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Meet Our Leaders!

GALECA is powered by our board of directors, advisory and appointed board members, liaison leads—and of course, our amazing members. Meet the team below and get to know some of the people behind the work.

Board of Directors

Walt Hickey

President

A data and culture writer from New York. He is the author of the 2023 book You Are What You Watch, the executive editor of Sherwood News, and the writer and publisher of the newsletters Numlock News and Numlock Awards. He won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. Walter has also been forecasting the Oscars since he was on the culture desk at FiveThirtyEight,

Gerrick Kennedy

Vice-President & TV Industry Liason
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Gerrick Kennedy, founder of creative publishing house Nineteen Ninety Eight, is a journalist, essayist, cultural critic, writer, editor and editorial consultant based in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, GQ, The Hollywood Reporter, Wall Street Journal Magazine, Men’s Health, Variety, NPR Music, Billboard, Spin, i-D, Playboy, Teen Vogue, Shondaland, Cultured Magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

Diane Anderson-Minshall

Executive Director

Executive Director Diane Anderson-Minshall was the first female CEO and Editorial Director at Pride Media. She’s published 5 books, appeared in The New York Times, Larry King, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, Us Weekly, EW, and has been an editor at The Advocate, OUT, Out Traveler, Plus, Pride.com, Chill, Curve, QSF, and Passport and co-founder of Girlfriends and Alice magazines. Diane is also executive producer of By The Roots.

Photo Cred: Jen Rosenstein

Reuben Baron

Treasurer

Reuben Baron is a freelance film critic published in a variety of outlets including Looper, Anime News Network, Paste magazine, and Hey Alma. They are also a member of the neurodiverse theatre company EPIC Players and the author of the webcomic Con Job: Revenge of the SamurAlchemist on Tapas.

Triston Brewer

Diversity Director
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Triston is a journalist, creative director, and activist based in Europe. He has been featured in The Huffington Post, New York Times, Vogue Italia, Washington Post, Hürriyet (Turkey’s largest daily newspaper) other digital and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally.

Jorgie Rodriguez

Membership Director

A Los Angeles-based film critic and host whose work explores the intersection of fandom and representation. Language studies in Russian and Japanese at UC Irvine inform their perspective on art and its power to connect audiences across cultures and languages, a power they've experienced firsthand through interviews with filmmakers from around the world.

Grace Han

Secretary

A Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Stanford University, Grace Han writes about digital animation and AI aesthetics.  She’s published and edited popular film writing on Asian diaspora cinema as a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, and has worked to diversify film criticism with Sundance and TIFF. She currently serves on the board for Society for Animation Studies and organizes the Digital Aesthetics Research Workshop at the Stanford Humanities Center.

Shelli Nicole

Outreach Director & Social Lead
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A Detroit-born culture writer, editor and award-winning creative strategist, Shelli Nicole’s work blends personal narrative and critique of film and television which has appeared in Vogue, Architectural Digest, Thrillist, and others. She writes the weekly newsletter The Cinehunni Diaries, has appeared on podcasts including The Bechdel Cast, and lives in Chicago, where she’s currently watching SWARM on repeat.

Tina Kakadelis

Film and TV Industry Assistant Liason

A film critic and pop culture writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When not publishing through her own outlet, Beyond the Cinerama Dome, Tina Kakadelis’ writing has been featured on Girls on Tops, Film Daze, Film Obsessive, and more. If Tina's not in a movie theater, you can probably find her on the tennis court.

Jim Farmer

Director of Talent Engagement

Jim Farmer is an award-winning journalist based out of Atlanta, where he is an editor at large for ArtsATL and contributor to publications throughout the area, including Georgia Voice. Jim also coordinates Out On Film, Atlanta's LGBTQ film festival. 

Tim Baros

U.K. Liaison
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Tim Baros is Entertainment Editor for FAB UK Magazine and also writes reviews/articles for American in Britain Magazine and Foreverwithpride.com, and covers film festivals in and around Europe. He has also written for Pride Life and The American magazines and websites, as well as for Hereisthecity.com and Blu-RayDefinition.com, and has contributed to In Touch and TNT Magazines, SquareMile.com and LatinoLife.co.uk. 

Frank J. Avella

Film and Stage Industries Liaison

FRANK J. AVELLA is a proud senior staff writer for The Contending. In addition to GALECA, he is also a member of NYFCO and NJFCC as well as an award-winning playwright (Vatican Falls, Lured) and screenwriter (Consent, Fig Jam). Frank is currently working on an epic play about the queer Italian-American experience, FROCI/FINOCCHIO. 

Advisory Board