Emeritus Board Members
Rachel Barenblat (2009-2011)
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat is co-founder of Inkberry, a literary arts nonprofit organization whose mission was to help every writer find her or his own voice. She has also served on the boards of two other nonprofit organizations. The six years she spent running Inkberry gave her expertise in nonprofit management, grantwriting, and building membership. A poet who blogs about issues of faith as "The Velveteen Rabbi" as well as an enthusiastic participant in online fandom since 1999, Barenblat has a long commitment both to transformative works and to writing as a mode of personal transformation. She is married to Ethan Zuckerman, head of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and she currently serves a small congregation in western Massachusetts. During her years on the OTW Board, she watched a lot of West Wing and a lot of LOST.
KellyAnn Bessa (2007-2009)
KellyAnn Bessa has a BS in Management from Cardinal Stritch University, and currently works as a human resources consultant for an investment firm. She has been in fandom for nearly ten years as a writer, mailing list owner, community moderator, and webmaster. In addition to running several archives, she hosts and maintains websites for a number of fan fiction writers. One of her first childhood crushes was Batman, and she still works several hours a week at her local comic book store, and participates in the online feminist comic fan community.
Hele Braunstein (2011)
Hele Braunstein is a student at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where she studies biological sciences and has worked in environmental research. A latinoamerican, Spanish-as-mother-tongue fan, Braunstein is active in diverse online platforms and fannish cultures. An advocate for international and panfandom accessibility, her focus is on non-English-speaking fans and those who use English as a fannish lingua franca. She has mentored fellow fans on basic writing skills and has served as part of a website moderating team. Braunstein volunteers in various capacities with Perfect Imagination, the Jane Austen Fanfiction Index, and the Regency Encyclopedia. Her fannish tastes are broad, and currently — and non-exclusively — include Jane Austen, Harry Potter, X-Files, Naruto, Hikaru no Go, Monster, Iron Man, and The Breakfast Club fandoms.
Cathy Cupitt, DCA (2007-2008)
Cathy Cupitt teaches writing and Shakespeare at the University of Western Australia and has a doctorate in creative arts from Curtin University of Technology. Her fiction has appeared in Australian magazines such as Westerly and Borderlands, and in 1997 she won the US$20,000 first prize in Hyundai's 20th Anniversary World-wide Essay Contest. Since discovering fandom in 1988, Cupitt has written in nine fandoms, and she runs an active recommendations site. She has served on numerous fannish committees, including Australia's 2001 national SF convention, for which she was a co-convenor.
Susan Gibel, JD (2007-2009)
Susan Gibel is a senior manager with the Center for Effective Public Policy, Inc., a nonprofit organization founded to assist other agencies in developing and implementing sound public policy. Her work there is focused on national training and technical assistance initiatives related to domestic violence and offender reentry. She has worked with antiviolence organizations on issues of domestic violence and queer rights and holds a law degree from the University of Minnesota. Gibel has been involved in fandom since the mid-1970s, beginning with Star Trek. She writes in a handful of fandoms, primarily Due South, and founded the annual Due South Seekrit Santa story exchange.
Sheila Lane (2009-2011)
Sheila Lane has a master's degree in business management and is a licensed certified public accountant. She works as a corporate accountant for a worldwide brokerage company and has expertise in both individual and small business taxation. Lane previously worked for the U.S. Senate, serving as a liaison between constituents and government agencies, particularly the Social Security Administration and the IRS. She blogs about money matters on LiveJournal under the name "sheila_cpa." Lane has been involved in online fandom since 1994, going from a telnet BBS and 'zines to mailing lists and LiveJournal. She has written in more than thirty fandoms, from Alias to Witchblade, serves as a frequent beta, and has moderated multiple mailing lists, communities, and challenges.
Allison Morris (2010-2011)
Allison Morris has a BA in Japanese Literature from the University of Michigan and currently works in a public library as a public services supervisor. A lifelong fan, Morris is particularly interested in fanworks that honor the work of other fans and transform other fanworks, including remixes, podfic, recs, and other fan arts. She is a prolific creator and advocate of podfic; she built and maintains the Audiofic archive, providing a stable, permanent home for a constantly growing collection of podfic, and has conducted several podfic workshops. In addition to the Audiofic archive, Morris hosts and maintains websites for a number of other fans, moderates several ongoing communities and challenges, and participates in conventions and fandom-related conferences when she can.
Michele Tepper, PhD (2007-2008)
Michele Tepper is an interaction designer and usability expert who helps companies create memorable and successful software, Web sites, and digital devices. She has published influential essays about online community and social software, and she is the former Web producer for Lingua Franca magazine. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Michigan. Tepper was one of the creators and designers of buffistas.org, a fan-built, fan-maintained site centered on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The site has more than a thousand members and has been active for five years.
Rebecca Tushnet, JD (2007-2010)
Rebecca Tushnet is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. A graduate of Yale Law School, she clerked for Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia and Associate Justice David H. Souter on the Supreme Court. She practiced intellectual property law at Debevoise & Plimpton before joining the NYU faculty, then moving to Georgetown. Her work on copyright, trademark, and free speech has been published in the Yale Law Journal, the UCLA Law Review, and the Texas Law Review, and she maintains a blog on advertising and intellectual property law at http://tushnet.blogspot.com. She has advised and represented several fanfiction Web sites in disputes with copyright and trademark owners. Tushnet has been active in online fandom since 1996 and has written stories in the X-Files, Buffy, and Smallville fandoms, among others.
Elizabeth Yalkut (2010)
Elizabeth Yalkut is a student at Columbia University in New York City. She has worked in development, marketing, and strategy for nonprofit legal and theater organizations, is a long-time American Civil Liberties Union volunteer, and currently works for the Educational Technology department at Barnard College. Food is one of her fandoms: Yalkut blogs about food at A Very Uncommon Cook. Yalkut also serves as treasurer of the Columbia University Science Fiction Society, and currently enjoys the hell out of Merlin, Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
