Fund Advisory Board

Nora Ferrell

Vice President of Communications
Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust

  • Committed to public policy issues ranging from health care to water quality to homelessness, Nora Ferrell has spent years helping nonprofits and foundations tell their stories. As the director of communications at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, her work includes creating public relations strategies to share the work of the Trust and its grantees, building relationships with the media, overseeing the Trust’s online presence, and working hard to make the world of philanthropy understandable to the average person. 

    Prior to joining the Trust, Nora served as the vice president of the Community Media Workshop, a Chicago-area nonprofit; the communications director and editor at Minnesota 2020, a public policy think tank; and a senior account executive for Valerie Denney Communications (VDC), a public interest public relations firm in Chicago. During her time at VDC, Nora earned the Edwin J. Shaughnessy’s Quality of Life award from the Publicity Club of Chicago for her media work around police torture in Chicago.

Sorien Schmidt

Direct of Strategy and Learning,
Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation

  • Sorien Schmidt has a broad range of experience in the nonprofit sector, from legal representation to data analysis to coalition building on topics ranging from economic security to juvenile justice to health insurance coverage. Schmidt currently manages Z. Smith Reynolds’ State-Level Systemic Change grantmaking strategy and within that manages the democracy portfolio.  From 2013-2017, Schmidt served as the North Carolina State Director of Enroll America where her team informed North Carolinians about the Affordable Care Act health insurance coverage. Prior to Enroll America, Sorien worked with Prevent Child Abuse, was Senior Vice President for Action for Children North Carolina and was chair of the Covenant with North Carolina’s Children. Sorien began her career with Legal Services of North Carolina practicing public benefits law and then worked 13 years at the North Carolina Justice Center as both Legislative Director and a Public Interest Attorney. Sorien received her undergraduate and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lillian Ruiz

Founder, CI-X Strategies

Teresa Gorman

Associate Director, Public Square,
Democracy Fund

  • Teresa Gorman is an Associate Director at Democracy Fund, an independent foundation working to ensure that our political system is able to withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. The Public Square Program works to ensure all people have access to the news and information they need to engage in civic life, and use their voices without fear of being harassed, silenced, or ignored. This includes the foundation’s efforts to support trustworthy local news and investigative reporting, more equitable newsrooms, press freedom, community engagement, and digital spaces that advance democracy, not hate.

    Gorman runs the Public Square’s press freedom and local ecosystem news funding portfolios, including support of local news ecosystems in North Carolina, New Jersey, Chicago, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Before joining Democracy Fund in 2016, she spent her career working at the intersection of local-national collaboration, public media, and innovative digital transformation at the Association of Independents in Radio, NPR, and PBS NewsHour.

Grant Selection Committee

  • Aidil Ortiz

    Principal at Aidilisms

  • Kyle Brazile

    Director of Civic Engagement,
    NC Counts Coalition

  • Letrell Deshan Crittenden

    Director, Center for Community Engaged Media at Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication

  • Manolia Charlotin

    Board Co-Chair,
    YES! Magazine

  • Volha Kananovich

    Assistant Professor of Digital Journalism,
    Appalachian State University

Get Involved

The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund is always looking for people to support and inform our transformative work. We deeply believe that the Fund will have a more profound, long-lasting impact on North Carolina if our strategy is guided by the lived expertise and experience of community members—people who are at the heart of our vision.

Contact us to share what resonates with you about our mission and learn more about how to get involved in the Fund.

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