Board of Directors

Leen Obeidat is Director of Business Development at flytedesk, a technology firm that bridges the gap between national advertisers and college media. She spends most of her time working with hundreds of college media organizations across the nation to help them launch new products, optimize their operations and drive revenue. Her role at flytedesk has enabled her to continue working with The Daily Collegian’s team even after she left the organization in 2018. Prior to flytedesk, Leen worked at The Daily Collegian within the sales department and then took over as the business manager in 2017. During her time at Penn State, she double-majored in Finance and Telecommunications, which allowed her to see both sides of the news industry. She’s a college media nerd at heart and spends a lot of her time thinking about ways to continue moving student-run media groups forward.

 

Secretary: Glenda Gephart, ’76
Community journalist, nonprofit boards
TERM ENDS 2027

Glenda Gephart credits her experience at The Daily Collegian and supportive Collegian co-workers for laying the foundation of a career in journalism and public relations that continues today. At the Collegian, she was a reporter on a few different beats and news editor. That real-world experience, coupled with a degree in journalism and a job opening heads-up received through the Collegian network, led to 35 years with the Elmira (NY) Star-Gazette as a reporter, editor and freelancer. Glenda’s commitment to community journalism also included seven years as editor-in-chief of the Watkins Review & Express weekly newspaper in Watkins Glen, NY. Turns in her career path have given her fascinating and exciting years with the International Motor Racing Research Center in Watkins Glen, the Schuyler County Historical Society and with many other diverse nonprofit organizations. She has served as a volunteer on executive boards, advisory committees and event-planning teams. Glenda lives in the rural outskirts of Watkins Glen with her husband, Bill Phoenix.

 

Jake Aferiat , ’21
Sports Writer, NJ.com/The Star-Ledger
TERM ENDS 2026

A lifelong Bergen County, New Jersey resident, Jake Aferiat is in his third year on the high school sports staff for NJ.com/The Star-Ledger, one of the nation’s preeminent high school sports departments. A 2021 graduate of Penn State, Jake spent all four years at The Daily Collegian, where he did three stints as a sports editor, as well as served as opinions editor and features editor and covered Penn State’s national championship winning wrestling team for all four years. Upon graduation, Jake interned at The Sporting News from August 2021 to February 2022, before finally landing at NJ.com full-time in September. At NJ.com, Jake covers hundreds of teams and thousands of soccer, wrestling, softball athletes, plus the state’s governing body for high school sports, the NJSIAA. A 2024 New Jersey Press Association first-place award winner for Scholastic Sports Portfolio, Jake strives to tell the stories of the athletes and coaches around the Garden State with integrity and passion and tries to make his journalism about the people behind the sport rather than the sport itself.

 

Nichole Dobo, ’04
Senior Editor, The Hechinger Report
TERM ENDS 2026

Nichole Dobo is an experienced nonprofit newsroom leader and national news reporter. She works at The Hechinger Report, a pioneering national nonprofit news outlet. She manages the product, audience growth and innovation work, facilitating cooperation across departments to meet editorial and revenue goals. In 2021, she was awarded a Knight-Wallace Fellowship from the University of Michigan to study rural affairs, polarization and trust in the media. Her reporting has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, High Country News, Newsweek, The Atlantic and Slate. She worked at local newspapers earlier in her career, earning a variety of awards. She was a reporter and campus chief at The Daily Collegian. She lives in Rose Valley, Pa. with her husband, Wade Malcolm, who is also a Penn State and Daily Collegian alumni.

 

Krystle Kopacz, ’07
CEO, Revmade
TERM ENDS 2027

Krystle Kopacz, managing editor of The Daily Collegian in 2006-07, has a solid track record of building brands and designing and executing strategic and operational pivots. After spending more than a decade working in editorial and advertising at digital media companies, Krystle started Revmade in 2016 to help companies improve content marketing performance and build better audience relationships. Earlier in  her career, at Atlantic Media, she served as CEO, National Journal Group, General Manager, Government Executive Digital; Director, Digital Strategy and Operations; Digital Product Manager, and Audience Development Manager.

 

Chris Korman, ’04
Sports Editor, The Baltimore Banner
TERM ENDS 2028

Chris Korman is sports editor of The Baltimore Banner, an ambitious nonprofit startup seeking to develop a workable model for local news. He has extensive experience in the news industry, ranging from small-town papers to national publications. He was a senior editor and columnist at For The Win, a sports and culture site for USA Today, and reported and edited at The Baltimore Sun. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Village Voice. Chris spent most of his time at Penn State in the Collegian’s offices, working on the sports desk. But he majored in English, and later earned a masters, with honors, from The Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He lives north of Baltimore with his wife and three children.

