The CMAC Board of Directors is composed of a diverse group of local leaders representing a cross-section of community interests. The board is made up of 6 directors who are elected by the membership, 4 directors who are appointed, and 5 directors who are designated by the following organizations: City of Clovis, City of Fresno, Fresno County Superintendent of Schools (FCSS), Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC), and Fresno Building Healthy Communities (BHC).
Missy Mckai Cartier
Before her retirement, Missy Mckai Cartier served as the Public Information Officer for San Joaquin College of Law for 14 years. She currently sits on the Editorial Board of the Fresno County Bar Association’s Bar Bulletin, and has produced about two dozen episodes of “San Joaquin College of Law Today” for CMAC. Prior to her work at SJCL, she enjoyed a 30 year broadcast career, including as a Reporter/Anchor at KMJ, News Bureau Chief for Metro Networks, and Operations Director for KMGX. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the Pennsylvania State University. She and her husband, Richard, have three adult children, who still make them crazy.
(Appointed Member)
Emilia Morris
Emilia P. E. Morris is an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California. She is passionate about public service and promoting opportunities and access in the Fresno community. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, she was the Legal Director at Central California Legal Services, a non-profit public interest law firm that provides free civil legal assistance to low-income individuals, families, organizations and communities. Emilia began her career as an associate at a major national law firm in Los Angeles, where she represented major corporate clients, including music labels, in complex commercial litigation. Emilia holds a JD from Stanford Law School and an AB with Honors from Harvard College. She is a mother of two and a native of Fresno, CA.
(Elected Member)
Kevin Hamilton
Kevin Hamilton is the CEO of the Central California Asthma Collaborative. He serves on numerous boards and committees associated with grassroots community capacity building and local, state and regional policy development. His education includes an AS in Respiratory Care, BS in Geology, extended course work in social work, mathematics, business and management training. He has worked extensively on different aspects of health care access and redesign around primary care, disease management, childhood and adult immunizations and behavioral health for over 35-years and is a well- known advocate for social and environmental justice.
(Designated by Fresno BHC)
Lisa Birrell
Lisa Birrell is the Communications and Public Relations Officer for the Office of the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools. She has extensive experience in communications, marketing, and public relations. At FCSS, she also supervises the Graphics and Printing and Multimedia Services departments. Prior to joining FCSS in 2014, Lisa was with The Fresno Bee for 21 years in a variety of management roles, including community relations, special sections, and marketing. Lisa is a life-long Fresno resident and a graduate of Fresno State where she earned a Master’s Degree in Mass Communication. Lisa and her husband, Paul, have been married 27 years and have a son who will be attending law school.
(Designated by FCSS)
Anita Fernandez
Anita Fernandez is a California native born in Stockton. Her father taught her to draw and in high school she developed a passion for Fine Arts which she pursued at San Joaquin Delta College. Printmaking became very attractive to her and she began to develop a love for Intalio, etching, and lithography. She participated in group shows at the Haggin Museum in Stockton and The Crocker Museum in Sacramento. She worked as a film editor at KOVR-TV in Stockton and KMPH FOX 26 and KJEO CBS 47 in Fresno. She retired and attended film school at The Art Institute, Sacramento, but the commute became too much. When she found CMAC and attended the very first orientation, she believed this would be the chance of a lifetime – she could continue her education in film production. She was right, her hunch paid off.
(Appointed Member)
Diane Flowers
Diane Flowers is a graduate from California State University, Sacramento with a degree in Communications Studies. Diane also holds a certificate from Fresno City College in Electrical Systems Technology-Communication Technology. She worked as an editor for Pro Image Video in 2004 and in 2007 became the owner of the duplication portion of the business. She currently enjoys producing passion projects with CMAC.
(Elected Member)
Will Freeney
Will Freeney is a native Californian, retired from a career in IT for the State of California, and now pursuing creative expression in multiple modes. In addition to his activities at CMAC, he completed an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Fresno State University (2022), where he also completed multiple classes in the MCJ Department. Prior to that, he completed an MA in English Literature with an emphasis in Creative Writing, synchronous with his final years of State of California employment.
Will has been a CMAC member for over five years, has taken numerous CMAC workshops, volunteered for a full range of duties on other members’ productions, and entered the realm of producer / director / cinematographer / editor with this year’s season of Respite by the River.
