Christopher P. Obal

Christopher P. Obal is a second-year MA student in the Media and Public Engagement (MaPE) program passionate about media literacy, civility in online communities and media production. He previously toiled as an independent filmmaker having produced a feature film "The Squealer" which is now in consideration for numerous international film festivals. Prior to moving to Boulder, he lived in Austin, Texas where he worked for KLRU (Austin's PBS affiliate) on their nationally televised Austin City Limits show. While at KLRU, he served as a Union Stewart and Bargaining Committee member helping to negotiate contracts between the station and the CWA members. As an entrepreneur, Christopher has been self-employed since 2008 as a consultant assisting small businesses with their accounting systems, HR policies, general operations and marketing. In 2011, he started an online ancillary music services company that sold merchandise, tickets and VIP packages for recognizable musicians and bands.

Christopher's current projects include Media Buffs, a student-run unit within the University of Colorado Boulder that provides media production to various departments and Citizen Discourse, a start-up non-profit that will soon launch a social media platform dedicated to providing a civil space for a community of teens to engage with high-caliber content. Christopher is an “inactive” CPA and holds bachelor's degrees in Radio Television Film from UT Austin and Business Administration from Oral Roberts University.