Speaker Bios

Moderator:
Jack Meyers
Assistant to the Provost, Yale University

Jack Meyers has had twenty years of experience in private and public foundations. He was deputy director of the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles and director of education policy for the J. Paul Getty Trust. Before going to the Getty, he was an assistant director at the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, DC. Most recently, he was a senior fellow at the Center for Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He has taught at Wayne State University and George Washington University and is currently assistant to the provost at Yale. PhD University of Chicago, 1980

Elena Park
Assistant Manager Editorial & Creative Content, Metropolitan Opera
Elena Park oversees all editorial, marketing, education, press and public relations efforts at the Met. She serves as a Supervising Producer for the Met's new, critically-acclaimed “Live in High Definition” series of transmissions to movie theaters around the world, which are also seen on PBS, and as an Executive Producer for the Met’s international radio broadcasts. She was previously Executive Producer for Music & Culture for WNYC Radio, where she created award-winning national specials, and Editor-in-Chief for Andante, a classical music website and record label; Elena has directed PR efforts for the Brooklyn Academy of Music and San Francisco Opera.

Gigi Sohn
President, Public Knowledge
Gigi B. Sohn is President and Co-Founder of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization that addresses the public's stake in the convergence of communications policy and intellectual property law.

Gigi serves as PK’s chief strategist, fundraiser and public face. She is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as well as in trade and local press. Gigi has been published in the Washington Post, Variety, CNET and Legal Times. In addition, she has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the Today Show, Good Morning America, The McNeil-Lehrer Report, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

Gigi is a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law, Graduate Studies Program in Australia. She has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.

Gigi served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens’ rights before the FCC and the courts. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Gigi to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Gigi its Internet “Pioneer” Award in 2006.

Gigi currently serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters’ Child Development Center (BCDC). She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition. Gigi served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors from 1997-2000.

Gigi holds a B.S. in Broadcasting and Film, Summa Cum Laude, from the Boston University College of Communication and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Since 1984 Ms. Walker-Kuhne has been President of Walker International Communications Group. She conducts seminars and workshops while providing marketing consultation services to arts organizations, performing and visual artists, dance companies, Broadway and off Broadway productions, and non-profit groups. Among her clients are major multicultural performing arts organizations including, The Romare Bearden Foundation, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Three Mo’ Tenors, Columbia University Arts Initiative, The Montclair Art Museum, the Broadway production of THURGOOD starring Laurence Fishburne, August Wilson’s Radio Golf, Carribbean Cultural Center, The Apollo Theater, The Sphinx Organization, Sony/BMG Music, WNYC Radio, the Arts and Business Council, and Dance USA. She was recently an Associate Producer for the critically acclaimed production of George C. Wolfe’s Harlem Song at the world-famous Apollo Theater. She was honored in 1998 as the first American... (Click here for the full bio)

Moderator:
Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, Esq.
Director of Education and Staff Attorney, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts

Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento is an artist and writer interested in cultural production stemming from the relationship between art and law, specifically conceptual and new genre practices as they relate to intellectual property, property law, and the First Amendment.

His work has been shown in national and international exhibitions, including Mexico, Germany, Spain, Dallas, New York City, and Los Angeles, and has published essays and projects in Five Continents and One City Exhibition (catalogue essay, Mexico), Capital Art: On the Culture of Punishment (catalogue essay, US), Cabinet Magazine (US), Law Text Culture (Australia), Afterall (US/UK), and Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left (US).

Sarmiento has previously taught at Harvard University, the University of Southern California, California Institute of the Arts, and the University of California at Irvine, and has participated in lectures and workshops at Parsons The New School for Design, The Creative Capital Foundation, The Vera List Center for Arts and Politics at The New School, Columbia Law School, The School of Visual Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The School of Visual Arts, Cornell Law School, and the Centre Sociologie de l'Innovation, Ecole des Mines de Paris.

Sarmiento received his BA in Art from the University of Texas-El Paso in 1995, and was awarded a Philip Morris Fellowship to attend the California Institute of the Arts, where he received his MFA in Art in 1997. He was a Van Lier Fellow at the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program in Studio Art the following year, and in 2000 was awarded a studio residency at the World Trade Center by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He received his J.D. from Cornell Law School in 2006. He is currently Director of Education and Staff Attorney with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in New York City.

Robin Batteau, singer-songwriter-soloist (violin) and music producer
6 months out of college (Harvard, biochemistry), Grammy-winning, Emmy-winning, Clio-winning, Gold Record-winning, and Oscar-nominated singer-songwriter-soloist (violin) and music producer Robin Batteau was signed to his first record deal, with Columbia Records (now called Sony). A dozen CD’s later, he’s played everywhere from the street corners of Paris to Carnegie Hall, played his personal style of improvisational violin with everyone from YoYo Ma to Benny Goodman to Bruce Springsteen, had his songs performed by everyone from Whitney Houston to Judy Collins to Bette Midler, created songs for charities and causes from Save the Whales to Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign to Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for kids with such things as cancer and sickle-cell and AIDS and thalassemia.

