Yonty Friesem

  Yonty Friesem is the Executive Director of the Media Education Lab who also works an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the School of Communication and Culture at Columbia College Chicago. Yonty is an award winning educator, advocate, and filmmaker who design and provide professional development for educators applying a trauma-informed, healing-centered and equity-based lens. For more than twenty five years, Yonty has worked with a number of organizations, universities and colleges around the world to increase their inclusive practices. As part of their educational work, advocacy, and research, Yonty have presented at international conferences and global workshops in Belgium, Canada, Cameroon, China, Finland, France, India, Israel, Japan, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the UK, the US and Zimbabewe. In October 2010, as a visiting scholar at the Media Education Lab, the collaboration with Dr. Renee Hobbs and the Lab students led them to pursue their PhD as Hobbs’ advisee. Yonty received their PhD from the joint doctoral program in education at the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College.

Research. Yonty is developing an acccessible and equitable measurement tool to explore the skill level of youth who produce media as community engagement. They are the editor-in-chief of Youth Media Reporter - an online publication for media educators to be relaunched in March 2026. In 2017, Yonty was the guest editor for JMLE special issue on Media Literacy and Disability. Their first book published in September 2022, Routledge Handbook for Media Education Futures Post-Pandemic convey 57 chapter with case studies of 27 countries across the five continents during the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic.

For their dissertation, Yonty explored how eight elementary school teachers integrated media production into their practice. Mapping the practice of media production of full time elementary teachers help Yonty advocate for a deeper implementation of media literacy in the public schools. Yonty is using cognitive and affective components of empathy as a psychological and sociological measure of youth interaction in an out of school program. 

As part of the MediaEd Institute Yonty examines how media production advance leadership skills of media literacy teachers. For four years, Yonty evaluated the First Star URI Academy program using quantitative and qualitative measurement to assess students’ academic performance. Some of the case studies include a youth media initiative called GiveMe5 produced by RISCA (Rhode Island State Council on the Arts) including students with disabilities; a research project on the nonviolence and conflict management skills learned by producing media with Friends Forever. Their paper was awarded Top Student Paper in Applied Communication at the 100th annual National Communication Association conference in Chicago in 2014. 

Teaching. Yonty is teaching undergraduate and graduate students. In the classes, the students work in groups to produce multimedia for social change. By developing digital and media literacy skills, the students learn to be active citizens of the 21st century. Students produce various media as part of their training to become media professionals. Yonty is also a Quality Matters Peer Reviewer for graduate online classes. They use webinars to expand his outreach to various communities around the world. 

Yonty started as a videography instructor for the "Together" Project - using art to create empathy between Arab and Jewish children in Jaffa, Israel. After receiving a special grant for the guidance of youth-at-risk from the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, they decided to enter the formal education system. Between 2001-2008, Yonty specialized in teaching media literacy with special populations such as students with learning disabilities, students with behavioral and emotional problems, mentally challenged students, gifted students, and youth-at-risk. 

Educational Leadership. Yonty finished a three years term as the co-vice Chair of the UNESCO Media and Information International steering committe between 2023-2025. Yonty serves on various advisory boards for media literayc intiative around the globe. 

Besides their work as executive director of the Media Education Lab, starting in 2014, Yonty serves as a faculty and producer of the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy providing educators tools to use media production in order to foster learners' cognitive, emotional and social skills. In the last six years, Yonty produced many local, national, and international conferences such as the MediaEd Institute, MediaEd Research Jam, Media Ed Forum, The 12th Northeast Media Literacy Conference, 2014 International Association for Intercultural Communication Studies, Digital Engagement 2.0, GiveMe5 teachers' Lab. 

They collaborated with RISCA, RIIFF, VSA Art RI, and Adoption RI, to bring media literacy to special populations in the state of Rhode Island. Nationwide, Yonty worked on the educational outreach as well as coordinating research groups for Project Look Sharp, PBS news Hour Student Reporting Lab, and First Star URI Academy. Between 2013-2016, Yonty has been working with the executive director of VSA Art RI, Jeanine Chartier. Together, they received a grant for $31,000 for equipment and professional development in the Central Falls public library. In 2014 and 2015, they received a $20,000 grant from the Washington D.C. Kennedy Center to hold a professional development workshop for more than 200 in-service and pre-service teachers in Rhode Island, teaching Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and digital literacy. 

Workshops. Yonty offers many professional development workshops for educators and administrators who are interested in implementing technology in their classrooms. As Faculty and producer of the MediaEd Institute, Yonty works with educators to promote media and AI literacy skills to become mentors in their educational settings. With their model of Media Production Hive, Yonty advocates for the creation of a  sense of shared goals, enhanced sense of mastery, and reassurance to be autonomous in order to integrate digital and media literacy practices. 

Internationally, Yonty leds a professional development for 20 Palestinian educators as part of a grant of the State Department in 2025-2026. They gave a professional development workshop to 200 TV executives of Guangdong TV center at the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival. They provided workshops to educators with the MediaEd Institute in Chicago, Lisbon, and Sao Paulo. 

Nationally, he offered workshops and made presentations for educators, media practitioners, and administrators at PBS, NewCAJE, ScriptBiz, Northeast Media Literacy Conference, NAMLE, ISTE, AERA, JEA, and NCA. Locally, Yonty gave workshops for JFRI, WordCamp, Promising Practices Multicultural Conference, URI Technology Symposium, and Blended learning & Technology conference. 

Curriculum Development. Yonty developed many new courses on media and AI literacy, new major in Jorunalism and Communication, and two graduate programs at Columbia College Chicago to implement civic media into the media studies curriculum. At the Harrington School of Communication and Media, they developed a curriculum for Film/Media 101 course, Nonviolence in the Media, and special topics in Media Production FLM 351. For First Star URI Academy and in collaboration with VSA Art RI, and Adoption RI, Yonty Friesem and Kelsey Greene developed a media literacy curriculum of videography and social networks courses for special populations such as foster youth, and youth-at-risk. Between 2014-2015, Yonty worked with the literacy and math coach in Narragansett Elementary School to develop digital and media literacy curriculum for preK-4th grade aligned with the Common Core State Standards. 

Filmmaking and Media Production. Nowadays, Yonty is producing two podcast one Media Daddies with his friends and colleuge, Alexandre De Voci Sayad on being a parent and a media literacy expert. In the last three years, Yonty recorded interview with world expert on media literacy and launch the MediaEd Podcast in 2026. During their film studies, Yonty worked as a local news reporter and was an executive producer in the Israeli Educational TV Network for two years. Yonty directed five short films, and produced six. After winning the best short film award for his co-production of Mur’alim, they joined the feature production ‘Yeladim Tovim" as a co-producer. The award winning film was chosen by the New York MoMA to be featured in a retrospective of queer films from the last fifteen years. Between 2006 and 2008, Yonty produced the National Dimona Festival for Youth Media Production, which featured 400 Israeli high schools short film contest and offered a three-day workshop for 3,000 students. Between 2013-2015, Yonty produced and directing short videos for the Media Education Lab and the Harrington School of Communication and Media. In 2015 they collaborated with RISCA and the RI Film and TV Office to produce a documentary about GiveMe5. 

Yonty Friesem received their PhD from the joint doctoral program in education at the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College. M.A. Magna Cum Laude in Leadership and Management in Education, Tel-Aviv University. B.A. Magna Cum Laude in Social Science and Humanities at The Open University of Israel, and a professional diploma as a Video and Film Producer from Camera Obscura School of Art.