Ms.
Byfield is an educator, whose professional training is in journalism.
She is the executive director of the Black Media Foundation, a nonprofit
organization whose mission is to provide communication arts and
media training to young, disadvantaged people. Her work includes
guiding the development of this relatively young group administratively
as well as programmatically. She has designed programs specifically
to teach journalism and newspaper production to young people.
Ms. Byfield also is the former director of the Journalism and Liberal
Arts program at City University of New York, Queens College. In
this position, she oversaw and planned for the future of this honors
program that places students in some of the city's major media institutions.
Her work also included teaching some of the core courses in the
JALA program, designing new courses and overseeing other staff and
adjunct faculty.
She has directed the Queens College Summer Journalism Workshop for
minority high school students. This is an intensive three-week program
for a select group of students. The program operates as a laboratory
newspaper that produces one paper by the end of the session.
Ms. Byfield also has been a working journalist in the New York City
market for over 12 years. She spend six years at the New York Daily
News. Her career at the News took a rapidly ascendant trajectory.
She spent a short time as a general assignment reporter then moved
on to cover some of the paper's most coveted beats. She worked at
Police Headquarters and covered then-Governor Mario Cuomo and the
state legislature in Albany. She also covered Queens public school
schools and the bureaucracy of the central Board of Education.
Some of the celebrated stories she's worked on include the Central
Park jogger, on which she was the lead reporter, the Tawana Brawley
story and the Tompkins Square Park riots.
Her reportage has included international as well as local events.
It includes Hurricane Gilbert in Jamaica and government corruption
in Kenya.
Ms. Byfield work also has appeared in Time magazine, The New York
Law Journal, The American Lawyer and New York Woman.
Her work has been honored many times. While at the Daily News, Ms.
Byfield worked on a story that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Some of her other awards are from the Associated Press and the Society
of the Silurians.
Clarence
Sheppard (co-founder)
Mr.
Sheppard is an educator, whose professional training is in art and
photojournalism. Since 1993, he has been the artistic and technical
director of the Black Media Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose
mission is to provide communication arts and media training to young,
disadvantaged people. His work there focuses on photography/computer
graphic artsand video. It includes teaching all levels of computer
skills from basic use to graphic design and layout. He also has designed
and laid out several publications.
His work extends beyond BMF. He has been a regular participant and
co-instructor in the Summer Journalism Institute for Minority High
School Students. In addition to layout and design of the workshop's
publication, he also provided video and computer instruction to a
group of select students.
Mr. Sheppard's also has taught in photojournalism. He was an instructor
in the Africa Project, a program designed to train minority photojournalists
for the purpose of increasing their ranks in the field. His work in
the project included training a select group of New York City high
school students in the art of photojournalism, which culminated in
a photo expedition to Africa.
Ten years of Mr. Sheppard's career was spent at the New York Daily
News, where he was a photojournalist for the bulk of that time. He
has covered international, national and local events.
That includes coverage of the Ethiopian and Eritrean conflict and
the devastation of Hurricane Gilbert in Jamaica, W.I. He also went
on photo expeditions to Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan, and Kenya. His national
coverage includes the 1992 and 1988 presidential campaigns, National
Basketball Association finals, Major League Baseball's World Series,
U.S. Open tournaments, National Hockey League's finals and the National
Football League games.
Mr. Sheppard's work also has appeared in The New York Times and Vanity
Fair.
His work has been honored many times. Two awards are from the New
York Press Photographer's Association. He was awarded a first place
prize for feature photography in 1993. And in 1991, he was a third
place feature winner. The New York Police Department also honored
one of his exclusive photographs of the "Naked Killer" in
St. Patrick's Cathedral.
His works also has been displayed internationally as well as locally.
Ms.
Byfield is an educator, whose professional training is in journalism.
She is the executive director of the Black Media Foundation, a nonprofit
organization whose mission is to provide communication arts and
media training to young, disadvantaged people. Her work includes
guiding the development of this relatively young group administratively
as well as programmatically. She has designed programs specifically
to teach journalism and newspaper production to young people. 
Mr.
Sheppard is an educator, whose professional training is in art and
photojournalism. Since 1993, he has been the artistic and technical
director of the Black Media Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose
mission is to provide communication arts and media training to young,
disadvantaged people. His work there focuses on photography/computer
graphic artsand video. It includes teaching all levels of computer
skills from basic use to graphic design and layout. He also has designed
and laid out several publications.