Beyond the Marquee Reporter & Marquee'ologist; Allison Tate-Cortese

SANTA BARBARA (March 6, 2012) – Allison Tate-Cortese of Orlando, Florida has been named the recipient of a $9,500 award in the California Population Awareness Awards (CAPAs) sponsored by CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization). Her winning submissions were in the video, audio and Facebook campaign categories.

A graduate of Oviedo High School, Tate-Cortese is now a freshman at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles studying film and television.

“Being honored and recognized for projects that I put thought, time and effort into is the most fulfilling thing for a media maker, and I am so grateful to CAPS for creating this contest and opportunity for students,” said Tate-Cortese.

The CAPAs were created to increase awareness among California college students of the state’s rapid population growth and to encourage them to explore the sources and implications of continuing growth, and the benefits that a sustainable population would bring. Students from throughout California attending universities, colleges and trade- or career-based schools were encouraged to enter the competition.

Tate-Cortese’s entries were titled California’s “‘POP’-ulation.” Through simple and clear illustrative messaging – an expanding balloon that ultimately pops if air continues being added beyond capacity – the entries effectively conveyed the limits to population growth.

“Allison gets it. And I’m not just talking about her grasp of the facts associated with unsustainable population growth. She also gets it from an ad perspective. Her campaign was wrapped around a real concept. And she carried the concept over into various creative elements, forming a cohesive campaign. This is what I would expect from a USC Film student,” said Brantley Davis, awards judge and executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Davis & Company, of Tate-Cortese’s work.

The $1,500 award in the editorial category went to Robert Neumann, a student at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. Other winners from California colleges were Nick Gailey, Parker Wilson and Sarah Ruffner who each won an iPad 2 in the CAPAs competition.

In addition to Brantley Davis, other contest judges for the CAPA Awards were Keith Cizowski, corporate communications manager for Nissan North America; Robert W. Gillespie, president of Population Communication; Maggie Mixsell, acting teacher at Santa Barbara Community College and the University of California, Santa Barbara; TV and video producer Adam Ross of Santa Barbara’s Black Diamond Productions; and renowned author, ecologist and filmmaker Dr. Michael Tobias, president of Dancing Star Foundation.

About CAPS
CAPS (http://www.CAPSweb.org) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1986 that works to formulate and advance policies and programs designed to stabilize the population of California, the U.S. and the world at levels which will preserve the environment and a good quality of life for all.