Sarah Leen, Picture editor, National Geographic
Sarah Leen is a freelance photographer who works primarily for National Geographic Magazine. She has , to date, published 14 stories in the magazine and have also worked on a number of books for the National Geographic Book division including "American Back Roads", a book of her work published in the spring of 2000. She is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and a winner of the College Photographer of the Year competition.

Ken Light, photographer, Adjunct Professor, University of California - Berkeley
Ken Light is a social documentary photographer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and exhibitions. A new book "Coal Hollow" will be published in 2006 by The University of California Press. His most recent book a text, "Witness In Our Time; Working Lives of Documentary Photographers" was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in October 2000. He has exhibited internationally in over 165 one-person and group shows and is the collection of numerous collections including the San Francisco MOMA, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the International Center of Photography and the American Museum of Art at the Smithsonian. He is an adjunct professor and director of the Center for Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California - Berkeley.

Daryl Moen, professor, Missouri School of Journalism
Former editor of three daily newspapers, Moen teaches design and writing at the Missouri School of Journalism. Moen is author of "Newspaper Layout and Design, A Team Approach, 4th edition", from Iowa State University Press. He has consulted on design, writing and reporting with newspapers and magazines and has conducted workshops in more than 30 states and 11 countries, including Lithuania, India and China and has taught at both the American Press Institute and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

Paula Nelson, director of photography, the Boston Globe
Paula Nelson graduated from the University of Missouri - Columbia in 1983 with a Bachelor's in Journalism. Before joining the Boston Globe in 2002, she worked at the Dallas Morning News for 18 years as a photographer, photo editor and director of photography. Nelson is the recipient of multiple Pictures of the Year editing awards and was a member of the Dallas Morning News team awarded the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for "Violence against Women: A Question of Human Rights."

Peggy Peattie, Staff photographer, San Diego Union Tribune
Peggy Peattie grew up in Southern California. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, graduating with a degree in Journalism/Art. She spent two years at Ohio University on a Knight Journalism Fellowship, where she earned her Master's degree in visual communication. She was also the winner of the first professional Alexia Foundation Grant for World Peace and Cultural Understanding. That project became the recently published "Down in Dixie", a photo documentary of the heritage and the attitudes concerning the confederate flag. She is a staff photographer at the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Tim Rasmussen, director of photography, the SOUTH FLORIDA Sun-Sentinel
Before joining the Sun-Sentinel in 2002, Tim was the Visuals Editor at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which was awarded Best use of pictures from Pictures of the Year in 2002. He worked his way through college at The Herald Journal in Logan, Utah and in 1988 he was accepted to the first Eddie Adams Workshop where he received one of ten awards given. In his ten years as a freelance photographer, with the Hartford Courant and in New York City with Sygma, his work was published in many American and international Magazines and Newspapers including the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He has won numerous awards from Pictures of the Year, NPPAÕs Best of Photojournalism and Society of News Design awards as a photographer, picture editor and designer.

Sylvie Rebbot, Picture Editor, Geo (Paris)
Sylvie Rebbot was born in 1946 in Paris and grew up in Morocco and Algeria. She began her career at Sygma in New York and then went on to work for Woodfin Camp in New York until 1979. For the next three years she was the director of the Magnum archives, first in Paris and then in New York. She has been a member of many contest juries, and was the first woman to serve as president of the World Press Photo jury.

Stephan Savoia, National Staff photographer, Associated Press
Born in New York City and raised in its metropolitan area, Stephan Savoia is a graduate of the State University of New York College at Potsdam, where he majored in Sociology/Social Theory and minored in Art/Photography. Savoia also holds a Masters degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, where he studied under renowned editor and photojournalist Angus McDougall. Upon completion of graduate school Savoia worked as a newspaper staff photojournalist in Monroe, Louisiana and Baton Rouge, Louisiana respectively. Joining the Associated Press as a staff photojournalist in November 1990, Savoia currently works out of the Boston bureau as a national photographer based in the northeast.
A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Savoia was the lead photographer on the Associated Press' photo team that won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. He also shared in the AP's 1999 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.

