2022 Annual Conference Speakers
Michael Bradley, Bradley Law, LLC
Mike is an attorney at Bradley Law, LLC, with 29 years of experience, practicing in the area of municipal telecommunications and cable franchising. Throughout his career, Mike has advised local governments and PEG Organizations. Mike and his firm represented a large consortium of municipal clients from across the country on the FCC's Section 621 proceeding and subsequent appeal to the Sixth Circuit and United States Supreme Court. He is working with many cities on updating municipal codes addressing cable television, telecommunications, small cell wireless facilities permitting and master license agreements. Mike has received the highest attorney ratings from AVVO/Martindale Hubbell and has been recognized as a Communications Law "Super Lawyer," by Minnesota Super Lawyer magazine.
Dana Healy - Vice President, Cablecast Media
Dana has been entrenched in community media for over 23 years. She has held a series of increasingly senior roles, from her start as a meeting operator as a teenager to her most recent position as Executive Director of a multi-municipality consortium. She developed her leadership and revenue generation skills during her 10-year tenure at Danvers Community Access Television in Massachusetts. She then took the helm of CTV North Suburbs in Minnesota in 2018, re-inventing the brand and revenue generation model for what is now known as NineNorth. A respected speaker at government and community media conferences, she has previously shared insights as a guest contributor to Cablecast's PEG Experts blog.
Beth George - Executive Director - ICTV
Beth has been the executive director of Itasca Community Television for 17 years. She' gone through two rounds of franchise negotiations, the first a formal process and the most recent and informal process. With the exception of their attorney, Ms George was the only city/station official in Rapids to have gone through both negotiations with the two cable providers and four communities.
Nick Gibson - Producer, City of Garland, Texas
Nick has been with the City of Garland since 2013. He has been referred to as the Tom Bodett of Garland, because his productions are just that stupid! There's been some awards sprinkled here and there, but his true sense of accomplishment comes from the sheer look of terror when he tells his boss "I have an idea" and "just trust me." NEVER trust Nick!
Pedro Hernandez - Motion Graphic Designer, City of Garland, Texas
Pedro has been a video producer with the City of Garland since 2015. His superpower is creating motion graphic design. He has worked many jobs in the past from construction to flipping burger patties. In all the same thing holds true. For every problem there is a solution. His everyday goal is to keep becoming a better designer and storyteller.
Michelle Hutchison - President, Skillled Expressions
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Michelle moved to Minnesota at an early age and soon left her Ohio twang behind in Buckeye country. Glued to the television she studied Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball with great hopes of performing comedy someday. Instead, she launched into music playing the trumpet from the 4th grade on performing in The Cotton Bowl parade, the NFC halftime show in front of a live TV audience in Cowboy Stadium, and in The Rose Bowl parade, in Pasadena California. It was not until her senior year in high school she finally realized her dream of performing on stage when she was cast in Once Upon Mattress, ironically the show that started Carol Burnett's career. Michelle graduated from the University of Minnesota with a theatre degree and went on to perform in professional theatres in the Twin Cities, Chicago, New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Classically trained in theatre, her comedic ability led her to improvisational theatre where she flourished performing live improvisation and sketch comedy with groups such as TheatreSportz, ComedySportz and Dudley Rigg's Brave New Workshop. Michelle began her on camera career landing many television commercials and corporate industrials until eventually her skills led her to the big screen where she made her first feature film appearance in the iconic Coen Brother's film, Fargo. Her hilarious portrayal of an escort playing opposite of Steve Buscemi opened the doors to other films such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Thin Ice, Factotum, Into Temptation and many others. In Los Angeles, Michelle performed with other Minnesota natives in the original play, Cabin Pressure at the Hudson Theatre and the Tamarind Theatre and most recently the LA Weekly Award nominated show, The Bad Seed. Michelle has enjoyed a successful career as a voiceover artist for national, regional and local television commercials, radio spots and industrials. Her warm and engaging voice can be heard on a series of national Purina Dog Chow television commercials.
Daniell Krawczyk - Founder, Municipal Captioning
Daniell Krawczyk is the owner/operator of Municipal Captioning Inc. and has been coming to MACTA for about 15 years. Daniell helps cities compare all options for playback rebuild and captioning and just sold both to North Metro TV close to where we are today. Daniell has a big announcement to make at ACM later this month in Chicago, but he will give a sneak peak of it at MACTA because he wants to share it with this crowd in particular for sentimental reasons.