He’s heard nice words from the Boston Globe (“Acoustic heaven…“), Time Magazine, People Magazine, the New York Times, Washington Post, Entertainment Tonight, Mary Hart, Oprah Winfrey, Bonnie Raitt (“Here comes the Love God…“), and helped advertising campaigns win nearly 1,000 awards with jingles like “I’m Lovin’ It” for McDonald’s, “This is Beer” for Budweiser, and “The Heartbeat of America” for Chevrolet.

Robin was once hired by a record company to secretly program a computer to write hit songs; it can’t actually be done (yet), but today he’s ready to reveal a couple of interesting, counterintuitive secrets he’s discovered-- before they have him killed.

Jennifer Kiger
Associate Artistic Director
Yale Repertory Theatre

Jennifer Kiger joined the Yale Repertory Theatre staff in 2005 as Associate Artistic Director and director of the theatre’s commissioning and new play development programs.
Ms. Kiger came to Yale Rep from South Coast Repertory, where she was Literary Manager from 2000-2005 and served as Co-Director of the Pacific Playwrights Festival. She was dramaturg on over 40 new plays at SCR, including the world premieres of Rolin Jones’ The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, Amy Freed’s The Beard of Avon, and the west coast premieres of Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House and Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics. Prior to that, she served as production dramaturg at American Repertory Theatre, collaborating with directors Robert Brustein, Robert Woodruff, Liz Diamond, and Kate Whoriskey, as well as with multi-media director Bob McGrath on stage adaptations of Robert Coover’s Charlie in the House of Rue and Mac Wellman’s Hypatia. She has dramaturged for the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis and Boston Theatre Works, served as a panelist for the California Arts Council, and is a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.
Ms. Kiger completed her professional training in Dramaturgy at the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University, where she taught courses in acting and dramatic arts.

Jurgen Weiss
Executive Director
Snappy Dance Theater

Jurgen Weiss was born in Stuttgart (Germany) and lived in Germany and France before coming to the United States in 1991. He has worked as an advertising executive for McCann Erickson in Paris, France, as a management consultant for Booz Allen & Hamilton (Dusseldorf, New York) and as an economic consultant and expert witness for The Brattle Group (Cambridge) and LECG LLC., prior to starting Watermark Economics LLC, an economic advisory firm. He is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Reutlingen, where he teaches business strategy at the graduate level. Jurgen joined Snappy Dance Theater's board in 1998 and became its executive director in 1999. He holds a B.A. in European Business Administration from EPBS (European Partnership of Business Schools Reutlingen/D and Reims/F), an MBA from Columbia Business School (Beta Gamma Sigma), and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard Business School/Harvard University.

Jeffrey Cunard
Partner
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP

Jeffrey Cunard, managing partner of the Washington, D.C. office, practices in the areas of information technology, intellectual property and communications law, including copyright litigation, joint ventures, privatizations, regulatory advice and e-commerce transactions, and US and international media and telecommunications law and he is an internationally recognized practitioner in the field of the Internet and cyberlaw.

Mr. Cunard is the author, and a contributor, to books and articles on communications and intellectual property law, and speaks widely on both subjects. He is the co-author of Copyright Law: A Practitioner’s Guide (2001-2007), published by Practising Law Institute. He also is the co-author of the “Obscenity and Indecency,” “Copyright” and “Trademark and Unfair Competition Issues” chapters in Internet and Online Law (K. Stuckey, ed.) (Law Journal Seminars-Press 1999-2007) and annually co-authors a comprehensive summary of legal developments involving the Internet for the Practising Law Institute’s Communications Law program. He is a major contributor to The Future of Software (1995), published by MIT Press, is a co-author of two books on international communications law, From Telecommunications to Electronic Services (1986) and The Telecom Mosaic (1988), both published by Butterworths, and is on the Board of Editors of e-commerce Law & Strategy. He teaches a seminar at Harvard Law School, “Practical Lawyering: Internet-Related Issues,” and is co-director of the Clinical Program at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the law school.

Mr. Cunard is an active participant in community activities and the arts. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; serves as Secretary of and is on the Board of Directors of Friends of Khmer Culture; and is Counsel to the College Art Association. He is a past President of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and a past director of both Rhizome.org and the Choral Arts Society of Washington.

Mr. Cunard graduated summa cum laude in English and Political Science from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1977 and received a J.D. in 1980 from the Yale Law School, where he was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal. After graduation from law school, he served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Wm. Matthew Byrne, US District Court for the Central District of California.