BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Lehigh Valley Public Media announced appointments to its PBS39 Community Advisory Board and a new chairman.
The Rev. James Greenfield, president of DeSales University, will lead the advisory panel. Also joining as new members are Steve Thompson and Mike Grabarits.
Lehigh Valley Public Media is a community-owned public media organization serving eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. Besides PBS39, it includes 91.3 WLVR Radio and LehighValleyNews.com
Greenfield became president of DeSales University in 2018 and is an alumnus. He previously was provincial of the Wilmington-Philadelphia Province of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales for 10 years.
Prior to that, Greenfield was an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University, The Catholic University of America, and the former Washington Theological Union, all in Washington, D.C., where he taught courses in human development.
Thompson is vice president of finance at Delane Consulting and Talent Management, which focuses on consulting and staffing for leaner business processes.
He has a communications background in the manufacturing and services sectors with AT&T, Lucent Technologies, and Verizon Communications. He is a former LVPM board member.
Grabarits was chief executive officer of ExecuTrain of Pennsylvania, a computer technology company, and also is founder and retired chairman of The Institute For Literacy and Learning, an international literacy research think tank promoting evidence-based research to practice in every classroom.
He also headed Step By Step Learning, a professional development company that trained teachers on how the brain learns to read, to be more effective in closing academic gaps when teaching reading, writing, spelling and comprehension.
Advisory board's purpose
The advisory board is a public media requirement from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
It is advisory, functions independently of the management of the station and exercises no control over station operations.
It was established by WLVT PBS39 to advise with respect to whether programming and other policies are meeting the specialized educational and cultural needs of the communities the station serves.
It provides station staff and management with suggestions for programming and other outreach activities that use a variety of media and venues to increase the positive impact of PBS39.
