NETA Consulting Team

Skip Hinton served as the president of NETA and its predecessor, the Southern Educational Communications Association, from 1989 to 2017. In addition to overseeing staff and activities as NETA’s president, Hinton also provided staff support and counsel for the public television Affinity Group Coalition, a policy and planning association that represents the interests and concerns of every public television licensee type. He served in a similar role for the Organization of State Broadcasting Executives (OSBE), an association of CEOs representing statewide public television networks.

During his tenure with NETA, Hinton established NETA Consulting as a service to support public media organizations in research, planning, and executive recruitment. During this time, NETA also established the NETA Business Center. The Business Center now provides outsource business services to dozens of public media licensees and other associated organizations.

Milton Clipper is the former president of Public Broadcasting Atlanta. His career in management spans over 40 years in the media industry. He began his career with Post-Newsweek (The Washington Post, WTOP-TV, and WJXT-TV). After close to twenty years, Clipper left to run his own successful Washington, DC based advertising agency, serving a number of national clients. He was later persuaded to return to the industry on the public media side, overseeing membership, marketing, and creative services for WHMM (now WHUT), the PBS member station at Howard University.

Clipper has been invited throughout the world as an opinion leader, participating on many national and international panels, and has had several published papers. He has also sat on many boards, including Integrity CDC, the Atlas Performing Arts Center, Cultural Tourism DC, the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta College of Art, Consumer Credit Counseling Services, Junior Achievement, Public Radio International, the Association of Public Television Stations, and was past chair of the Integrated Media Association

In addition to his work with NETA Consulting, Clipper is also the founder of Clipper and Company, a firm providing training and consultation in DEI. (See ad below.)

Tom Rieland has more than four decades of executive leadership in public and commercial broadcasting. Most recently, he served as general manager of WOSU Public Media in Columbus, Ohio. WOSU’s coverage area includes over 2.5 million Ohioans served through its PBS, NPR, and classical music stations. Rieland led a strong, community-based, university-licensed organization that opened a new $32 million headquarters near the Ohio State campus. In 2021, WOSU concluded its most successful capital campaign in history. 

Rieland has extensive experience in strategic planning, university licensee strategies, creative nonprofit collaborations, editorial integrity issues, technology innovation, and educational engagement. The Ohio State press published his history of detailing the birth of educational broadcasting: Sparks Flew – WOSU’s Century on the Air in 2019. Rieland has a degree in mass communications from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and a master’s degree in journalism/political science from the University of Mississippi.

Rieland has served on many community boards including the United Way of Central Ohio and the Gateway Film Center. He served two terms on the PBS Board and as chair of the NETA Board and the Public Media Affinity Group Coalition (AGC). He served on the founding board of the Public Media Venture Group (PMVG) and twice as president of the Ohio Educational Television Stations. Rieland retired from WOSU in January 2022.