Board of Directors

2024-2025 Board of Directors

President: Robyn Radomski, ’75

Principal of RLR Advisory Group
TERM ENDS 2026

Robyn is a strategy, marketing and brand positioning executive who has served as Chief Marketing Officer of some of the world’s largest professional services organizations and as Senior Vice President of Edelman Worldwide and Bozell.  She has been widely recognized as a marketing leader by media and business organizations including the American Marketing Association, Legal Marketing Association, Marketing Partner Forum and International Association of Business Communicators. She is retired from her CMO duties and runs her own consulting firm, RLR Advisory Group.  Robyn holds an MBA from DePaul University in Chicago along with her PSU BA in Journalism. She lives in Lake Forest, Illinois and San Diego.

 

Vice President: Jerry Schwartz, ’77

Journalist, Author
TERM ENDS 2025

Jerry Schwartz spent the entirety of this 45-year career at The Associated Press in New York, starting as a reporter on the city desk. He went on to serve as national special projects editor, national writer, editor of AP Newsfeatures, deputy top stories editor and senior editor at large. He was a long-time member of the team that edited the AP Stylebook, contributed to the book “Breaking News: How The Associated Press has Covered War, Peace and Everything Else,” and is the author of “The AP Reporting Handbook.” A 1977 graduate of Penn State with degrees in journalism and history, he was editor of The Daily Collegian in 1975-76. This is his second stint on the Collegian AIG board; he also has served on the College of Communications Alumni Board.

 

 

Secretary: Barbara White Stack, ’75

Consultant, The Pittsburgh Foundation Communications Department
TERM ENDS 2025

Barbara White Stack is a consultant providing project management to The Pittsburgh Foundation for its annual report as well as editorial consulting and writing for nonprofit organizations. She is the retired blog editor for the United Steelworkers union, having written and published long form editorials in the name of the international president, published in forums such as Huffington Post and AlterNet. Earlier, she worked for 27 years as an investigative reporter, editor and editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She covered children and family issues for a decade, and her work led to the opening of juvenile court dependency hearings to the press and public in Pennsylvania. Her work was recognized with local, state and national journalism awards. She is a 1975 graduate of Penn State’s journalism school. On The Daily Collegian in the mid-1970s, she covered the police beat, a beat called “radicals and minorities” and served as Editorial Page Editor.

 

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 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.

 

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 couple 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.

 

R.J. Hufnagel, ’94

Editor, USW@Work
TERM ENDS 2025

R.J. Hufnagel is the editor of USW@Work, the United Steelworkers union’s quarterly magazine with a circulation of 800,000. A native of Pittsburgh, he graduated from Penn State in 1994 with a degree in journalism. He spent four years on the news staff of the Daily Collegian, serving as a reporter, news editor, campus editor and opinion editor. R.J. spent 14 years as an editor and occasional writer with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and served three terms as president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. He has served on the board of directors of Pittsburgh Cares and is a long-time volunteer helping organize the annual Pittsburgh fundraising event called Off The Record. Before the USW, Hufnagel worked as a communication specialist for SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania.

 

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 2025

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.

 

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.

 

Sheila (McCauley) Young  ’77

Newsroom Executive; Fundraiser
TERM ENDS 2027

Sheila is a dual-career executive who raised more than $41 million as a Major Gifts officer and as a journalist led national news projects and pioneered digital media. A former editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian, she earned a bachelor’s in Journalism at Penn State and an MBA and membership in the Phi Kappa Phi honors society from the University of Maryland Global Campus. In her first career, Sheila served for 25 years at The Baltimore Sun as a newsroom executive, Deputy Bureau Chief in Washington, Assistant National Editor, assignment editor, and writer. She was also a pioneer in developing in-house desktop publishing for widespread distribution and was one of the first online news editors in the country, creating some of the first searchable databases and interactive programs to engage readers. In her second career, as a fundraiser, Sheila was a Major Gifts officer for higher ed at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at University of Maryland, where she was an Assistant Dean, and at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where she found private support for ground-breaking research and clinical treatment. She was also Vice President for Development and Media Relations at the East Baltimore Development Corp., Inc., an innovative urban redevelopment project that emphasized community involvement in all aspects of the planning.

 

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: Amy Schafer

Business Manager: Zachary O’Brien

General Manager: Brent Addleman