Mary Van Sickle

Mary Van Sickle is a community media executive whose leadership was rooted in Bismarck, North Dakota and the civic life of the Bismarck-Mandan area. Before joining Dakota Media Access, she built a career in community and civic organizations in Bismarck - running a furniture business, serving as executive director of the Bismarck Downtowners, marketing director of the Bismarck Civic Center, and development economic specialist for the Bismarck-Mandan Development Association. She became Executive Director of Dakota Media Access in 2000 and led the organization for 25 years until her retirement in 2025. Under her leadership, DMA grew into a full-service PEG community media center covering government meetings, community programming, media training, and local production across the Bismarck-Mandan area - live streaming its channels since 2015 and expanding to Apple TV, Roku, and other platforms. She also helped build two signature programs: the Dakota Film Festival, an annual celebration of local and international short filmmaking held at the historic Belle Mehus Auditorium, and Radio Access 102.5 FM, which opened community radio to producers and DJs who found the microphone more approachable than the camera.

Her service to the broader field was equally sustained. She served on the ACM national board, including as board chair, and was active with the ACM Midwest Region, bringing the perspective of smaller-market and plains-state access centers into national conversations about funding, policy, and the future of community media. In 2020 she received the ACM's Sue Miller Buske Leadership Award. In 2021 she was recognized with the Leadership Bismarck-Mandan Alumni Association Distinguished Alumna Award.

Her contribution reflects the kind of steady, place-based leadership that keeps community media useful and visible across distance - the work of building something durable in a community where no one else was going to do it, and then showing up for the field beyond it.