Liza Gershman
Best-Selling Author and Winner of the Gourmand Cookbook Award (2018), Liza Gershman has nearly two decades of industry experience working in all facets of Commercial and Editorial photography and writing, including 12 published books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine stories. She specializes in Lifestyle, Food, and Travel. Her passion for people, culture and cuisine, has taken her to more than 51 countries and 47 U.S. States during her career.
Her 12th book, Cuban Flavor, has garnered many accolades, and has been featured on CBS, in National Geographic, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, NPR and many additional local and national publications and radio shows. Liza was honored to speak for Talks At Google, and on the prestigious campuses of Twitter, Oracle, and Disney to name a few.
As a photographer and Art Director, she regularly teaches, writes and presents for celebrated companies: Creative Live and Canon USA. She was honored to nationally launch the 6D for Canon, and the T6. Prior to that she worked as the in-house Senior Digital Photographer for Williams-Sonoma and continues to freelance for clients such as Goldman Sachs, Hyatt Hotels, Restoration Hardware, Safeway, Party City, Getty Images, AirBnB, Visa. In 2010, Liza was Governor Jerry Brown's campaign photographer, and in 2014 was a photographer for the RedBull Youth America's Cup.
She has been a regular contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle Travel Section, writing tips on top destinations for a monthly column called “5 Places”, and continues to write about travel, food and culture in articles and book form.
Many of Liza’s notable clients include celebrity chefs, restaurants, wineries, beverage brands, fashion brands, spas and hotels.
3 words to describe Nature?
Beauty. Peace. Serenity
3 things Nature taught you?
How to go into my inner self
How to be still
How to observe
3 most treasured Nature spots?
The Russian River in Sonoma County
The beaches of Nantucket
The open skies of Wyoming
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
Introspective
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
Grounded and most like myself
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
In awe
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
Lucky to be part of the world, inside of a painting
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Excited! I love a great storm as long as everyone is safe
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Like getting under covers
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Forest and lakes first, then ocean, then desert, but I love all of it!!!
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
11
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
Canoeing down the river. That's my happiest activity. Smelling the ferns and mint and redwood trees all around.
Michael Rosenblum
For more than 30 years, Michael Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital ‘videojournalist’ and Citizen News revolution.
During this time, he's led a drive for video literacy, and the Democratization of Video and Video news. His work includes: the complete transitioning of the BBC's national network (UK) to a Vj-driven model, starting in 2002; the complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United State’s Government’s broadcasting agency, (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the ‘VJ” paradigm (1998-present); the design behind Current TV in partnership with former US VP Al Gore; the construction of a national hyperlocal citizen journalist network with Verizon; and the construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company and the largest producer of non-fiction television in the US.
He has partnered with a number of major media companies including The Guardian (UK), USA Today, New York Magazine, The Travel Channel and others to create video ‘Academies’ where anyone can learn to report, shoot, edit and produce video on their own.
In 2009 he co-founded TheVJ.com, along with his wife, Lisa Lambden, an online video training site.
He has also designed, built and implemented VJ-driven news channels around the world, including Time/Warner’s New York 1, Associated Newspapers (UK) London based Channel 1, Young Broadcasting stations in the US, Switzerland’s largest commercial TV broadcaster, TeleZuri, as well as a host of smaller projects such as Eritrea’s ERI-TV and Sri Lanka’s SLBC. His consulting clients include The BBC, McGraw-Hill, TV-24/Germany, TV4/Sweden, Oxygen Media, National Public Radio, Danmarks Radio (DK), TV-3 Sweden, Norway & Denmark, Tokyo Broadcasting, Korea Broadcasting.
As a producer, Rosenblum has produced or overseen production on more than 3000 hours of programming for both network and cable. His shows have included the long-running TRAUMA: LIFE IN THE ER, Paramedics, Police Force, Labor and Delivery, Science Times. These series have aired on TLC, Showtime and National Geographic. He has also produced for ABC, CBS, Oxygen and the BBC. Most recently his groundbreaking 5Takes series for Discovery has completely rewritten the production paradigm. The company currently has more than 350 hours in production for this year alone.
He has conducted his unique VJ training classes and boot camps all over the world, from Thailand to Marrakech, and has lectured extensively both overseas and in the US. He recently entered into a partnership with Discovery Communications to set up the Travel Channel Academy, a national training facility open to anyone. For 8 years he was an adjunct professor of communication at New York University, where he taught “Television and the Information Revolution”, a course of his own design and at The Bauhaus in Germany. Prior to that he taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. His Brussels based Rosenblum Institute trains European journalists to work as vjs. He is the author of Videojournalismus (germany) and iPhone Millionaire (McGraw Hill, 2013).
He and his wife live both in New York and in the UK and teach at Oxford University in Britain.
3 words to describe Nature?
Real. Unmediated. Honest
3 things Nature taught you?
Who I was
Who I am
Who I could be
3 most treasured Nature spots?
Coast of England at Northumbria
Middle of Sahara Desert
Lamu, Kenya
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel…?
Humble
When you see a forest, it makes you feel…?
Connected
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel…?
Terrified
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel…?
Grateful
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel…?
Alive
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel…?
Connected
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Ocean
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
When I was about 10 years old, my father had a friend named Eddie Durban who had a wood Lightning sailboat - 19 foot. No motor. One day, he took me out for a sail and we turned up into a series of small estuaries that ran in the wetlands that are now almost gone on the East Coast. The boat was silent, but it ghosted along, and as we drifted in the marsh, the whole place around us seemed alive and vibrant.