Who We Are
The Organization for Transformative Works is run for fans by fans. The directors of OTW's board are all active in fandom, as are the hundreds of other people serving on committees and working as volunteers. Other volunteers are signing on to work on particular projects or tasks. Interested? Read about our current committees and find out how you can get involved!
Board of Directors (2012)
Kristen Murphy (President)
Kristen Murphy is on the staff of the Individualized Major Program at Indiana University and is pursuing a master’s degree in higher education and student affairs. She co-organized the first U.S. conference on individualized major programs, which has become an annual event. She has worked on a professional Web development team and as a writer and editor for print and online media. Murphy joined online fandom in 1996, beginning with Quantum Leap and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and branching out to numerous science fiction and fantasy fandoms. She is an avid writer, beta reader, and podficcer.
Jenny Scott-Thompson (Secretary)
Jenny Scott-Thompson is a IT consultant, lifelong fan, and advocate for sustainability and diversity of the OTW. Jenny works for a major international firm and has several years of experience in systems implementation and technology projects. She lives in the UK and studied maths at the University of Cambridge. She volunteered for Dreamwidth before and during Open Beta, during which time she acquired first-hand awareness of diversity and accessibility issues. She's been a fan ever since she learnt to read, with a range of book, TV, film, and RPF fandoms.
Julia Beck (Vice Secretary)
Julia Beck is a student of media and communication studies at the University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany) and works as a communications and quality supervisor in customer support. A fantasy nerd from childhood, her initiation into organised fandom was sparked by Zetsuai: Bronze and German yaoi fandom, from which she moved into international media fandom. She identifies as a hardcore gamer, mainly of Western and JRPGs, but is a fan of fandom rather than any particular source. As a founding member of OTW's Translation and Internationalization & Outreach committees, her priority is to increase the OTW's diversity and accessibility to fandom, broadly conceived, and for the organization to increasingly reflect the realities of fandom as an interconnected, international community.
Nikisha Sanders (Treasurer)
Nikisha Sanders holds a BA in sociology and anthropology from Earlham College, where she authored a senior thesis on gender representation among queer women. She has worked as an activist for AIDS awareness and education, lobbied for LGBT rights at the local and state level as staff for the Fairness Campaign, and served as member of the board of the Kentucky coalition of Jobs with Justice. She brings experience in non-profit management and accounting to the board, and has a personal interest in outreach to fannish communities of color. She is relatively new to online fandom, joining in 2000 as an avid reader of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic; and has been writing in various television and film fandoms, including NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Harry Potter, since 2006.
Francesca Coppa, PhD
Francesca Coppa is director of film studies and associate professor of English at Muhlenberg College, where she teaches courses in dramatic literature, popular fiction, and mass media storytelling. Her writings on media fandom have been included in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet and presented at MIT's Media in Transition conference. Coppa has been attending conventions and buying zines since the early 1980s, when she and her friends wrote fanfiction by hand and circulated it by snail mail. She has been involved in online fandom since the mid-1990s as a writer, list administrator, vidder, archivist, and community moderator.
Ira Gladkova
Ira Gladkova is a Web designer and developer who focuses on user interfaces, usability, accessibility, and Web standards. A lifelong fan and media omnivore, she has particular interest in fan projects that bring together diverse communities and media. A community moderator and staff of two fandom newsletters, her work in an annual multi-fandom exchange involves co-moderation, the design and front-end coding of signup forms, and crafting guidelines that use inclusive language and welcome diversity across media, kinks, and gender preferences. Gladkova has created stories, art, comics, and graphics in over fifty fandoms, is an active reccer and beta reader, and hopes to finish her first vids soon. She has an unfortunate propensity for falling in love with background characters.
Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik is the New York Times-bestselling author of the award-winning Temeraire historical fantasy series, which has been translated into twenty-three languages and optioned as a film by director Peter Jackson. Previously, she also worked on the hit computer game Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide and helped start up Juno Online Services. Novik has been active in online fandom since 1994, publishing stories and vids in more than fifty fandoms and founding several fan-run institutions: a multiuser online role-playing game begun in 1995, a vidding convention begun in 2002, and an annual cross-fandom story exchange begun in 2003. She created the open-source Automated Archive software used by many fanfic archives and helped to found the OTW in 2007, chairing the Board from its inception through the first three-year term.
Emeritus Board Members
2011
- Rachel Barenblat
- Hele Braunstein
- Sheila Lane
- Allison Morris
2010
- Naomi Novik
- Rebecca Tushnet, JD
- Elizabeth Yalkut
2009
- KellyAnn Bessa
- Susan Gibel, JD
2008
- Cathy Cupitt, DCA
- Michele Tepper, PhD
