A self-proclaimed change maker, Brenda Solórzano is known as a leader focused on continual learning while making time to play and enjoy life. Solórzano is the President and CEO of The California Endowment. She was appointed to the position in 2024. This is a return for Brenda, after working at the Endowment early in her philanthropic career.

Brenda began her career in advocacy circles and has continued to ensure community voice remains at the center of her philanthropic work. She is a nationally recognized leader in trust-based philanthropy, a values-driven approach that advances equity, shifts power, and builds mutually accountable relationships between funders and nonprofits. As a founding member of the movement, Brenda understands that democratizing philanthropy, putting the community at the center, and building trusted partnerships and relationships are critical to ensuring positive and healthy change.

After immigrating to the United States from Guatemala as a baby, Brenda was raised in San Francisco. She calls San Francisco home and lived in California for nearly 50 years before moving to Montana to be the founding CEO of Headwaters Foundation.

Brenda comes to the Endowment from Headwaters. During her tenure at Headwaters, Brenda built an institution for the community, by the community, from the ground up. Leading with a lens of health equity and trust-based philanthropy, she reimagined and reinvented philanthropic practices, changed systems and policies to advance better health outcomes, and built a network of trusted partnerships across the state.

In her career, Brenda has also held positions at the Blue Shield of California Foundation and the California Healthcare Foundation. Brenda has a bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in political science from the University of San Francisco and a Juris Doctorate from Whittier Law School in Southern California.

Brenda is married to Randall Caudle, an immigration attorney, and she has two college-aged children, Alina and Kian. Brenda is currently based in L.A. with her husband and their two pups.

Charo Henríquez is a journalist, working at the intersection of journalism and technology, to help create better editorial operations and a more inclusive culture in newsrooms. She has focused most of her career on leading innovation in news organizations. Currently, Charo is part of the leadership team of the Culture and Careers department and leads the Newsroom Development and Support and Newsroom Research teams at The New York Times. She is also the Vice President of Online News Association’s Executive Board of Directors and a member of the Advisory Council Board to the Spanish-language Journalism Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. In 2021 she completed a fellowship at Columbia University’s Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program. Charo has been faculty for ONA Women’s Leadership Accelerator and Poynter Institute’s Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media. 

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz is the Editor in Chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, the leading news source in the Bay Area. The Chronicle focuses its coverage on the issues critical to its readers, including health, homelessness, the post-pandemic future of the city, climate change and its deadly consequences and the area’s world-class food and wine scene.

Garcia-Ruiz joined the Chronicle in September 2020 after spending the previous 19 years at The Washington Post. His final role at The Post was as Managing Editor for Digital, where he oversaw the development and execution of digital strategy, supervising more than 350 journalists. He edited the 2000 Pulitzer prize-winning investigation by the St. Paul Pioneer Press that uncovered academic fraud in the University of Minnesota men’s basketball program. His career includes editing at the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times.

Felicitas is a Product manager and leader navigating the intersection of journalism, tech, and media business models. She is currently the Executive Director of the News Product Alliance, a community of support and practice for news product professionals and product thinkers working together toward a more sustainable and ethical future for the news industry. She was featured as “One to Watch” in the News Industry by Amy Webb’s Future Today Institute annual Tech Trends Report for her leadership. In her previous role as the Innovation Director at SembraMedia, she worked with news organizations across Latin America, Spain, and the United States to promote innovation and led product design and systems development for the organization.

Fernanda Camarena is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years of experience in the media industry. As a full-time faculty member at Poynter Institute, Camarena specializes in leadership, ethics and journalistic standards. She co-leads Poynter’s Women’s Leadership Academy and the Essential Skills for Rising Newsroom Leaders program. 

In addition to her teaching roles, she coaches and consults with newsrooms and journalists at all levels—from early-career to executive positions—both locally and nationally. 

