MSE Executive Team
Ron Mitchell
President and CEO
Ron Mitchell has spent over twenty-five years in the New England market creating in-depth long and short-form news and informational programming. As a network television cameraman and editor, Ron was responsible for creating daily news content, including an Emmy nominated news series on the criminal justice system and its effect on the Black community. Stories included the lack of Black judges, the newly elected slate of African American leaders in criminal justice, including Steve Thompkins, Ayanna Pressley, Rachel Rollins, and William Gross. Ron coproduced stories which covered a wide range of topics: Covid-19’s effect on Chinatown and Chelsea, which at one time recorded the highest level of Covid cases per capita in America and, 10 of course, stories that expose the racism and injustice as well as the beauty and brilliance that is the African American experience.
Many of these news stories highlighted the effects of racism in youth sports before the 2019-2020 epidemic, including a story on a referee’s use of the “N” word in AAU athletics, general news coverage of Duxbury, Massachusetts’ anti-Semitic problems, and racial abuse disturbances in Georgetown and Danvers high school sports games.
While at WBZ, he created news coverage focused on racism in elementary school textbooks in
2014, and a four-year news series chronicling an eleven-year racism lawsuit that culminated in an eleven-million-dollar award to a Black firefighter in Brookline, Massachusetts.
André Stark is an established television and film producer with over twenty-five years of
experience working in television, advertising, public relations, marketing, and museum exhibition development. As a producer, he has written and produced material on evolution, oil
exploration, civil rights, and sports. He recently finished a feature film on teen violence called,
“Senseless Smoke”. His field producing experience spans fifteen countries on four continents
Stark has worked for the PBS, and the FOX television station in Boston, and has successfully
produced or coordinated independent television programs for Annenberg, FOX, CBS, and
HBO.
André is one of the producers of the PBS program “In Pursuit of a Dream, a story about teens
recreating life on the Oregon Trail. His sports program, the Sports Exchange was twice
nominated for an Emmy Award. His 7 DAY PSA Project garnered an Emmy Award in 2015.
Notably, President Clinton enjoyed one of his interactives at the former MCI National Sports Gallery in Washington, DC.
André is a Trustee Emeritus at Noble and Greenough School and is on the board of The Center for Teen Empowerment in Roxbury.
André Stark
VP and Production Manager
Colin Redd
Director of Digital Advertising and Marketing
Colin Redd is an experienced sales professional with a background in commercial real estate and digital advertising. Colin’s past work includes being a business development manager of AfroTech, a division of Blavity, Inc., the largest digital media platform for African Americans and minorities. Additionally, Colin worked with Burb Media as the director of strategic partnerships, a Philadelphia suburb based digital media news company with three platforms focused on daily local content.
Ron Wilhelmsen is a multi-Emmy Award winning broadcast graphic designer. He brings over
thirty years of experience to the group. Ron started his career in New York City with NBC
Network News. There he created graphics for NBC News with Tom Brokaw, NBC Sports and 12 The Today Show. Since coming to Boston, Ron has been designing graphics for local news and
has received national recognition for his work as well as several regional Emmy awards.
Ron was also the lead designer for Violence Transformed, a Boston arts and social justice
initiative. There, he helped create the organization’s first website and promotional content.
In 2016 these designs were showcased in an exhibition at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston.
Ron Wilhelmsen
Graphics Director
Anthony W. Neal
Managing Editor
Anthony W. Neal is an accomplished historian, attorney and teaching specialist with over twenty
years of experience in secondary school education. Anthony is the author of three books
including. Unburdened by Conscience: A Black People’s Collective Account of America’s
Antebellum South and the Aftermath (2011), and the forthcoming Elevating the Race:
Remarkable African Americans in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Boston (2022).
Ivy League educated, he has also been a contributing writer to the Bay State Banner for more
than a decade, penning over thirty articles featuring prominent historical figures in Boston’s African American community. They include the articles, “Maud Cuney-Hare: Lifting the Race
through the Arts, “Butler Roland Wilson: Humanitarian and Civil Rights Advocate” and
“William H. Lewis: Eloquent Orator and Lauded Lawyer.”
Atakelti, better known as “AT,” is a Boston corporate attorney in the real estate investments and
transactions at Ropes & Gray LLP. AT’s practice has enabled him to develop extensive
knowledge in structuring joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, strategic transactions and debt/
equity financing. A graduate of Boston College (B.A. ‘09 and M.Ed. ’11), AT is involved with
numerous non-profit causes surrounding service, social justice and education
Atakelti H. Desta, Esq.
Chief Legal Advisor
Sheena Collier
Director of Digital Communities
CONSULTANTS
For MSE to implement its six-state platform it is imperative that we create a strong social media community. In order to do that we have researched and identified New England’s top minority
social media community developer, Sheena Collier, creator and owner of the Collier Connection.
She will work with us to design and implement our strategy to maximize our reach to the 3.5
million Black, Brown and white progressive millennials who reside in our new service area.
Sheena Collier is our lead consultant. She is a super-connector, convener, and planner with over fifteen years of experience in community organizing, partnership building, strategic event planning, and program development. As Founder and CEO of The Collier Connection (TCC), she designs innovative diversity, equity, & inclusion initiatives and events to help companies engage employees, customers, & suppliers of color.
In 2020, Sheena founded Boston While Black (BWB), the first membership network for Bostonbased Black professionals, entrepreneurs, and students who are seeking connection and community. Through programs, events, and a digital community, BWB connects Black people
who are active in their local neighborhoods, working at the most innovative companies, building 14 the businesses of the future, attending the area’s universities, and shaping the culture of the
region. Boston While Black is creating a city where Black people want to live and work because they have the spaces, tools, and relationships to find their tribe, grow their network, navigate the
city, and have fun.
Kenneth J. Cooper, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has been a journalist for more than four decades,
specializing in government, politics and social policy at the Washington Post, Boston Globe,
Knight Ridder, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and St. Louis American. In 1984, Cooper, then twentyeight, shared a Pulitzer for special local reporting for “The Race Factor,” a Boston Globe series
that examined institutional racism in Boston. For at least thirty years, he was the youngest
15 African American named as a recipient of a Pulitzer for journalism, and possibly the youngest
African American to win the prize in any category.
Cooper reported and wrote mostly for magazines and websites about a broad range of subjects,
including politics, higher education, criminal justice, race, media, health, books and international affairs. He was a regular contributor to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education Magazine and the Bay State Banner, a local black-owned weekly. His freelance articles have appeared in Ebony,
Essence, Boston Globe Magazine, Philadelphia Inquirer, Denver Post, Howard Magazine, AARP
Bulletin, and the Crisis Magazine.
Currently, he is a senior editor at GBH News, an NPR and PBS station in Boston. He is a
member of the newsroom’s leadership team and directs radio and digital coverage of education
and the city’s majority-minority neighborhoods.
Kenneth J. Cooper
Director of Editorial Content