Hanamura said the best pitch is always persona

[Mostafa044]

Ubois got to know Hanamura when he was at the MacArthur Foundation and she was spearheading the Archive’s proposal for the MacArthur 100&Change competition. Although the Archive wasn’t awarded the grant, it was one of eight semi-finalists of nearly 2,000 applicants for the grant. The major endeavor, Ubois said, required Hanamura to thoroughly imagine and manage a multi-step process, while enlisting the support of others to participate. “Her vision on the one hand and her implementation skills on the other are superpowers,” Ubois said.


Brewster Kahle, Wendy Hanamura and John Gonzalez supporting Internet Archive’s “100&Change” grant submission.
Hanamura began her career in New York as a reporter-researcher at data provider Time Magazine, after graduating summa cum laude from Harvard University. She moved into broadcast journalism and worked as a correspondent in Tokyo for World Monitor on the Discovery Channel. In the San Francisco Bay area she worked at the local CBS affiliate, covering breaking news, and then as a producer at PBS. Hanamura ran an independent documentary company for 15 years, spent time as General Manager of independent tv network Link TV and was chief digital officer at KCET/Link before joining the Archive in 2014.



“I think of myself as a storyteller for change. What it comes down to is telling your story—your vision—convincingly and bringing others into that vision and finding ways to integrate them,” said Hanamura, 62, who lives in San Francisco. “That’s just always what I’ve done whether it be for Time Magazine, a television network, PBS or the Internet Archive.”