Lucian Pera is president of TCOG’s Board of Directors. Pera is a partner with Adams and Reese LLP in Memphis. He focuses his law practice on commercial litigation, media law, and legal ethics work.
Doug Pierce is past-president of TCOG’s Board of Directors. Pierce is an attorney with King & Ballow in Nashville. His law practice includes employment and First Amendment law. He represents the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters.
Adams Yeomans is vice president of TCOG’s Board of Directors. Based in Nashville, Yeomans is an executive with The Associated Press, serving as the news organization’s regional director of the South.
Marian Ott is treasurer of TCOG’s Board of Directors. Ott is treasurer and past president of the League of Women Voters-Tennessee and is active in many charitable activities in Middle Tennessee. The League of Women Voters is an organizational member of TCOG.
Dr. Dorothy Bowles is secretary on TCOG’s Board of Directors. She is professor emerita of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville where she taught journalism for 22 years. She has helped TCOG in key initiatives, including statistical research into open government practices.
Victor Ashe has a long history of public service. He was a state representative from 1968 to 1975, then a state senator until 1984. Later, he was Knoxville’s mayor for 16 years before being appointed as the U.S. ambassador to Poland.
Chris Baker is the president and CEO of Tennessee Association of Broadcasters. Prior to TAB, Chris enjoyed a 36-year career in broadcast media, advertising sales, television and radio management and equity ownership. He worked 19 years at Knoxville stations.
Braden Boucek is litigation director for Southeastern Legal Foundation. He formerly was litigation director for Beacon Center of Tennessee. He also served as a state and federal prosecutor in Nashville and Memphis for more than nine years.
Joel Christopher has been executive editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel since 2019. Prior to this, he was editor of the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., and an editor at newspapers in Wisconsin for 19 years.
Maria De Varenne is senior partner with Finn Partners, an integrated marketing agency. She is former executive editor of The Tennessean with more than 30 years as a journalist.
Alison Gerber is editor and director of content for the Chattanooga Times Free Press where she has worked since 2003. Gerber began her career as a reporter in Florida where she covered city government, crime and education.
Frank Gibson is the founding director of TCOG and served as its first executive director from 2003 to 2011. He then became public policy director for Tennessee Press Association until his retirement in 2017. Gibson was inducted in 2018 into the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame, honoring his four decades as a reporter and editor at The Tennessean.
Ben Goad is news director for The Tennessean. He has worked as a journalist for more than 20 years, including as a crime reporter and as a DC reporter for The Hill covering Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court.
Robb Harvey is a partner at Waller Lansden in Nashville, where he leads the media/IP/entertainment litigation group and regularly represents content providers. Robb is the incoming Chair of the American Bar Assn’s Forum on Communications Law, has served as the Chair of the Tennessee Bar Assn’s Communications Law Section and Nashville Bar Assn’s Media Law committee, and in various capacities with the Media Law Resource Center.
Rick Hollow, with Hollow & Hollow in Knoxville, is longtime counsel for the Tennessee Press Association and the Knoxville News Sentinel. He has been involved in many cases involving open meetings, public records and access to courts and courtroom records.
Gregg Jones headed family-owned Jones Media, Inc., which managed The Greeneville Sun, The Daily Times in Maryville and other community newspapers until JMI sold in 2016 to Adams Publishing Group. Jones, now retired, and his family have been active in the Tennessee Press Association for several years.
Jack McElroy is former executive editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel, a role he held from 2001 to 2019. He is a founding board member of TCOG and a past president of the Tennessee Press Association.
Mark Russell has been with The Commercial Appeal in Memphis since 2013 and its executive editor since 2017. He started his career as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to coming to Tennessee, he was executive editor at the Orlando Sentinel. He also has served four years as a Pulitzer Prize juror.
Otis Sanford holds the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Economic and Managerial Journalism at the University of Memphis, and is the author of “From Boss Crump to King Willie: How Race Changed Memphis Politics.” Previously, he had a long career at the Commercial Appeal where he editorial page editor and managing editor, the first African-American to hold those positions.
Helen Burns Sharp, born and raised in Chattanooga, is a public interest advocate who founded Accountability for Taxpayer Money. After earning degrees from the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, she became a principal planner in the Tennessee State Planning Office for 16 years and later worked in city planning in Oregon. Sharp is on the board of Chattanooga’s Downtown Owners Collective.
John Stern is chairman emeritus of Nashville Neighborhood Alliance, Inc. He is also a founding board member of Cumberland Region Tomorrow.
Hedy Weinberg is the former longtime executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. She retired in 2023. An affiliate of the national ACLU, ACLU-TN’s mission is to protect and advance civil liberties and civil rights through a range of strategies including advocacy, litigation, lobbying and public education.
Dick Williams is state chair for Common Cause in Tennessee for whom he has served as a volunteer lobbyist since 1975. He was an environmental and grants analyst for Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency in Nashville from 1979 to 2007.