Before joining Poynter, Camarena served as a manager on NBC News’ Standards and Practices team, where she provided critical support and guidance across NBC News Network, MSNBC, Telemundo and streaming platforms to uphold rigorous journalistic standards. Camarena’s previous roles include Senior Editor for The Texas Newsroom, where she played a key role in building a collaborative NPR project among Texas stations and led their enterprise work. 

Under her leadership, the team won a national Edward Murrow Award, an IRE Award and multiple Gracie Awards. She also led the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at Latino USA and spearheaded investigative collaborations at The Center for Investigative Reporting, contributing to a Peabody Award-winning project. 

Her career began in broadcast journalism as a reporter and anchor at Televisa in her hometown of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Camarena went on to work with CBS’ 60 Minutes and she helped launch the first Telemundo news station in El Paso, Texas. Camarena is currently a member of the board of directors for Public Health Watch, a non-profit investigative newsroom. She teaches and consults journalists in English and Spanish. 

While growing up in Juarez, she crossed an international border daily to attend school from elementary through college. After moving to New York City and spending more than a decade there, Camarena now resides in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband and their two young sons.

Kevin Reome started classes in 1993 at The Second City Training Center and Improv Olympic in Chicago and is a founding member of the long-form improv team “Inside Vladimir”. Kevin starred in The Real, Real World with the Upright Citizens Brigade in 1995. Reome’s written, directed, produced, performed in many scripted and improvised shows such as The Eulogist, Rahm Zombie, The Reome Awards of Chicago to Benefit Alzheimer’s Research, Lightfoot Loose, and currently plays in The Reome Ring, a monthly improvised show featuring Chicago’s top improvisers.

Kevin has been teaching improvisation at the Second City Training Center in Chicago since 2005. He has also taught at improv theaters in Denver, Houston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Atlanta, San Diego, Ft. Lauderdale and in 2014 he traveled to Osaka, Japan to teach improv for The Second City Training Center. In 2022 he delivered a Ted Talk called “What’s My Motivation?”. He has appeared on the ABC 7 talk show Windy City Live as well as Fox Chicago, NBC5 Chicago, WBBM Newsradio and WLS Talk Radio. 

On the corporate side he has facilitated applied improv workshops for Abbott Pharmaceuticals (Montreal, CA), PwC (Chicago), Kraft Heinz (Mexico City, MX), SmithGroup (Detroit, MI), Walgreens (Deerfield, IL), Murray State University (Murray, KY), The Detroit Tigers (Detroit, MI), the Western Michigan University Football team (Kalamazoo, MI), Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and many others. Kevin has a B.A. in English and a teaching degree from Western Michigan University.

Nikita Roy is a data scientist, journalist, and Harvard-recognized AI futurist.

She is the founder of Newsroom Robots Labs, an AI training and advisory firm for media organizations, currently incubating at Harvard Innovation Labs. Nikita also hosts the globally acclaimed Newsroom Robots Podcast, which has been ranked among the top technology podcasts in over 30 countries on Apple Podcasts.

As a Knight Fellow at the International Center for Journalists, Nikita is spearheading efforts to advance AI literacy across the news industry. She played a pivotal role in launching and leading the AI Journalism Lab at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, a groundbreaking initiative supported by Microsoft. She also serves on the university’s AI Advisory Board.

A globally recognized keynote speaker, Nikita’s expertise and opinions have been featured on BBC, CBC News, Quartz, Yahoo Finance, and Harvard’s Nieman Lab. As a leader in AI education, she has conducted workshops and training sessions at world-renowned newsrooms and institutions, including The Economist, The Boston Globe, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Toronto.

Nikita is the President of the Canadian Association of Journalists – National Capital Region chapter.

An alumna of Harvard University and the University of Toronto, she champions responsible AI adoption in media through strategic advisory, product development, and hands-on workshops.

Jelani Cobb, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism and Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism

Kate Kennedy, Director of Professional Programs

Karen Gordon, Principal, Strategic Horizons

LaToya Jordan, Founder and Principal, Lead By Design Lab

Ashli Carter, Lecturer, Management Division, Columbia Business School

NYC Media trips:

• The New York Times
• Documented NY