Biographies
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Co-founder
& Vice Chairman, Director, VP of Programming,
Medical Director and Documentary Participant & President;
Senior Internet
Advisor
Harold E. Morse, Chairman and
Chief
Executive Officer
Harold E. Morse, Ph.D., founder, former
President and CEO
of
OVATION - The Arts Network, a cable television network dedicated
exclusively to the visual and performing arts, has spent his entire
career enriching the lives of millions through his work in the arts,
education and television.
Founding The Learning Channel in 1972, Dr. Morse
expanded
the
scope of his influence by bringing educational television into 18
million households and thousands of schools. In 1989, he was a member
of a U.S. State Department team that negotiated a treaty to provide new
American programming to the former Soviet Union. In 1992, Dr. Morse
founded an arts-based television network. OVATION provides documentary
and performance programming on classical music and jazz, opera and
drama, dance, visual arts, architecture and literature. Extending into
the classroom, OVATION works to expand arts in education in the United
States.
In awarding the Doctor of Human Letters degree to Dr.
Harold
E. Morse, the State University of New York recognized "the lengthy
career accomplishments and societal contributions of a true visionary
in the arts, education and television."
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Leo Greenstone, M.D.,
Medical
Director and Documentary Participant
Over the past 10 years, Dr. Leo Greenstone has been a
leading teacher
and practitioner in the field of Integrative Medicine. Dr. Greenstone
received his medical degree from Yale University and his Internal
Medicine training at the University of California San Francisco where
he also served as Chief Medical Resident. In 1990, his interest in
education
led him back to his hometown of Chicago where he joined the faculty of
the
University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. There he practiced
and taught Internal Medicine, Medical Ethics, and Evidence-Based
Medicine, and
received numerous teaching awards for his efforts.
In 1994, Dr. Greenstone and his family moved to Ann Arbor,
Michigan
and he became an adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at
the University of Michigan and worked at its affiliate Oakwood Hospital
in Dearborn, Michigan.
Dr. Greenstone was appointed Associate Chief of Staff for
Ambulatory Care
of the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System in April 2006. Since that time,
he has
overseen the outpatient operations of the Healthcare System which
includes the VA Ann Arbor Hospital and Medical Center and its
community-based outpatient
clinics in Jackson, Michigan; Flint, Michigan; and Toledo, Ohio serving
over
22,000 veterans.
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Hank Schlenker, President
Hank Schlenker is President of RealNet Learning and
former
CFO
of The Learning Channel. He began his career as a consultant with
Deloitte Consulting, and then became part of the management group that
created and developed The Learning Channel (TLC). After the sale of TLC
to Discovery Communications, Schlenker co-founded RealNet Learning
Services, which provides professional training over a variety of
platforms, including satellite, classroom delivery and the Internet. He
has more than 35 years experience in cable television, marketing and
strategic planning.
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Jerrold Schecter, Co-founder
and Vice
Chairman
Jerrold L. Schecter is a policy expert on Asia,
Russia, and
the Middle East, based on his prize winning career as a historian,
journalist, government official and corporate officer. Through his
extensive firsthand experience in Russia, Japan, Korea, China and
Southeast Asia he has developed a comprehensive network of high level
business, media, think tank and government officials in Washington and
New York.
After serving as a U.S. Naval officer in Korea and
Japan,
Schecter began his journalism career with the Wall Street Journal and
then spent eighteen years with Time Magazine. He was a foreign
correspondent covering Indo-China, Taiwan and China based in Hong Kong
(1960-1963). After a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard he was bureau chief
in Tokyo (1964-1968) and Moscow (1968-1970 where he was instrumental in
the acquisition of Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs. He was Time’s White
Housecorrespondent (1971-1973) and diplomatic editor (1973-1977).
He served on President Jimmy Carter’s White House
staff as
associate White House press secretary and Spokesman for the National
Security Council (1977-1980), headed by Zbigniew Brzezinski. From 1980
to 1982 he was vice president for public affairs of Occidental
Petroleum Corporation. He founded Schecter Communications Corporation
in 1982 . From 1994 to 2006 Schecter was Senior International
Consultant for Cassidy & Associates, the Washington, DC public
affairs company.
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Steven Schecter, Director, VP
of
Programming
Steven Schecter, President of Schecter Films, Inc.
is an
award winning independent producer and director, cinematographer,
editor, and writer. He began his career in film and video as an
apprentice and production manager at Guggenheim Productions in
Washington, D. C. Following an undergraduate degree at Harvard and
three years of full-time Smithsonian work, which led him to shoot over
150 hours of 16mm film in Brazil, Micronesia, India, and Nepal,
Schecter started his own company as an independent producer in 1983.
Nationally broadcast documentaries and features
which he
produced, photographed, or edited include:
» 1999 - Mending Ways. The Canela Indians of
Brazil.
Broadcast by the Discovery Channel as Intimate Truths of the Canela
Tribe. In the fall of 1997, 22 years after his first trip to Brazil,
Schecter returned to shoot new material on the Canela Indians. A
co-production of Schecter Films and the Smithsonian Institution, which
premiered domestically on the Discovery Channel and internationally on
National Geographic Channels in the fall of 1999. Credits: Producer,
Director, Camera, Editor, and Co-writer.
» 1998 - Windhorse. Schecter worked in Nepal
and
Tibet as Director of Photography on Paul Wagner's dramatic feature
about contemporary life in Chinese-occupied Tibet. The digitally-shot
drama received the Best U.S. Independent Feature award at the 1998
Santa Barbara International Film Festival among other festival awards,
and began its theatrical release in February, 1999.
» 1996 - With God On Our Side. Director of
Photography for Lumiere Productions. A six part historical series on
the involvement of the religious right in American politics. PBS.
» 1995 - MIR-18: Destination Space. National
Geographic Explorer's documentary about the first American astronaut to
blast off from earth on a Russian rocket. Credits: Field Producer,
Additional Camera, and Translator. TBS.
» 1994 - A Forgotten People. The Sakhalin
Koreans.
Director of Photography on Dai Sil Kim-Gibson's award-winning
documentary about the Koreans abandoned on the island of Sakhalin, in
the Soviet Far East. PBS.
» 1990 - The Party Is Over. A Schecter Films
production on the impending death of the Communist Party in the USSR.
Credits: Producer, Director, Camera, Editor. Broadcast nationally on
the PBS show The Nineties.
» Schecter was also director, cameraman,
editor and
writer of My Russian Friends, a one hour special on the search for
spiritual roots by ordinary Russians, a co-production with WGBH Boston.
Schecter's work in the nineties includes Preserving Our Global
Environment, a one hour program for educational distribution completed
for the World Resources Institute, hosted by Jessica Mathews and David
Gergen.
Schecter's latest work is a feature documentary: an
unconventional look at leadership through great works of literature for
the Stanford Graduate School of Business with Professor emeritus James
G. March. The program is called: Passion and Discipline: Don Quixote's
Lessons for Leadership
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Tom Des Jardins, Senior
Internet
Advisor
Tom Des Jardines is a specialist in online media,
having
founded, built and sold Lightningcast, the leading video ad company, to
AOL in 2006. With decades in internet and streaming experience he is
now advising Health and Healing Network, IPTV, video search and video
ad companies on technology, revenue generation and distribution
strategies.
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Harold E. Morse