The Collegian AIG is recommending a slate of four candidates to serve on the board of directors. Four seats with terms expiring this year will be filled in an election to be conducted between Aug. 29 and Sept. 5.
The recommended slate is Krystle Kopacz, Terrence Casey, Sheila (McCauley) Young and Leen Obeidat. Terrence, Sheila and Leen are current board members who have agreed to stand for election to second terms. Krystle would be a new board member.
Krystle Kopacz, Government Executive
Krystle is CEO of Revmade, a marketing and communications strategy company that has won more than 50 industry awards for its work, primarily across the healthcare and life sciences sectors. She founded Revmade in 2016 after more than a decade in digital media where her work focused on editorial, product and revenue transformation.
For six years prior to Revmade, Krystle led Atlantic Media’s B2B divisions, achieving record digital audience and revenue growth; prior to that she worked at a consumer healthcare startup. Krystle graduated from Penn State in 2007 and held the positions of managing editor, campus assistant editor, police reporter and Greeks reporter at the Daily Collegian. Last year, she was the featured speaker at a well-attended, AIG-sponsored Zoom roundtable for Collegian students. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and 2 daughters.
Terrence is Director of Communications and Outreach for the Penn Memory Centerand the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor of InSight news magazine and the weekly InSight newsletter. He designed and manages the Penn Memory Center website.
A journalist by training, he believes in the power of storytelling, whether in dissemination of science, research recruitment or philanthropy. Terrence was Collegian editor-in-chief from 2008 to 2009 and spent time as an editor at various local news organizations before joining Penn in 2015.
Terrence Casey
Terrence serves as chair of the AIG’s Alumni Engagement Committee, and this is his third stint serving on the Collegian AIG board. He also serves on the Philadelphia Financial Exploitation Prevention Task Force, Together For West Philadelphia’s Senior Well-Being subcommittee, the Springfield Democratic Committee, and the Delaware County Democratic Committee. He lives in Springfield, Delaware County, with his wife and three children.
Leen 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.
Leen Obeidat
Her role at flytedesk has enabled Leen 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.
Sheila was appointed to the AIG board earlier this year by Board President Robyn Radomski to fill a vacancy created by a resignation. Sheila is a dual-career executive who raised more than $41 million as a Major Gifts officer and who, as a journalist, led national news projects and pioneered digital media. The board believes her skills and experience as a fund raiser will be crucial as the Collegian AIG contemplates a major development campaign to benefit The Collegian.
A former editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian, Sheila 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.
Sheila (McCauley) Young
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.
Any Collegian alumnus who wants to stand for election to the board may advance their candidacy by sending to the Collegian AIG a statement of interest, a resume and the signatures of 20 Collegian AIG members in support of their candidacy. Self-nominations must be received at [email protected] by July 30. Candidates must be members of the Penn State Alumni Association and be willing to serve a term of three years.
The Collegian AIG board is a working group that promotes The Daily Collegian and Penn State and provides a means for alumni of The Collegian to connect for personal and professional enrichment. Right now, the AIG is working on projects intended to help The Collegian survive the university’s decision to eliminate all subsidies for the student media organization as of this school year.
