Mike Wassenaar

Mike Wassenaar is President and CEO of the Alliance for Community Media, the national organization that supports, promotes, and defends public, educational, and government access television in the United States. He got his start in media as a high school student in Minneapolis working in a youth radio program - an origin that connects directly to the community media values he has carried through his career. He went on to work as Program Director and News Director at KFAI Fresh Air Community Radio in Minneapolis, earned a Master of Arts in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and worked in community and public radio in both Minnesota and Wisconsin before moving into community television.

He served for 13 years as Executive Director of Saint Paul Neighborhood Network, where he led projects in digital literacy, youth development, media empowerment, and community voice, including serving as lead partner in the Community Technology Empowerment Project, an AmeriCorps program promoting digital literacy across the Twin Cities. He then served as Senior Development Director at Free Press in Washington DC before joining the ACM, where he first served as Public Policy Advocate before becoming the organization's first President and CEO. In 2012 he received the ACM's Sue Miller Buske Leadership Award. He has made presentations before Congress, the FCC, and national and regional media organizations, and regularly leads seminars and training on community media across the country.

His leadership connects the older access movement to the present questions facing the field - declining cable revenue, digital distribution, local news gaps, broadband policy, and the ongoing work of helping community media centers explain their value and remain embedded in the communities they serve. He belongs to a generation of leaders who inherited public access values and have worked to carry them into a more digital, fragmented, and urgent media landscape.