>> 2003 Town Meetings >> Cleveland CLEVELAND: Speaker Biographies Arthurs | Avsec | Besek | Coleman | Gunderson | Kelly | Kessler | O'Rourke | Seng |   Alberta Arthurs Alberta Arthurs is an independent contractor in the arts and humanities, and a frequent commentator and writer on cultural issues. Operating as Arthurs.US, she provides programming, planning and research services to foundations and non-profit cultural organizations in both the United States and abroad. Recent and current clients include the James Irvine, Henry Luce and Rockefeller Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, J.P.Morgan Chase, the Cisneros Foundation, the National Music Leadership Coalition, the New Media Lab of The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She was the Director for Arts and Humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation from 1982 to 1996. Until recently, she was affiliated with MEM Associates in New York City, and for a year – 1996 to 1997 – she directed a program on culture and development at the Council on Foreign Relations. She sits on the boards of the Salzburg Seminar, Yaddo, The PEN American Center, Exit Art, Aid to Artisans and National Video Resources (chair), and is recent past chairman of the Kenan Institute for the Arts and of the advisory board of Radcliffe’s Bunting Institute. She is on advisory boards currently for Princeton University, New York University and UNESCO. She has taught and held administrative posts at Tufts, Rutgers and Harvard Universities, and was the President of Chatham College from 1977 to 1982. She holds the doctorate in English literature from Bryn Mawr College Mark Avsec Mark Avsec is an associate with the Intellectual Property Group of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, LLP, specializing in entertainment and copyright law. Before his legal career, Mr. Avsec was a studio musician, producer and songwriter, writing over 300 songs and producing more than 25 sound recordings for artists such as Bon Jovi, Donnie Iris, The Grass Roots, Cellarful and others. He is an American Music Award winner and has been nominated for two Grammy Awards. Mr. Avsec is a member of The American Federation of Musicians and The American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers, The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and is currently serving his sixth term as chair of The Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts section of The Cleveland Bar Association. Mr. Avsec’s client roster includes a variety of traditional business organizations, emerging Internet companies, including digital media companies, major record labels, recording artists, producers and publishers. Mr. Avsec earned his B.A. and his J.D. from Cleveland State University. He is also an Adjunct Law Professor at Case Western University Law School where he teaches “Law of the Music Industry.” June Besek June M. Besek is the Executive Director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at Columbia Law School. Prior to joining Columbia, she was Director of Intellectual Property at Reuters America Inc., and before that, a partner at Schwab Goldberg Price & Dannay in New York City, where her work focused on copyright, trademark, and other legal issues concerning databases, software and the Internet. Ms. Besek is a member of the ABA Intellectual Property Section, where she co-chairs the Committee on Minorities and Women in the Profession, and is a former chair of the Copyright Division. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. She is a frequent speaker on copyright issues, and teaches a seminar in Electronic Publishing at Columbia. She earned her J.D. cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was elected to Order of the Coif, and her B.A. cum laude from Yale University. Deborah A. Coleman Deborah Coleman is a partner in the Cleveland office of Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP, where she is Co-Chair of the Firm’s Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group. Ms. Coleman has represented businesses and institutions in complex commercial litigation for over 25 years. She also assists clients in structuring transactions and relationships to protect rights and minimize litigation risk. As a counselor, litigator, mediator and arbitrator, Ms. Coleman has substantial experience in dealing with intellectual property and technology, and with competition and distribution law issues. A frequent writer and speaker on intellectual property, litigation, antitrust and ethics issues, Ms. Coleman has published articles on the intersection of intellectual property and antitrust law in the American Bar Association’s Computer Law Journal . Ms. Coleman is Antitrust Committee Chair of the Cleveland Intellectual Property Law Association, and a former member and chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professionalism. Ms. Coleman graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. magna cum laude in government, and earned her J.D. at Harvard Law School. She became the first woman partner of Hahn Loeser in 1984. Mark Gunderson Mark Gunderson is Cleveland-based audio artist and founder/member of The Evolution Control Committee <http://evolution-control.com/>. The