(Elected Member)
Phil Howard
Phil Howard is the Audio-Visual Systems Specialist at State Center Community College District and represents the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium on the CMAC board. He is a Zoom subaccount administrator for his district’s 3,000 plus Zoom users with a special focus on public facing “hybrid” events, meetings, and webinars. His professional background also includes extensive motion picture, television, video, radio, concert, and theatrical production experience. Phil is excited to serve on the CMAC board, and looks forward to helping build greater awareness of this valuable community resource, to helping build CMAC membership throughout our region, and to helping further the mission and values of the Community Media Access Collaborative.
(Designated by CVHEC)
Justin McAleece
Justin McAleece is a socially conscious director and cinematographer of narrative and documentary projects both personal and commercial. He has been dedicated to filmmaking since 1999 and has won dozens of awards and directed hundreds of hours of content and lensed even more. He has conducted hundreds of interviews in a variety of spaces and is equally comfortable directing a team of 25 in a corporate setting or shooting solo on the Serengeti. Justin also wrote, produced, directed, and edited the feature comedy Brick MADNESS and often returns to his comedy roots.
(Appointed Member)
Chad McCollum
Chad McCollum serves as the Economic Development, Housing, and Communications Director for the City of Clovis.
Prior to working for the City of Clovis, Chad spent more than 20 years working at local television news stations across state, most recently as News Director at KSEE24 and CBS47. Before coming to Fresno, he also worked at KCBS/KCAL in Los Angeles, KUSI in San Diego, and KSBY in San Luis Obispo.
(Designated by City of Clovis)
NeFesha Ruth Yisra’el
NeFesha Ruth Yisra’el is a New Jersey native. She studied Fashion Design and Merchandising at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and earned her Masters in Urban Studies with a concentration in Community Arts from Eastern University. She worked as an Arts Administrator and Community Organizer in Philadelphia, PA, before moving to Fresno, CA, to be the Chief Organization Officer for Royal Roots. NeFesha has worked as a Program Developer at Another Level Training Academy and a Project Investigator for the Math and Science Teachers Initiative and the San Joaquin Valley Math Project at California State University, Fresno. NeFesha believes in the importance of archiving and continuing the work of her ancestors through the research, documentation, and practice of the Black folk traditions.
(Elected Member)
Michael Seng
Michael Seng is a retired Federal Magistrate judge and current proprietor of Seng-ADR, an arbitration and mediation service in the Central Valley. Before becoming a judge, Michael practiced civil litigation law in Fresno and Central California for some 30 years. As a judge, he was active on judicial committees devoted to promoting education, community involvement, and diversity on the federal bench (including serving two years as Chair of the Federall Magistrate Judges Diversity Committee). He sought to become a CMAC Board member primarily upon learning of its capacity to make its remarkable facilities and equipment available to the public generally and especially to the otherwise under-served members of our community.
(Elected Member)
Mark Standriff
Mark Standriff is the Director of the City of Fresno’s Beautify Fresno Program, an initiative to cooperate and collaborate with other public and private agencies to clean and beautify the City of Fresno through the elimination of trash, graffiti, and blight, and the creation of community-based beautification projects. Prior to this, Mark served as the City of Fresno’s Director of Communications and Public Affairs for two Mayors. He is active in the community, serving on the boards of Any Given Child, StageWorks Fresno, the Fresno/Clovis Convention and Visitors Bureau, and CMAC. Mark studied at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the University of Toledo. His career in broadcasting spanned almost 30 years and he is a frequent guest host on a number of talk radio stations around California, including Newstalk 580/105.9FM in Fresno.
(Designated by City of Fresno)
Jes Therkelsen
Jes Therkelsen is a documentary filmmaker, a photographer, a musician, an educator, a scientist, and an activist. His media projects have stretched across five continents and have confronted issues such as human rights, sustainable development, and environmental justice. His films have won a D.C. Peer Award, a CINE Golden Eagle, and have screened in festivals across the country. He has worked as a photographer/filmmaker with National Geographic Student Expeditions in the Galapagos Islands, the Australian Outback, the Great Barrier Reef, Tuscany, Iceland, London, and Paris. He served as the first Filmmaker-in-Residence at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Originally from Lawrenceville, NJ, Therkelsen currently teaches media production and storytelling at California State University, Fresno.
(Appointed Member)