 

Chris Krewson, ’98
Publishing, news executive
TERM ENDS 2028

Chris Krewson has been the executive director of the national nonprofit Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers since 2019, helping digital publishers work toward sustainability. Previously, he was an executive at the local news company Spirited Media, and the founding editor of Philadelphia’s Billy Penn and at Pittsburgh’s The Incline. Prior to that, he was in executive digital editorial roles at Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also worked in a variety of roles at The (Allentown) Morning Call, and started his professional career as a reporter at the Centre Daily Times, after interning on the features desk immediately after graduation. He was an arts writer for the Collegian from 1996-1998, graduating in 1998 with a degree in journalism.

 

Jim Kuhnhenn, ’76
Writer, editor, researcher, consultant
TERM ENDS 2028

Jim Kuhnhenn is a writer, editor, researcher and consultant with a long career as a Washington journalist. He was bureau chief for the Kansas City Star before becoming congressional correspondent and political editor at Knight Ridder Newspapers. He joined The Associated Press in 2006 as a national political writer; in 2010 he was assigned to the White House to cover the Obama presidency. He retired from daily journalism in 2016. He is past president of the Washington Press Club Foundation and a former member of the congressional Standing Committee of Correspondents. He has appeared on MSNBC, NPR and C-SPAN. In 2019-2020, Jim served as the Press Freedom Fellow at the National Press Club Journalism Institute. Born in Chile, Jim speaks Spanish fluently. A 1976 Penn State graduate, he was Collegian news editor.

 

Diane Davis Otter, ’90
VP of editorial, A+E Global Media
TERM ENDS 2028

Diane Davis Otter is vice president of editorial at A+E Global Media, overseeing content and production on the websites and connected television apps of History, A&E and Lifetime. She spent the first half of her career working in newspapers including the (Lancaster, Pa.) Intelligencer Journal, now known as LNP; the (Elmira, N.Y.) Star-Gazette; and Newsday, where she served as metropolitan editor in charge of New York City news. She became the first lifestyles editor for the Associated Press and then moved into digital-focused jobs, including editor-in-chief for NBC’s owned television stations’ digital platforms. She was editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian 1989-1990, where she also served as managing editor and the first sports administration reporter. She graduated in 1990. She lives in Westchester, N.Y., where she has worked on local school board committees to foster community engagement and develop AI academic policy.

 

Megan Swift, ’23
Trending News Reporter, TribLive
TERM ENDS 2026

Megan Swift is a trending news reporter for TribLive (the Tribune-Review) covering current events, important issues and breaking news in the greater Pittsburgh region. She graduated from Penn State Schreyer Honors College in 2023 with a B.A. in print/digital journalism and a minor in creative writing. With a dream of becoming a novelist, Megan is pursuing her graduate degree in creative writing through Harvard Extension School. At The Daily Collegian, Megan served as the 2022-23 editor-in-chief, as a news editor for more than two years and as a politics reporter during the 2020 election. While in college, she was also a Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications Fellow, news anchor for Centre County Report and Schreyer Honors College Orientation mentor. Megan was involved in Relay for Life benefiting the American Cancer Society, the News Literacy Ambassador Institute in partnership with PEN America, the Singing Lions, Penn State’s Student Leaders Roundtable, the Bellisario Student Leadership Cabinet and Kappa Tau Alpha honor society as well. She served as a 2023-24 Penn State Young Alumni Ambassador after graduation. Megan is thrilled to serve on the AIG board. She intends to advocate for the Collegian’s members and its legacy by providing a recent graduate perspective in decision-making.

 

Immediate Past President: Jordan Hyman, ’99
SVP, SVP Sales, Navito

Jordan Hyman is SVP Sales, at Nativo, the world’s leading native advertising and storytelling platform. Previously, he was SVP, head of sales and marketing for Magnet Media, a boutique strategy and content production shop based in New York City. He is a 22-year veteran of the advertising and marketing industry, having built and run multimillion-dollar branded content divisions at NBC Universal, Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Time Inc (Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money). A 1999 Penn State grad (journalism), Jordan is President Emeritus of the Collegian AIG Board and resides in Mountainside, NJ, with his wife Jeannine (Penn State Class of 1999) and three children.

 

The Daily Collegian

Editor-in-Chief: Mercedes Hamilton 

Business Manager: Amy Schafer

General Manager: Brent Addleman