Brian Storm, president, Mediastorm
Brian Storm is a passionate leader in the fields of photojournalism and new media. Storm has focused on the craft of visual storytelling as a photojournalist, an innovative picture editor, a technological pioneer and a champion of emerging and fair business practices. Storm is President of MediaStorm, a company dedicated to publishing social documentary projects which incorporate photojournalism and audio reporting across multiple media. From August 2002 through November 2004 Storm was Vice President of News, Multimedia & Assignment Services for Corbis, a digital media agency owned by Bill Gates. From June 1995 through August 2002 Storm was Director of Multimedia at MSNBC.com, a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC News based in Redmond, WA where he was responsible for the audio, photography and video elements of the site. Storm created The Week in Pictures and Picture Stories to showcase visual journalism in new media. Storm received his master's degree in photojournalism in 1995 from the University of Missouri where he ran the School of Journalism's New Media Lab, taught Electronic Photojournalism and produced CD-ROMs for the Pictures of the Year competition and the Missouri Photo Workshop.

JosÉ Luis Villegas, Staff photographer, the Sacramento Bee
JosŽ Luis Villegas is a graduate of the University of San Francisco and has been a staff photographer with The Sacramento Bee since February of 1992. Villegas spent six years as a staff photographer with the San Jose Mercury News. He has also worked at the Los Angeles Daily News, Arizona Daily Star, and Community Edition of the Orange County Register. In 1996, along with writer Marcos Bret—n, they were awarded the Alicia Patterson Fellowship to continue their project on Latin Baseball. The project was published in book form, "Away Games" by Simon & Schuster in 1999. A photographic book, "Home is Everything" was released by published by Cinco Puntos Press of El Paso, Texas in 2003. In May of 2005, "Home is Everything", The Latino Baseball Story will open at the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, Texas.

Joe Weiss, interactive producer, the News & Observer, Raleigh, NC
Joe Weiss has worked as a photojournalist, multimedia reporter, designer, programmer, producer and editor in print and online media since 1996. He's currently an interactive producer at The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. Previously he was the Director of Photography and Multimedia at The Herald-Sun newspaper in Durham, N.C. and twice worked for MSNBC.com as a multimedia producer in Redmond, Wash. He started his life in journalism as a photographer at The Herald-Sun after attending the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and Randolph Community College.

Moderators:

David Rees, POYi Director
Former high school English teacher David Rees began photographing in a town so small that if he went out to drink his students would let him know about it the next day. He spent the first year of his photographic career shooting with a twin lens Yashica-D and only printing contact sheets in his living room. The bulk of his professional experience was a staff photographer and then photo editor at The Columbia Daily Tribune. Currently he is the head of the MU Photojournalism Sequence, as well as director of the Pictures of the Year and MPW Co-Director. Rees has taught courses in photojournalism, new media and reporting at MU, and has participated in Poynter Institute, Scripps Howard and National Press Photographers Association seminars and workshops. He maintains interest in grassroots photojournalism and online publishing. He actively freelances photos and stories. He has one book to his credit, on the University of Missouri, and worked on the 1996 Discovering Ecuador book project.

Loup Langton, assistant professor, University of Miami
Loup Langton currently serves on the faculty of visual communication at the University of Miami’s School of Communication. His career reflects a balance between creative and academic work with a particular passion for Latin America. As director of photography for Copley Chicago Newspapers he helped lead a team that twice produced the POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year and as director of photography for El Universo, Ecuador’s most prestigious newspaper, he changed the concept of visual story-telling. He also co-directed the Descubriendo Ecuador book project published in 1994. As an educator, Langton was a faculty member at the University of Missouri School of Journalism for six years and has taught photography at Ecuador’s Universidad San Francisco, been a guest speaker at Universidad Católica in Quito and Universidad Espiritu Santo in Guayaquil and conducted photography workshops for professionals in Germany, Bulgaria, Argentina, Miami and Ecuador.
Langton received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Texas School of Communication. He has been an invited speaker at numerous conferences throughout the United States, and a faculty member for the Missouri Photographic Workshop as well as a judge and consultant for Pictures of the Year International.