Jodie Miller - Executive Director, Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission and Town Square Television
Jodie Miller has been the Executive Director at Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission ("NDC4") and Town Square Television since 1993. NDC4 and Town Square Television operate the local community media station serving the seven cities of Northern Dakota County, just outside St. Paul, Minnesota. Jodie is a past NATOA Board President and past leader of NATOA's Policy & Legal and Communications Committee, and was honored to be added to the prestigious list of NATOA Life Members in 2020. She co-chairs the Legislative / Policy Committee of NATOA's Minnesota chapter MACTA, and has served as a MACTA board member and President. Miller also sits on the League of Minnesota Cities Telecomm Task Force, and has served on several non-profit boards of directors in the NDC4 service area over the past 30 years.
Danika Peterson - News Director, North Metro TV
Danika is the news director at North Metro TV in Blaine. She's worked in the station's news department since 2004. She teams up with Rusty Ray to create a weekly newscast; and during election season this dynamic duo will cover about 35 local races, and about 100 local candidates. When she's not making television, she enjoys spending time in her garden, smoking meats, and playing board games with her family.
Rusty Ray - News Producer, North Metro TV
Rusty has worked as a reporter, producer, anchor, and host for North Metro TV in Blaine since September 2018. He anchors the weekly newscast covering the seven member cities, along with public affairs and election programming. He's helped develop Local Decision programming to include one-on-one studio interviews with as many political candidates during election years as are willing to participate. Rusty is a proud graduate of the University of Maryland and worked previously at WBTW-TV, the CBS affiliate in Eastern South Carolina, for 14 years. He and his wife and two kids live in Lino Lakes.
Tom Ringdal, Director - Bloomington Educational Community Television
In February of 1982 Bloomington Public Schools purchased a Portac Character Generator, and a JVC VHS deck. They also hired Tom Ringdal to oversee this "vast empire of technology" and to try to make an Educational Access station out of it. Young and foolish, but enthusiastic and resourceful, Tom did what he had to do to start up Bloomington Educational Cable Television with virtually no budget. This included raiding the cable company's dumpster at night for scrap cable to wire things up and creating his own Homebrew Autopilot system out of 10 bucks of parts from Radio Shack. Now, No longer young, but still foolish and enthusiastic, Tom has never lost the Dumpster Diving Mentality of the early days and still revels in finding production resources costing little or nothing.
Ray Tiley - Senior Developer, Cablecast
Has been with Tightrope since 2009. Typically can be found in Maine doing some dev stuff in Ember. His hobbies include scrapbooking, collecting yearbooks and building model railroads. He also climbs rocks.
Nancy Werner - General Counsel, NATOA
Nancy Werner is General Counsel of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors. Prior to joining NATOA, Nancy was Of Counsel at the law firm of Beery, Elsner & Hammond, LLP in Portland, Oregon, where she represented local government with a focus on communications law, right of way management and utility franchises. She has represented clients in state and federal court on issues including cable franchise renewals, telecommunications law, right of way regulations and fees and home rule authority. Nancy previously was a litigator at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago and O'Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles. Nancy is a graduate of the University of Southern California Law School, where she was on the staff of the USC Law Review.
Robert Vose - Shareholder, Kennedy & Graven
Bob Vose is a partner with the Minnesota law firm of Kennedy & Graven. Bob serves as the city attorney for Victoria, Pine Island, Oak Grove, Independence, Rogers, Nicollet, Greenwood and Belle Plaine. In addition to general municipal law, Bob represents cities and cable commissions around the state regarding cable television regulation and franchising, telecommunications law, communications infrastructure development, right-of-way issues, and wireless regulation and leasing. Bob is a long-time MACTA member and has given many presentations concerning cable franchising and telecommunications matters to MACTA members.
Mike Wassenaar, President & CEO Alliance for Community Media
Mike is President & CEO of the Alliance for Community Media, the organization which supports, promotes and defends Public, Educational and Government Access television in the United States. He regularly leads seminars and lectures on community-based media organizations throughout the United States, and has made presentations before Congress, the FCC and other national and regional media organizations. Mike served thirteen years as Executive Director of Saint Paul Neighborhood Network, a community media center in Saint Paul, MN. During that time, he worked as lead partner in the Community Technology Empowerment Project, an AmeriCorps program promoting digital literacy in the Twin Cities. Mike has worked in community television and community and public radio for over thirty years in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He got his start in radio working in a youth media program as a high school student in Minneapolis. He produced news and public affairs and entertainment programs with community volunteers at KFAI Minneapolis and WORT Madison, and was a reporter and radio host with Wisconsin Public Radio.
