Cathaleen Curtiss is Director of Photography, The Buffalo News – Buffalo, NY.
Curtiss is an award winning photojournalist and editor. Cathaleen holds a BA from Central Michigan University.
As a photojournalist, she has documented events from Super Bowls to Superpower Summits, covering three presidential administrations, generated daily assignments and documented international news. In 1990 the White House News Photographers Association recognized her as the Photographer of the Year. She is an active member in the National Press Photographers Association and the White House News Photographers Association. She is a board member of the National Press Photographers Foundation.
As Vice President of Global Photography at AOL, Cathaleen built and managed a global staff of visual content editors who created visual presentations for AOL worldwide. Cathaleen was a visionary in creating and successfully leading a staff in the US, Europe, Mexico and India to support the ongoing need for visual content on AOL. Growing the staff from 2 photo editors in 1997 to over 80 by 2009, Cathaleen played a key role in expanding the use of photojournalism online and is respected as a chief innovator in the digital space. The photography department under her direction accounted for over 12 billion page views a year. She also oversaw the direction, development and implementation of AOL Visions and Pixcetera.com the basis for many online photo sites in the current market.
While at AOL she managed and assigned photographers while elevating the use of photography at the online service. In 2005 her staff of photographers and photo editors played an important role in AOL winning its first Daytime Emmy in the nontraditional broadband delivery platform category, for the Live 8 Concert.
In 2008, AOL presented Cathaleen with the first AOL/Time Warner Heroes Award in recognition of her department’s role in driving more than 70% of the page views on AOL content sites.
Curtiss was Coordinator of Entrepreneurship at Daemen College. She is managing director of JPGmag, National Clip Chair for the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) and a member of the board for CenterSpace. She also writes a blog “As I See It”. For over three years she has been recording an “iPhonoto” a day. She has had solo photography exhibits in NYC and Buffalo as well as juried work at the Corcoran Art Gallery, Library of Congress, the Building Museum and National Geographic. Most recently her work “AS i SEE IT” was exhibited at CEPA Gallery.