2009-2010 Board of Directors


Hannes R. Richter, Ph.D., President
Hannes Richter is co-founder of Campaign Digital. He is a web designer and political scientist whose research focuses on new media effects on American political behavior. He previously held positions at the Austrian Press and Information Service, Embassy of Austria in Washington, D.C., the National World War II Museum, New Orleans, as well as the University of New Orleans. He lectured at the John F. Kennedy Institute for American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and the Department of Political Science, University of New Orleans. He is a Permenent Fellow with the Center for Austrian Culture and Commerce at the University of New Orleans. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of New Orleans and completed programming at The Ohio State University, the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of California, Berkeley.

Caroline H. Sparks, Ph.D.
Dr. Sparks is a Psychologist and Associate Professor of Public Health at The George Washington University, Washington, D.C, and co-founder of Campaign Digital. She has a 15-year history in the design, implementation and evaluation of tobacco control programs. She is one of the authors of the 2007 IOM Report: Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation, and contributed the article on advocacy as a tobacco control strategy. Dr. Sparks teaches courses in individual and community-level change to promote health and specializes in program evaluation for community-level interventions.

Michael Knoflach, M.D.
Dr. Knoflach is a resident at the Department of Neurology at the University Clinics Innsbruck, Austria. He is a former resident of the Hematology and Oncology Department of the University Clinics. Dr. Knoflach was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Aging Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of the Dr. Johannes Tuba Award (2003) and the DAKO Flow Cytometry Junior Research Award (2000), among other distinctions. Recently, Dr. Knoflach has become interested in how primary prevention can prevent or modify the impact of chronic illness on stroke patients. He has earned his M.D. at the Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck Medical School with a Doctoral thesis at the Institute for Pathophysiology under the supervision of Dr J. G. Wiegers. His research has been widely published in various international journals.

Sabine Edlinger, mag. jur.
Sabine Edlinger studied Russian and English before earning a law degree from the University of Innsbruck with a specialization in Austrian telecommunications law. She completed further educational programming in business and project management. Previous employers include the Tyrolean State Supreme Court and the Tyrolean state government. Sabine currently serves as head of the International Relations Office of the Innsbruck Medical University, where she is tasked with building the university's international relations and partnerships.

Michael L. Hess, Ph.D.
Michael L. Hess, Ph.D. was raised in Fort Bragg, California and graduated from Santa Clara University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1986. After serving two years as a volunteer in inner-city Milwaukee, Wisconsin with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps from 1986 - 88, he worked for and administered a variety of not-for-profit organizations there before moving to San Antonio, Texas. In San Antonio, he received a Master of Arts degree in International Relations from Saint Mary's University in 1999, and from 1995 - 2000 served as the executive director of the Socially Responsible Investment Coalition, an organization that facilitated bringing the social and environmental concerns of its institutional members to the attention of corporations through shareholder action. He received his doctorate in Political Science in 2008 from the University of New Orleans. His interests are in international relations and comparative politics, and particularly in the political economy of developing countries. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife, Megan Kamerick, a journalist. He is currently Training and Development Specialist for the Assessment and Learning Program at the University of New Mexico (UNM), and this Fall will also be an adjunct professor of political science for UNM's political science department.

Ute Pannen, mag.phil
Ute Pannen is an Art and Communications scholar and a consultant for social media strategies. She is a frequent lecturer on Web 2.0 and politics. In 2007 she was a researcher at Columbia University and a practitioner at the New Organizing Institute in Washington, D.C. Ute is a member of the Online Advisory Council of the German Social Democratic Party and is currently completing her dissertation “Democracy as a Collector. Art and State Representation in the Federal Republic of Germany.” She lives in Berlin, Germany.

Christoph Knoedler
Mr. Knoedler, a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been involved in music from a very young age. He studied piano and organ privately during his childhood. He attended Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI where he studied mathematics and music. While at EMU, Mr. Knoedler had the privilege to study the organ under Dr. Mary Ida Yost and choral music under Professor Emily Lowe with whom he traveled to the United Kingdom in 1985 to compete in the International Choral Festival, Cork, Ireland. He has remained active in music since college as a church organist and choral director as well as being a leader of community arts programs, community theater and conductor/singer in community choral programs. In addition to his involvement with the WIC/MCS he also volunteers his time in community and high school theater - producing, directing, music directing, set construction/design and acting.  Recently, he was appointed to the Board of Directors of VSA Arts Loudoun County, VA - A non-profit organization for the advancement of the arts amoung people with disabilities.


Advisory Council (currently being formed)

Ursula Daxecker, Ph.D.
Ursula Daxecker is assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from the University of New Orleans in 2008. Dr. Daxecker’s research and teaching interests focus on the causes of international and civil conflict, U.S. foreign and security policy, and international relations theory.

Doris Dialer, Ph.D.
A political scientist by training, she earned her M.A., and Ph.D from the University of Innsbruck and completed a Master of Management Program at the Universitas Indonesia Jakarta and Gadjah Mada University Yogyakarta. Doris Dialer is political advisor of one of the Vice-Presidents of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament and external lecturer at Innsbruck University, Austria. Her research interests focus on meta-issues of the European integration process, the European Parliament and the European public sphere. She is the author of Die EU-Präsidentschaft Frankreichs, a study of European Presidencies; Die EU-Entwicklungspolitik im Brennpunkt, showing future political aspects of EU's Development Policy; and of Politische Streifzüge durch das EU-Parliament, an insight perspective of the European Parliament (forthcoming 2010). Previous employers include Vienna Institute for Development and Cooperation, Südwind Agentur (Agency for South-North Developments and Public Works), SMA Sales Manager Academy Austria, ILF Consulting Engineers, Tiscover/HRS Travel Service Provider and TAL Transalpine Pipeline.