2021 ACM Award Winners Announced

Emerging Leader Award
ELISA BARRIOS, OPEN SIGNAL PORTLAND



Elisa Barrios, Director of Equity and Community Media, A multicultural and bilingual educator, Elisa has taught people of all ages for more than 15 years. She has worked as an arts facilitator for adults with developmental disabilities and an in-school and out-of-school curriculum director and an educator for wilderness survival programs. Elisa holds an undergraduate degree with a focus on video production and social sciences from The Evergreen State College. 

Joining Portland Community Media in 2015, Elisa has designed and led both youth and adult programs that have helped the organization evolve into Open Signal, a future-focused and boundary-pushing community media arts organization. Through her tenure with Open Signal, Elisa has been involved with the development and implementation of several equity-driven programs. She currently provides oversight on all equity and race-based work at Open Signal, and oversees community access programming. 
 
Elisa is also a part of a female, non-binary identifying LatinX video production collective, Girl Game Gang, that recruits predominantly BIPOC and non-binary identified emerging film industry professionals. She is also the board president and trauma-informed trainer and camp director for The Healing Circle, a summer camp for child survivors of sexual abuse.  

The Dirk Koning – George Stoney Award for Humanistic Communication

PETER ALBERT WILLIAMS, NORTHAMPTON OPEN MEDIA


Peter Albert Williams works at the intersection of community, art, and technology as Executive Director of Northampton Open Media (NOM), a forward-seeking community media organization whose projects have included Crowdsourced Cinema, co-founding of the Public VR Lab, the Northampton Film Festival, the Northampton Awesome Foundation, the 7 Day Film Sprint, Minecraft Northampton, Cinema Northampton, Paradise City Press, a production grants program, building a regional distribution network for community media centers, and others. NOM has won 39 national Hometown awards since 2011, and the student programs it supports have won 5 regional Emmy awards.

Al matriculated from university at Boston College where he earned a degree in philosophy with a concentration in writing and was a first-day dropout at Lewis and Clark Law School. He has served on the board of directors of Mass Access, the Northeast Region of the Alliance for Community Media, the national board of the Alliance for Community Media, and Holyoke Media, for whose establishment he was an initiator and founding force.

Al’s parents were gifted at being human, and a mathematician-artist and a master storyteller. His wife is Kathy Bisbee, an accomplished pioneer and groundbreaker in the field of community media. He was born in Detroit and has lived most of his life in Western Mass. He is a double-Taurus-Sagittarius-moon Taoist-Chistian-Pantheist-Agnostic stoic-epicurean phenomenologist. He is from the genetic H4a maternal haplogroup, and is half Lithuanian-American.

Al values play, results-oriented approaches, educated agility, and mistake-as-opportunity.  He sees meaning and understanding not as a passive process of deciphering but an active expression towards co-active creation. Al is a visual artist and musician who loves new mediums. Al loves beets.

Buske Leadership Award
 BARBARA CHISHOLM, WACA TV & JON FUNFAR, CITY OF PASCO



Barbara Chisholm has been involved in community media for over 25 years. She currently is the Executive Director of WACA TV. She served on the original Board of Directors of WACA TV and held the position of Treasurer. Barbara joined the staff of WACA TV as the Operations Manager, a position held for 10 years. During that time, she has overseen a number of major projects while increasing programming and community involvement and awareness. Barbara is proud to be a member of the ACM because it is a wonderful support system for community media centers across the country large and small assisting stations both educationally and legislatively.



Jon Funfar is Communications Program Manager for the City of Pasco, Washington. As a one-person shop, he manages Pasco City Television, the City of Pasco website, City social media, and City print publications.

A native of Enumclaw, Washington, where he was the City’s Media Services Manager from 2000-2011, and then relocated to Pasco. Jon was introduced to the ACM in 2001 by attending a Northwest Regional conference where he heard Dirk Koning speak and has subsequently been active in the ACM. Currently, he is Northwest Region Vice-Chair. Jon served as Chair for the National Board in 2016-2017 and brought his small-center community media experience to the ACM. He has also served as President and Secretary of WATOA (Washington Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors).

When not juggling those varied responsibilities, he enjoys spending time with his dog Bubba and friends and appreciating living in the center of Washington wine country.

The Jewell Ryan-White Award for Cultural Diversity
JEAN FIX, COMMUNITY MEDIA CENTER OF CARROLL COUNTY



March 1969 to July 2001
Retired as a Project Manager and Customer Service Manager after 33 years. 

2006 to 2020: President of 
The goals are to ensure to political, education, social and economic equality of all citizen: to achieve equality of rights and to eliminate race prejudice among the citizens of Carroll County and the United States; to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through processes; to seek enactment and enforcement of federal, state and local laws securing civil rights; to inform the public of adverse effects of racial discrimination rights and to take all lawful action to secure the exercise thereof, and to any lawful action in furtherance of these objective, consistent with the NAACP’s Article of Incorporation and their Constitution. The NAACP is non- partisan
 organization.

