DMA Board of Directors
Andrea Jones
Board Chair
Andrea grew up in Davis and knows everyone! She's had much to do with helping DMA chart a course towards professionalism and fund development these past few years.
Valerie Jones
Board Treasurer
Valerie has lived in Davis since 1966. After graduating from UC Davis, she was the owner and chef of Valerie & Company restaurant and catering business. She later sold her cafe and then enjoyed a career with the State Department of Social Services serving as a administrator for budgeting and licensing programs. She has volunteered at Davis Community Meals in the past and looks forward to serving on the DMA board of directors.
Henry House
Board Secretary
Henry has been a long time member of advocate of the Linux User Group of Davis (LUGOD.)
Henry lives in Davis and is highly involved in both the family farm, Coco Ranch, and his family's agricultural consulting business, House Agricultural.
Craig Blomberg
Board Member
Craig is a longtime volunteer with KDRT, and has chaired the all-volunteer KDRT Management Team for the past several years. He spends hours each week updating the logs for the radio station, and selflessly devotes his time to making KDRT a great community resource. A registered nurse, Craig supervises case management at Sutter Davis Hospital. He lives in Davis with his wife, Darien.
Gary Chew
Board Member
Now retired, Gary is new to the DMA board, having spent his entire career in both noncommercial and commercial radio and television. He lives in Sacramento.
Prior to almost 20 years as an announcer, producer and on air host at Capital Public Radio, Gary was Station Manager of KWGS-FM at the University of Tulsa, where he brought that station to CPB qualification and affiliation with National Public Radio in early 1978. In the Nineties, one of Gary jobs at KXPR-Sacramento was producing and hosting broadcast concerts of the Sacramento Philharmonic.
His love and knowledge of a number of musical genres have propelled him to volunteer as an on air host at KDRT. His first love was jazz, then other kinds of really good music followed, which include: more modern classical music, American Popular Songs, the blues and film music. He was especially taken with the Beatles in the Sixties as a disc jockey at a commercial AM in Tulsa, where he came to larger market broadcasting in 1959. Being on the air when John, Paul, George and Ringo hit was a really big thing for Gary. He also currently writes film reviews for two websites in Northern California. He presented on-camera commentary on movies for commercial TV beginning in the early Seventies.
Laura Grindstaff
Board Member
Laura is a professor of Sociology at UC Davis and a faculty affiliate in Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, and Performance Studies. Her research and teaching focus on American media and popular culture and their role in reproducing gender, race, and class inequality. She publishes and lectures on a wide variety of topics ranging from cheerleading to reality television. From 2008-2015, she served as the faculty director of the Davis Feminist Film Festival, a grassroots festival of short films from around the world linking art to social justice issues. Prior to pursuing a career in academia, Grindstaff trained as a journalist at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) in her hometown of London, Ontario.
Autumn Labbe-Renault
Board of Directors ex officio, Executive Director Davis Media Access
At my core, I'm a community activist who believes that strong communities need constant care, dissenting voices and forums for healthy dialogue. "Finding" community media 20 years ago let me put all of that into action on a daily basis. Building DMA into a healthy and vibrant community resource is a huge passion for me.
Our work at DMA is collaborative, open, engaging, fun, and done for community benefit. I work with an awesome community of staff, board and volunteers. I've served this organization as Assistant Director, Director of Operations, and since 2006, its Executive Director. I produce programming for DCTV Channel 15, including local election programming, and have hosted public affairs programming on KDRT.
My monthly column on media and telecommunications is published in The Davis Enterprise the last Thursday of each month and I’ve also been published in a wide range of media journals, online media, and other periodicals.
Darrick Servis
Board of Directors Staff Representative, Director of Operations, DMA
I've been working at Davis Media Access for over 10 years. Before that I was involved with radio station KDVS. I spend most of my time here working on finances, operations, information technology and the repair, installation and integration of all of our equipment.
I have been a linux zealot since 1996 and code on a number of open source projects. Most recently the radio station automation suite, Rivendell.
I like my work because I believe free and diverse expression is an important part of our culture. It heightens the quality of discourse and helps us all continue to grow, learn and experience new things.