Kathy Davidov, Acting Chair
Kathy Davidov is an award-winning television executive and storyteller with a proven record of leadership and ratings success across top-tier media including National Geographic, Discovery, TLC, CNN, ITVS, and Al Jazeera America.
Kathy headed production for Condition One, a Silicon Valley 3D virtual reality start-up, and executive produced This is Climate Change, a groundbreaking 3D documentary series and official selection at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival for Participant Media.
Kathy launched AJAM Presents, the documentary showcase for Al Jazeera America. As senior executive producer and head of the documentary unit, she was creatively responsible for several critically acclaimed series including Borderland and The System with Joe Berlinger.
At National Geographic Television, Kathy served as executive vice president of production, managing 125 hours of content annually in Washington and New York. She revamped Explorer, NatGeo’s Emmy award-winning flagship series. She also developed and launched multiple successful series including Border Wars and the Emmy-nominated Brain Games.
Kathy worked for the Discovery Channel and TLC as an executive producer. She oversaw the hugely popular Trading Spaces franchise and was the creative leader for many hit series, including Junkyard Wars, Maternity Ward, Police Force and Crime Scenes Uncovered.
Kathy is a graduate of George Washington University, where she majored in Drama. She is married to Paul Koring, a journalist and lawyer.
Ted Frank, Treasurer
Ted Frank is a Retired Partner at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, LLP. Before retiring from active practice, Ted represented a number of organizations in the communications field. Much of his practice focused on representing public broadcasters, including PBS and several producing stations, as well as commercial broadcasters and telecommunications companies. His work included advising clients on First Amendment, defamation, invasion of privacy, and related issues outside the jurisdiction of the FCC.
He has represented 100Reporters LLC since its creation, reviewing articles for potential defamation issues, among other matters and moderating this panel. He has been an active participant in the Federal Communications Bar Association serving on the Executive Committee and as Co-Chair of several committees. In recent years, he has devoted time to professional ethics, serving as Chair of the Advisory Committee on Admissions and Grievances of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and the Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review. Upon graduation, he clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then took a teaching fellowship at Harvard Law School, where he earned an LL.M.
Margaret Ebrahim
Ted Frank is a Retired Partner at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, LLP. Before retiring from active practice, Ted represented a number of organizations in the communications field. Much of his practice focused on representing public broadcasters, including PBS and several producing stations, as well as commercial broadcasters and telecommunications companies. His work included advising clients on First Amendment, defamation, invasion of privacy, and related issues outside the jurisdiction of the FCC.
He has represented 100Reporters LLC since its creation, reviewing articles for potential defamation issues, among other matters and moderating this panel. He has been an active participant in the Federal Communications Bar Association serving on the Executive Committee and as Co-Chair of several committees. In recent years, he has devoted time to professional ethics, serving as Chair of the Advisory Committee on Admissions and Grievances of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and the Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review. Upon graduation, he clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then took a teaching fellowship at Harvard Law School, where he earned an LL.M.
Ron Nixon
Ron Nixon is the vice president of investigations, enterprise, partnerships and grants at the Associated Press, and former international investigations editor overseeing a team of reporters in London, Cairo, New Delhi, Shanghai and Washington, DC. He is a former Washington correspondent for The New York Times, covering homeland security and, before that, federal regulatory agencies. He has written widely about the U.S. role in the Arab Spring, domestic surveillance programs at the US Postal Service and the Transportation Security Administration. Nixon has also reported from Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Prior to The Times, Nixon was database editor at Minneapolis Star Tribune and a member of the paper’s investigative team. Before working at the Star-Tribune, Nixon was on the national training staff of Investigative Reporters and Editors and worked as reporter at the Roanoke Times in Virginia.
He is author of the book Selling Apartheid: Apartheid South Africa’s Global Propaganda War (Jacana Media, June 2015).
Ron is also co-founded three news-related startups: The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, The Ujima Project and TruthBeTold.com.
The Ida B. Wells Society works to increase the ranks, retention and profile of reporters and editors of color in the field of investigative reporting. He served as chair of 100Reporters from its founding in 2011 to December 2019.
The Ujima Project, which started in 2009, was an online portal of databases, documents and other information that attempted to bring transparency to the workings and spending of Africa governments, multinational non-governmental organizations and business enterprise operating in African countries. He was a featured speaker at the 2009 TedX talks in Kampala, Uganda discussing the Ujima Project and transparency in development.
TruthBeTold.com, which begin 2015, was a non-profit, non-partisan fact-checking website and digital network, run and edited from Howard University’s Department of Media, Journalism and Film in the School of Communication. It used journalistic skills and crowd-sourced information to play a leading role by examining claims about the black community in public debate.
Ron is currently the visiting associate for Journalism and Media Studies at The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and was the 2013-14 Hearst Visiting Professional at Howard University in Washington, DC.
Brett A. Pulley
Brett A. Pulley is the Atlanta bureau chief for Bloomberg. He is a former executive vice president, director of corporate content and senior media strategist at Weber Shandwick. A veteran journalist, author and educator, he has served as dean of the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University. Additionally, he spent three years covering media and entertainment at Bloomberg L.P., seven years as a senior editor at Forbes magazine, five years as a national correspondent at The New York Times, and five years as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. He was the president and chief executive officer of NewYork.com, an internet company dedicated to tourism and entertainment, and he has made numerous appearances on television programs, including Entertainment Tonight, Showbiz Tonight, Inside Edition, Access Hollywood, CBS’s “48 Hours,” and NBC’s “Dateline.” Pulley is the author of “The Billion Dollar BET” (Wiley & Sons, April 2004), a book that takes an in-depth look at Black Entertainment Television. A graduate of Hampton University and of Northwestern University, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and two daughters.
Diana Jean Schemo, ex officio
Diana Jean Schemo is president, co-founder and executive editor of 100Reporters, and founding director of Double Exposure: The Investigative Film Festival and Symposium. She is an author and award-winning veteran national and foreign correspondent, with more than 25 years at The New York Times and The Baltimore Sun. She has covered poverty and child abuse, religion and culture. The Times nominated her coverage of education for a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. Her stories have appeared in Ms., Marie Claire, New York and The New York Times magazines. Diana is the author of the 2010 book Skies to Conquer: A Year Inside the Air Force Academy (Wiley). She has reported from more than 25 countries and regions of the world, including Somalia.
Past Directors
Lori E. Gold
Served June 11, 2011 to October 29, 2015.
Ricardo Sandoval-Palos
Served December 1, 2015 to October 15, 2016.
Susanne Reber
Served September 1, 2018 to January 23, 2023.
