Sean McLaughlin

Sean McLaughlin is a community media advocate, educator, and policy leader whose work has connected island media, rural broadband, local voice, and communications rights across several decades. In Hawai'i, Sean was the first director of telecommunications for the Honolulu City Council, a founding board member of 'Olelo Community Media, and the first CEO of Akaku: Maui Community Media. That early work placed him close to the practical and political questions that have always shaped community media: who controls local communications infrastructure, who gets access to channels and tools, and how communities protect public voice as technology changes.

Sean later became executive director of Access Humboldt in Northern California, where his work extended community media into a broader vision of local information ecosystems. In Humboldt County, he connected PEG access, broadband policy, digital redwoods, rural communications, local storytelling, emergency information, and public participation. His leadership helped show that community media is not separate from infrastructure. It is part of how communities understand themselves, share knowledge, and stay connected across geography, institutions, and generations.

In 2006, Sean received the ACM's Sue Miller Buske Leadership Award, honoring a career rooted in access, policy, and community self-determination. His legacy belongs to the bridge generation of the field: leaders who carried public access values into a new era of broadband, digital networks, information equity, and community resilience, while still holding onto the older promise that local people deserve tools, platforms, and rights to speak for themselves.