ECC is best known for its copyright-challenging stance, using found sounds with or without permission to create new musical works. Over its full history the ECC label has produced 16 full-length albums, a videotape, various singles and compilation appearances, and even a wax cylinder recording. Their "Whipped Cream Mixes" single was hailed as the song that spawned the "mash-up" musical genre that swept the UK by storm last year. Their other notorious single, "Rocked By Rape", earned The ECC a threat of legal action from CBS due to unauthorized samples of newsreader Dan Rather (hear an NPR report on the case). Mark was the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship Grant in Media Artsfrom the Ohio Arts Council in 2002. Richard Kelly Richard Kelly is a Pittsburgh based photographer, whose environmental portraits of artists, actors, athletes, and captains of industry and science have been published in Fortune, Adweek and USA Weekend. His photographs have been exhibited at Nikon House, the United Nations, Sweetwater Center for the Arts and the Silver Eye Center for Photography. He is currently working on a new body of work entitled "Artists and Scientists". Richard trained at the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts and the Rochester Institute of Technology. He continued his training by working as a First Assistant and Producer for Art Kane, Kurt Markus, Steven White and David Vance. Richard opened his New York City photography studio in 1990. In 1992 he moved his practice to Pittsburgh and is the past president of the ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) Pittsburgh Chapter. Richard Kessler Richard Kessler joined the American Music Center as executive director in May 1997. He was earlier vice president of Artsvision, an independent arts consulting firm, where he created and implemented many of America's foremost arts and education programs for school communities, arts organizations, and foundations. Prior to his tenure at Artsvision, Richard Kessler performed and taught music throughout the world for nearly fifteen years. Always active in new music, Mr. Kessler commissioned and premiered works by a wide range of composers including Arvo Pärt, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, Linda Bouchard, Richard Danielpour, Elliot Goldenthal, Anthony Davis, Joseph Schwantner, Ned Rorem, and many others. Throughout this period Kessler gained experience as an artist/educator, and conducted residencies, master classes, workshops, and arts education programs for organizations such as Lincoln Center Meet-The-Artist, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, the San Francisco Conservatory, New York and New Jersey Young Audiences, and The New York Philharmonic, among others. Richard Kessler was a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music from 1988 to 1993. Maureen O'Rourke Maureen O'Rourke is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Administration at Boston University’s School of Law. She had previously worked for IBM, where she handled software licensing issues. The intersection of intellectual property law with contract law antitrust abd other fields has long been her primary interest. "New technology,” she says, “is constantly challenging the law, particularly intellectual property law. Both industry and the public have to adjust to new technology, and it's never quite clear whether the law is helping or hindering that adjustment.'" In addition to teaching courses in commercial code and intellectual property law, Professor O'Rourke helps supervise the student-run Journal of Science and Technology Law. In May 2000, she became the School's sixth recipient of the Metcalf Award, the University's highest teaching honor. Professor O'Rourke's articles have appeared in the law reviews of Columbia, Duke, Iowa, and Minnesota and the technology journals of Berkeley, Harvard, and Boston University. She co-authored the casebook Copyright in a Global Information Economy. In the summer of 2002, she taught intellectual property law at LaTrobe University in Australia. She has also visited at Columbia University School of Law, where she taught intellectual property and a seminar on the commercial law of intellectual property in the fall of 1999. Walt Seng Walt Seng knew he wanted to be an artist from the age of four. But it wasn't until he looked through the viewfinder of his used Yashica D twin-lens reflex camera during an obligatory photography class at Carnegie Mellon University, that he got the shock of knowing that it was photography that was his calling. After a stint in Europe with the Army Signal Corps, he set up a studio in Pittsburgh and then settled in Cleveland in 1990. In 1975, Walt co-founded the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Association and taught there for five years. Now he has established a successful studio with commercial clients, works on independent projects and teaches at Cuyahoga Community College. Walt Seng is currently working on a documentary on bikers, mostly focused on the Bikers of the Black Hills, South Dakota, Sturgis Motorcycle Rally <http://www.sturgismotorcyclerally.com/>. For examples of Walt Seng's work, see <http://www.sengphoto.com>.