Randy Olson
Randy Olson, POYi's Magazine Photographer of the Year for 2003 and Newspaper Photographer of the Year for 1992, has spent the last dozen years working for National Geographic magazine.  He is one of only two photographers to win the title in both media.  Olson was also awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship to support a seven-year project documenting a family with AIDS.  His story on problems with Section 8 housing earned him a Robert F. Kennedy Award. He was awarded the Nikon Sabbatical grant in 1996. The Pittsburgh resident is a graduate of the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri.

Eliane Laffont
For more than forty years, Eliane Laffont has been a leading creative and entrepreneurial force in the world of photojournalism, and currently serves as Senior Consultant for Visa pour l'Image, the annual festival in Perpignan France. In 2001, Laffont joined Hachette Filipacchi Media as editorial director, supervising the photographic production of the group in the US and developing the photo division around three sectors: photojournalism, photo illustration and photo reportage. Laffont opened the U.S. office of Gamma Press Images with her husband Jean-Pierre Laffont in 1968.  In 1973, they co-founded the breakaway Sygma Photo News Agency where she served as President of the American operation. In 1999 Corbis acquired Sygma and Eliane was appointed Vice President of Global Editorial Content for Corbis Sygma.  She has served on many international juries including the W. Eugene Smith in the U.S., The World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam, the Overseas Press Club of America, Pictures of the Year International at the University of Missouri and edited numerous photographic books.

Brian Storm
Brian Storm is president of MediaStorm, a multimedia production studio based in New York City. In 2010 and in 2011, MediaStorm was honored with Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University awards for Excellence in Boradcast Journalism. In 2007, MediaStorm won an Emmy for Broadband Documentaries, took first place in both the Pictures of the Year International and Best of Photojournalism competitions and, and won the Webby Award for the Magazine category. Storm serves on the Advisory Board for The Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch, The Eddie Adams Workshop, and Brooks Institute's Journalism School.  He has judged both the Pictures of the Year International and the National Press Photographers Association's Best of Photojournalism contests.  Storm received his master's degree in photojournalism in 1995 from the University of Missouri.

Randy Cox
Randy Cox is Senior Editor for Visuals at The Oregonian in Portland, where he has worked since 1997.  Prior to Portland, Cox served as the Assistant Managing Editor/Photography and Graphics at the Hartford Courant from 1984 to 1993 and as a freelance design consultant from 1993 to 1996.  His career has enjoyed positions as a staff photographer and photo editor at various newspapers from 1976 to 1984.  He was a Professional in Residence at The Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada-Reno between 1995 and 1996.  Serving the photojournalism profession, he served as the editor of  “The Best of Photojournalism” five times from 1995 through 2000.  He has earned numerous awards from Pictures of the Year International and The Society for News Design competitions.  He graduated in 1975 from the University of Missouri with a B.J. in Photojournalism.

Eli Reed
Eli Reed, currently a Clinical Professor of Photojournalism at the University of Texas, has been with photographic collective, Magnum Photos (currently cerebrating 60th year anniversary) since 1983. A 1982-83 Harvard University Nieman Fellow, he has worked on assignment for national and international publications such as National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, New York Sunday Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, Sports Illustrated, Vibe, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, Fortune, Oggi, Marie Claire, and the London Sunday Times covering world news events since 1982.  Some of his awards are W. Eugene Smith Grant in Documentary Photography, Overseas Press Club, Kodak World Image Award for Fine Art Photography, Leica Medal of Excellence, POYi World Understanding Award, World Press Photo, Pulitzer Prize nominee, and Visa pour L'image Festival Du Photoreportage (Perpignan, France), prizes. 

Mark Petty
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mark was an undergraduate teaching assistant for Angus McDougall and received a BJ in photojournalism from the University of Missouri in 1975.   After a brief stint at The Pensacola News Journal he and his wife, Marty, lived for 18 months in Carville, Louisiana, documenting the lives of patients at a leprosy hospital.  Subsequently he worked at The New Orleans States-Item, where their story on the leprosy hospital was published and freelanced for Black Star.  He attended law school at the University of Connecticut where he graduated, with honors, in 1987.  He practiced real estate and zoning law until he moved to St. Petersburg in 2000.  He is now a “recovering attorney” who has gone back into photography.  He has photographs in the permanent collections of several museums, including the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Marty Petty
Marty Petty is an independent advisor on strategy, talent development, retention and diversification, succession planning and building high-performing leadership teams. She is the former Executive Vice President and Publisher for The Times in St. Petersburg, FL. She serves on the Times’ board of directors and is a trustee of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit school for journalists which owns the Times.  Marty is chair of the Florida Press Association Board, and a director on the boards of Florida Press Services and the First Amendment Foundation. She has served as a Pulitzer Prize juror, chaired the Pulitzer photography jury, was president of the Society of Newspaper Design, and was a member of the Wm. Randolph Hearst Foundation journalism board. 

Tom Kennedy
Tom Kennedy is the Alexia Chair at Syracuse University where he teaches and researches concepts in visual journalism courses in the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He is the former managing editor for multimedia at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, recipient of 2006 local and national EMMY awards and three consecutive Edward R. Murrow awards for video journalism.  Kennedy was the director of photography at the National Geographic Society from 1987 to 1997, with a primary focus on National Geographic magazine, where he cultivated long-term relationships with a worldwide network of more than 200 freelance photographers. Prior to joining the National Geographic Society, Kennedy was deputy graphic director at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he directed and edited projects that won Pulitzer Prizes in Feature Photography in 1985 and 1986. Kennedy is a Florida native and a graduate from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism.

Loup Langton
In 2011, Loup Langton was named the new Director of the School of Journalism & Broadcasting at Western Kentucky University. Prior to Western Kentucky, Langton served as Program Director for Visual Journalism at the University of Miami.  His career reflects a balance between creative work and research with a particular passion for Latin America.  He directs the Latin American competition for POYi. His book “Photojournalism and Today’s News, Creating Visual Reality,” published by Blackwell/John Wiley & Sons, will be released in August 2008. As a Joe Morris Fellow and member of JB Pictures, he photographed for several publications in Egypt and Jerusalem.  As a freelance photographer, Langton was a contributor to the “Homeless in America” book in 1987, and he has photographed for Newsweek, Photo magazine (France), Focus (Germany), the Times of London, the London Correspondent as well as other international publications.  In addition his work from Haiti, North Carolina and Ecuador has appeared in exhibitions in New York and Washington, D.C.  Langton received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Texas School of Communication.