meet the national team

• Michael Rosenfeld – Vice President of National Productions

• Michael is an award-winning filmmaker and writer with extensive leadership experience in documentary production and digital media. He began his career at WNET, the public television station in New York, and then joined National Geographic Television, where he served as a producer, writer, executive producer and company president. In a career spanning network, cable, and public television, Rosenfeld has won dozens of industry awards, including 11 News & Documentary Emmys. He received his BA from Haverford College.
• As Vice President of National Productions at Twin Cities PBS, Michael Rosenfeld oversees programs about history, science, and American society for national broadcast on PBS. Most recently, he has been Executive Producer on two ground-breaking national productions: Facing Suicide and America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston. The latter was just renewed for a second season.

• Fritz Bergmann – Senior Director of TPT National Productions

  As Senior Director of TPT National Productions, Fritz manages operations, planning and production. Before joining TPT National Productions, Bergmann served as Director of Institutional Relations at Minnesota Public Radio | American Public Media from 2001-2008. Prior to that, he spent 13 years in various leadership roles with the American Composers Forum.

Rita Karl – Managing Director, STEM Media and Education Department & Executive Producer, SciGirls

• An accomplished leader of high-profile science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education initiatives in the U.S. and overseas, Rita current leads TPT’s multi-million dollar portfolio of STEM initiatives including the Emmy Award-winning SciGirls PBS television show and SciGirls CONNECT national outreach initiative. Ms. Karl is the Principal Investigator on several National Science Foundation grants, researching strategies that engage girls in non-traditional STEM fields and developing gender equitable and culturally responsive professional development for educators and programs for youth.Previously, Rita served as the Director of Education at the Challenger Center for Space Science Education managing the design, implementation and assessment of STEM education and outreach programs for an international network of learning centers in four countries located in schools, universities and museums. Prior to her work at Challenger Center, Ms. Karl was Director of the USAID project, Educational Technology in Schools, training over 2,500 educators and school administrators in inquiry-based teaching and learning using technology. The program won the “Best Project in USAID” award in 2004. At the NASA Johnson Space Center, Rita designed and led the NASA-award winning Aerospace Scholars program, now in its seventeenth year, encouraging gifted students, young women and minorities to consider careers in professional STEM fields by mentoring them with working engineers. Rita holds a Masters of Science Degree in Instructional Technology and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Directing.