Brian Pellot is Taboom Media’s co-founding director. He speaks regularly about LGBTQI+ rights and religion at media and human rights conferences around the world. He is based in Cape Town, South Africa, where he occasionally freelances for international news and media outlets. Before Taboom, Brian served as Religion News Service’s director of global strategy, as Index on Censorship’s digital policy advisor, and as Free Speech Debate’s online editor. He is a volunteer mentor-editor at The OpEd Project. Brian graduated from the University of Missouri with dual degrees in International Convergence Journalism and International Studies. He completed a master’s degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship. Email: brian{at}taboommedia[dot]com

Debra L. Mason, PhD, is a leading scholar and trainer on how religion is portrayed in the media. As Taboom’s co-founder, she brings more than 30 years of professional and scholarly experience. She previously served as director of the Center on Religion & the Professions at the world-renowned Missouri School of Journalism where she created the largest repository of religion resources for journalists, including Religion Stylebook and ReligionLink. For nearly 20 years, she served as director of Religion News Association, a secular organization of professional journalists who cover religion in mass media. She is publisher emeritus of Religion News Service (RNS), the world’s only secular news wire that exclusively covers faith, spirituality, religion and belief. Email: debra{at}taboommedia[dot]com

For each training and engagement, we work closely with dozens of local and regional partners from diverse media sectors, faith networks, activist circles, and LGBTQI+ communities. Each workshop is co-led by at least two regional trainers.