Chris Lawn – Board Chair

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Chris Lawn is the current Board Chair for the Northwest Region of the Alliance Community Media. Originally from Massachusetts, he had the pleasure of serving in community media for over a decade in numerous capacities at five organizations of varying sizes. He then transitioned to become an Audio Visual Program Manager at a global service provider collaborating side-by-side with the client company at their corporate headquarters. Upon departing from that position, Chris went back to school to learn full stack web development and is now working as a Technical Support Engineer in a software as a service (SaaS) role. His professional experience includes pre-recorded and live studio production, field production, video and audio editing, event management, broadcast programming, equipment maintenance, leading technical trainings, supervising interns and volunteers, project and program management, web development, and software support. His personal interests are travel, food, camping, meeting and networking with new people, music, dancing, art, and generally exploring the works around him with curiosity and a sense of humor. He hopes to utilize these skills and passions to continue to bolster community media in whatever ways he can!

Luis Mendoza – Treasurer

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Luis Mendoza is originally from Michoacan, Mexico. He moved to Oregon when he was 15 and received a GED from University of Oregon. As a native of Mexico, English is his second language. As a migrant worker, he worked in the fields picking berries. He also worked in plant nurseries, canneries, seed companies, and construction. Luis started his career in manufacturing. He went from not knowing anything, to becoming a Mechanical Engineer, in the course of 17 years. He learned new skills, moved to different departmental positions, becoming the lead. He managed people from different backgrounds, all without a degree. He became involved with Capital Community Media, formally known as CCTV, in 2015 as a volunteer. Within a month, he was creating a Spanish show with his wife, where they interviewed local community leaders, politicians, doctors, singers, actors, artists, teachers and more. Eventually, they created another show where they had local Hispanic musicians come and share their music. In 2016, Luis was hired by CCTV as the Community Facilitator and just recently celebrated his seventh anniversary. His job includes teaching classes to help people develop a show from beginning to end, working with them side by side until they feel confident to do it on their own. Luis has also worked with youth that are in correctional facilities, to learn video and audio while sharing his personal story, to help them believe they can accomplish anything they want; that if he can do it, they can do it. Luis is currently the treasurer for the Northwest Region of the Alliance for Community Media. His goal is to become an Executive Director in the future, to keep helping the Community he is in, and to be a role model to someone.

Robert Kam – National Representative

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Robert serves as the National Representative for the Northwest Region of the Alliance for Community Media. He has worked for public, educational, and government access channels his entire career. Robert started his PEG career as a volunteer camera operator for his high school football games with Charter cable in Grand Prairie, TX. In college, he worked at North Texas Television (NTTV) as a trainer, programmer and producer then he was hired for the government access channel in Denton, TX (DTV). He then ran the public access channel in Denton, TX for a year before moving to the Pacific Northwest to work for Thurston Community Media. Robert has an Associates degree from the Art Institute of Dallas in “Music and Video Business” and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Texas in “Radio, Television and Film”. Robert hosts and produces a monthly public access program on his own time called “Karaoke Oly” that airs on public access channel 22 in Olympia and on YouTube. He is also a board member for OlyFilm, aka The Olympia Film Collective.

Jamie Plakos – Secretary

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Jamie Plakos serves as the Secretary for the Northwest Region of the Alliance for Community Media. Jamie is a seasoned professional with over 10 years of experience in operations and organizational development. Currently employed as the Director of Operations at Portland’s community media center, Open Signal. Jamie’s educational background includes studies in Computer Engineering at USCB, as well as Marketing & Business Management at SBCC. In addition, Jamie holds an HR Certification through the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Throughout her career, Jamie has worked across various industries, including healthcare, hospitality, and entertainment. Notable positions include her work at UBM Medica and Optum Healthcare, where she played a pivotal role in building and optimizing systems to enhance operational efficiency for 10,000+ employees. Jamie’s key skills lie in developing new organizational systems and creating policies and procedures with a strong focus on equity and inclusion. She co-established Open Signal’s Equity Committee and has been instrumental in implementing equitable pay structures and fostering transparency within the organization. Beyond her professional contributions, Jamie is an active member of Girl Game Gang, a BIPOC female and non-binary led production company and a co-owner of Monoinyo Studio, a game development company.

Adam Carpinelli – Member

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Adam Carpinelli is a multifaceted artist, producer, community organizer and multi-instrumentalist.adam-carpinelli Carpinelli has been a long time advocate for community media as a way of supporting social movements with a focus on mass incarceration and houselessness. He has been co-producing the Prison Pipeline program at KBOO community radio where he served as a board member. Other board positions include Right 2 Survive, Northwest Alliance for Alternative Media and Education and Resolutions Northwest. Adam is National Secretary for The Jericho Movement for Political Prisoner Amnesty. He supports underserved and incarcerated youth in Oregon with a unique audiovisual music program; Keys, Beats, Bars and Propulsion Network, a multimedia arts program. Adam resides in Portland where he performs with his progressive jazz and world beat projects Shvvvr,Wamba and currently works with Senegalese Master Drummer Massamba Diop from Baaba Maal’s band and The Black Panther soundtrack.

Melissa Salazar – Member

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Melissa graduated from Pacific Northwest College of Art and has worked as an educator and professional mentor throughout the Portland Metro area. With over a decade of experience working with adolescent youth in preparation for their post secondary plans Melissa sought out opportunities to expand her work to all ages. Currently, she is the Production Cohort Facilitator at Open Signal, Portland Community Media. In this role she mentors community producers 16 years and up through a five month program that teaches them how to use an industry standard camera, lighting and networking with others through the completion of their media projects.

Melissa also serves on the National Alliance for Community Media Nomination Committee and Alliance for Community Media Pacific Northwest Region board. She believes in the future of community media and looks to learn from others with the same passion and drive to preserve public access media.

She has recently accepted an invitation to serve on the board of directors for Teens Grounded, a youth leadership program in her hometown in Texas. Her dedication to be in service to her community has led her to also serve within the Adult Congenital Heart Association as a peer 2 peer heart mentor as she was born with a rare congenital heart disease.

Kelly Frank – Member

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Kelly Frank started his media career working part-time air operations for Wyoming Public Television, the PBS station that covers the entire state of Wyoming. It is in that position that he also learned to run cameras and studio equipment. After three years, Kelly took a full-time position at the college that owned the license to Wyoming PBS under the Star Schools grant, a program building two-way interactive classrooms to service areas that otherwise would not be able to attain more advanced classes due to geographical and population obstacles. While in the position, Kelly honed his video techniques and learned editing skills. He also started the college’s PEG access channel from scratch. This position later transferred into the colleges TV / Radio / Film department where Kelly continued his video skills and running the PEG station, edited audio files for air and hosted a highly rated show for the college’s radio station. He worked at that position for a total of 18 years until he moved to Oregon. He currently works as the Public Access Technician at TVCTV in Beaverton, where he is the public point person from teaching the public courses to programming the shows on air for the three public channels TVCTV runs. He has been with TVCTV since 2017. Kelly also produces and voice-over hosts his own program which airs on TVCTV and many other PEG channels across the nation.