats anyway.
ColoRADo. Say it with me.
Julia Robinson
Julia Robinson is an independent photographer in her hometown of Austin, Texas. She's worked for large metropolitan dailies as well as small-town newspapers. Her work has recognized by Pictures of the Year International, NPPA's Best of Photojournalism, the Missouri Press Association, and the Associated Press.
Julia is founder of a monthly photo gathering cleverly named Austin Photo Night, runs an annual community photo project called ATX Squared, and is the current NPPA Regional Chair for the South. When she's not working, Julia is running the trails of central Texas with her dog Zoe, fixing up her house in east Austin, or enjoying a delicious IPA.
Clients include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USAToday, Wired, NPR, The Dallas Morning News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Texas Highways Magazine, The Texas Observer, and the University of Texas.
Jasmine DeFoore
Jasmine DeFoore is a photo editor and marketing consultant. Her marketing efforts have won PDN Self Promo Awards and her editing has helped photographers gain recognition from World Press Photo, American Photography, Communication Arts, and other elite competitions.
Prior to starting her own company, she was a photographer’s representative and Director of Marketing at the award-winning agency Redux Pictures.
Recent clients include Dell, AFAR, United, AARP, Texas Tribune, Texas Book Festival, and many talented editorial and commercial photographers around the world.
Katie Eastman
Katie joined 9NEWS in August 2017 as an MSJ (multi-skilled journalist) which means she shoots, writes, edits and reports.
Before heading west, she worked in Albany, New York where she won a New York Emmy Award for a story about a bunch of people playing hooky to watch a bridge implode.
Katie's favorite stories are about normal people doing not-so-normal things.
Katie also won a couple New England Emmy Awards for her work as a video journalist at the Boston Herald where she covered the Boston Marathon bombings and told the stories of survivors.
After graduating from Emerson College in 2011, Katie began her career in Des Moines, Iowa as a reporter at the ABC affiliate, WOI. While there, she got her 15 minutes of fame in a few cameos on The Colbert Report. One of them included her story on the longest garage sale in the country.
Originally from Maine, Katie loves running, Broadway musicals, and her long distance husband and cat.
Marcia Allert
Marcia Allert is the Director of Photography for The Dallas Morning News. She joined the organization in October 2016 and oversees a team of award-winning photographers, videographers, and picture editors. The team works closely with the editorial department to produce visual journalism that diversifies and deepens the storytelling. In 2017, her team won National Headliners, ASNE, and Texas APME awards for their coverage of the Dallas police shootings. Allert has also worked at the Associated Press, ABC News, The New York Times and The Daily Beast. Allert graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Photography.
Sally Ramirez
If you can’t find Sally Ramirez in a crowd, survey the room and follow the buzz of energy. Sally is a non-stop news and leadership machine, and is known for generating a fountain of ideas, and specific plans for execution, all delivered with a smile and her signature, “We can do this!”
And throughout her career, she has proven she can.
Ramirez jumped feet-first into the news industry, when she landed her first job as a producer at KTSM in El Paso. She later worked as a producer in Tucson, Arizona and Washington D.C., before heading off to Chicago as an executive producer for WGN. After she got married, she accepted a job in Sacramento and was a champion for special projects there. When KGW in Portland hired her as an executive producer, they knew they’d found a rising star. They later promoted her to assistant news director, and watched her passion for storytelling and enterprise reporting elevate the station’s content. It was that success that lead TEGNA to ask Ramirez to come on board as Executive News Director at its Houston station, KHOU 11 News.
And then, Harvey hit.
Shortly after Ramirez was hired, hurricane Harvey delivered a nasty blow to Houston, and to KHOU specifically. With their building flooded, the staff was forced to evacuate and to spend months working out of multiple locations, with minimal equipment, and a set that was pieced together on the fly. Ramirez didn’t flounder. She used her positivity and determination to keep morale lifted, and lived out the KHOU brand to Stand for Houston, by standing for her staff. She pooled resources, and with the help of TEGNA as a whole, made sure they had what they needed to get their jobs done.
Even though Ramirez joined the industry at a time when there was only one screen, she’s quickly adapted to feed valuable content to other platforms as well, and is an ambassador in the newsroom for thinking digital first.
Talent like this doesn’t go unnoticed, and Ramirez has received numerous awards, including Emmys, AP Awards, Murrow Awards and in 2018, TEGNA’s employee of the year award. While the company recognizes the value she brings to their leadership, Ramirez turns the focus right back to where she believes it belongs: the team. “These journalists make me proud every day,” Ramirez says. “They represent the best of this industry with their passion, creativity, and commitment to serving this community. I am proud to Stand for Houston right alongside them.”
Courtney Gilmore
Courtney Gilmore is a two-time Emmy nominated journalist. She is also a FAA certified drone pilot with a passion for aviation, technology, and 360 video.
For 13 years she has set out to master the art of "going live," by connecting words and movement, with visual perspective. Ask Courtney how she, and one photojournalist, were able to pull off a four-camera live shot while speeding around a NASCAR racetrack during a live interview. She has been live on top of a moving ferris wheel, in the conductor's seat of a Union Pacific cargo train, in the back of an ambulance, revving up a Maserati, and inside of the General Motors Plant on the assembly line. Her motto, "As journalists, we have the opportunity to take the viewer into the story. We can expand their perspective, while stretching our creativity." Taking risks, leading with authenticity, embracing failure, and a spirit of collaboration has led her toward innovation.
Her journalism career began in Houston, TX, where she spent nine years reporting and anchoring for the NBC affiliate KPRC. In Houston she covered every big and breaking news story from wildfires and hurricanes, to political elections and human trafficking (including uncovering the largest domestic sex trafficking ring in Harris County).
Her interviews spanned across all genres, including a sit-down interview with Academy Award Winner Sidney Poitier, to her interview with Astronaut Scott Kelly while he was aboard the ISS during his “year in space” mission.
Her reports have also expanded internationally. She covered the impact of human trafficking in Europe and traveled to Greece and Bulgaria to uncover efforts made to combat the epidemic and the direct link to Texas.
She has guest-lectured workshops overseas in the United Arab of Emirates at the American University in Dubai, and has held journalism workshops and mentored students throughout universities in Texas. The deeper she steps into her craft as a journalist, the more humbling her stance becomes.
Courtney was born and raised in Houston. She trained with the Guthrie Acting Program at the University of Minnesota, where she also received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Classical Theatre in 2005.
Before graduating from the University of Minnesota, she performed and trained around the world from Shanghai and Beijing, China to London, England. Courtney went back to school to earn her master's degree at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Aside from her passion for storytelling, she loves to travel. She has been to 19 countries, and is always planning for her next trip and welcomes any suggestions!