2020: 2nd Vice President of the Carroll County NAACP Branch 7014

2015 to present: Member of Point Breeze Credit Union Board of Directors

2004 to present: Human Services Program of Carroll County Board of Directors
HSP provides assistance with basic needs for low-income at risk citizens of Carroll County. HSP is a private, non-profit corporation. It is grant and county funded. There are over 20 programs. They are homeless, housing, support and emergency services.

2007 
I received the Excellence Award for Minority Achievement from the MD State Department of Minority Achievement Initiative for Maryland’s Minority Students program at Carroll County Public Schools. Recognized  for efforts to help parents improve student achievement. 

2004 to present: Carroll County Public School Education That Is Multicultural Council Member
Change of the Council: 
• To monitor the implementation of ETM in support of state regulation, as evidenced in the CCPS Master Plan, using the MD local school system ETM Protocol;
• To document the implementation of ETM at the school and district level
• To conduct an analysis and provide feedback to the superintendent on the status of ETM in our school

2009 to 2019: Community Media Center Member of the Board of Directors
The CMC is the local access cable television channels of Carroll County. 
The CMC is building stronger, more dynamic local community. It is the center for Public, Education and Government station by using media, link, engaging and connect resident and organization throughout Carroll County.  
 
Black Oral History Committee’s Carroll Remembers Project “Carroll County: Through the Eyes of the Black Experience” 50 interviews recorded so far. In the MD Senate Building 2011 awarded The MD Historical Trust, MD Preservation Award for Educational Excellence for the Carroll County History Project.  
 Produced videos William Decatur: Story of a Buffalo Soldier, White Rock Church History, Anniversary of 48th March on Washington, African American Trailblazers of Carroll County. 
2014and 2016 at the Semi-Annual Vollie Awards I received a Special Presentation as CMC Board Member of the Year.

2008 to present: Carroll Citizens for Racial Equality
To promote racial equality and understanding in Carroll County.

 2008 to 2015: Community Service Council Board Member of Board of Directors 
To identify and advocate to meet gaps in the community service needs; to coordinate a clearing house of information for the community. Over 100 non-profits are part of this council

2009 to present: Carroll County Human Relations Commission
The commission will seek to promote harmony and understanding among the citizens of Carroll County, and to ensure that all civic, economic, political, housing, recreational and other human rights.

2015 My husband and myself were Human Relations Award Recipient’s for 50 years of civil rights work and many initiatives in the county in addition to my extensive volunteer work with the county’s public schools.
 
2008 to present:  traveled with the Carroll County Public Schools to Recruitment Events to recruit, hire and retain minority candidates to be hired as educators. 

2010 to present: National Alliance of Black School Educators
The mission of NABSE African American learners are effectively educated, to ensure the African American learners are accorded priority for the future, and to ensure that African American educators lead the way in creating a concrete model that demonstrates the goals of academic and cultural excellence set forth so clearly in Saving the African American Child.
I have attended their conferences though-out the US with CCPS.

2014 to present: CCPS Diversity Leadership Committee 
To successfully expand the diversity of our instructional staff, we must actively recruit quality minority candidates, welcome them to our system, and ensure their ability to thrive as valued staff members. To support administrators in providing an environment which will increase and retain  minority employees. 

2014 to present: 
May 15th 2016 Dedication of Henryton Sanatorium and Nursing School (LPN) School. Henryton open 1023 and closed 1985. It was MD’s 1st tuberculosis sanatorium for African American’s and students when trained. The building has been demolished and there are no landmarks. Working with MD State Delegate Susan Krebs and the MD Historical Trust we will dedicate Historical Road Signs for both Henryton Sanatorium and Nursing School.
Henryton will be dedicated May 14, 2016

Worked with Carroll County Board of Election recruiting minority Election Judges,

2012 Carroll County Public’s Library Reader Leader 
The library quarterly selects a member of the community as their Reader Leader. I gave a list of my 10 favorite books. An article in their quarterly Currents Summer 2012 magazine. 

2004 to present: 
I have worked as an Election Judge with Carroll County Board of Election.
Serve as Election Judge.

2017 McDaniel College’s Phi Beta Kappa Society Delta of Maryland Chapter Lifelong Learner presented to me.

A President of the Board of Friends of Carroll County Public Library. We support the library in its mission to deliver lifelong learning for all ages through advocating for funding for libraries, promoting awareness of public library services and needs, and by enhancing library program resources in partnership with staff and trustees.

I have been married to John H. Lewis Jr. for over 38 years. We have a blended family of 6 children, 11 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren.