Staff Directory

Thor Neureiter is a veteran independent documentary producer and director whose work is focused on contemporary issues concerning U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics. His first independent feature documentary, which he directed, shot, and edited, “Disaster Capitalism(link is external)” will be released in 2017. The film was selected to the prestigious HotDocs Forum and has received support from The Bertha Foundation, The Film Collaborative, Documentary Australia Foundation, and Screen Australia.

During his career Thor has produced films for People & Power on Al Jazeera English and worked on programming for FRONTLINE on PBS, including “Showdown with Iran,” “News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin,” “The Last Abortion Clinic,” and “The O.J. Verdict.” He has also worked extensively for HBO and began his career working for Ken Burns/Florentine Films in 1999 as an Assistant Editor on the 10-part series “Jazz.” His first documentary as a producer, “Miracle in New York: The Story of the ’69 Mets,” was awarded a 2010 New York Emmy Award. Thor holds an M.A. Politics degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. While enrolled in the M.A. program, he began advising journalism students at Columbia which eventually lead to his current position of Director, Video Journalism at the school.

Sally Herships is the director of the audio program. An award-winning journalist, Sally has been a frequent contributor to American Public Media's Marketplace(link is external) and has reported for multiple other outlets including the BBC, The New York Times, NPR, WNYC and Studio 360. Her 2016 audio documentary, As Many Leaves(link is external) produced for BBC Radio 4, was rated among the top ten podcasts of the year by Vulture.com(link is external) and was written up in the Guardian, The Times of London and the Irish News.

A 2017 fellow with Linnaeus University’s Journalism in a World of Terrorism program and a 2015 US-Japan Journalism Fellow with the Japan Center for International Exchange, Sally has reported from Japan, Jamaica and India. Also an investigative reporter, her 2014 story "Good Cop, Bad Cop", for WNYC(link is external) and NBC(link is external),  showed that New Jersey taxpayers are footing the bill for millions of dollars in lawsuits in which police sue each other. Her 2011 project "The Five Percent Rule(link is external)", a look at the military’s failure to comply with its own tobacco pricing restrictions, was awarded the 2011 Third Coast Radio Impact award.

Sally is the founder of UnionDoc’s Radio Boot Camp program, and founded and hosts the live storytelling event Stories You Can't Tell on the Radio. She got her start as a high school student, carrying a notebook to school and pestering her friends to let her interview them about important topics of the day. A decade and a half later she decided it was time to learn some more solid skills and interned at Radiolab where she fell helplessly in love with audio. Trained as an illustrator at Parsons School of Design, Sally believes her artistic background helps bring color and creativity to storytelling for the ear. Among her proudest moments was when a group of students in Stroud England turned her piece “As Many Leaves” into a play for their high school drama project. 

Melanie Huff is the associate dean of students, responsible for overseeing the day-to-day lives of our students. She's the dean to talk to if you're having problems with a student, etc.

Krishnan Gajadharsingh is the assistant director of human relations at the Journalism School.

Jane Eisner is an accomplished journalist, educator, non-profit leader and public speaker who is currently director of academic affairs at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, overseeing the Masters of Arts program.

For more than a decade, she was the Forward’s editor-in-chief, the first woman to hold the position at America’s foremost national Jewish news organization.

Since Eisner joined the Forward in 2008, the publication dramatically expanded its digital reach, becoming the authoritative source of news, opinion, arts and culture in the Jewish world. The publication won numerous regional and national awards, and her editorials have been repeatedly honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and other media groups. She is known for her interviews of such notable figures as President Barack Obama, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin and many others.

Prior to her work at the Forward, Eisner held executive editorial and news positions at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years, including stints as editorial page editor, syndicated columnist, City Hall bureau chief and foreign correspondent. She served as vice president of the National Constitution Center from 2006 to 2008, and has taught at Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania, where she is a senior fellow at Penn’s Program for Research and Religion in Urban Civil Society.

Eisner is chair of the board of the Student Press Law Center and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of “Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy,” published in 2004 by Beacon Press. She frequently contributes to The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, TIME, NPR, and other major news outlets.

Eisner is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Columbia Journalism School. She was a fellow of the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center at Bryn Mawr College in its inaugural year and participated in the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program in 2009. She lives in New York City with her husband, Dr. Mark Berger.