Board of Directors

MORE is governed by a volunteer board committed to its mission of representation and empowerment. Meet the people accountable for guiding MORE’s work.

Semantics King Jr. – Acting Board Chair and President

Semantics King Jr. is a former Liberian journalist. Before fleeing Liberia in 1999, he hosted a talk show at Stone FM 105 and served as the station’s Director of Programs. In exile in Ghana, he founded The Vision Newspaper, a human rights publication serving Liberian refugees, and after resettling in the United States, he managed NewLiberian.com, an online newsmagazine for the Liberian community in the Twin Cities. In 2006, he was named a Permanent Journalism Fellow of the World Press Institute, a fellowship that took him through newsrooms across the United States. He founded MORE, the Media Organization for Representation and Empowerment, to build the kind of platform his own career had lacked, one where Africans speak for themselves rather than being spoken about, and he hosts and executive produces its flagship program, The Africa Desk Live.

Professionally, he is a Senior Project Manager at Minnesota IT Services, where he holds the PMP, CISM, CISA, and CompTIA Security+ certifications, as well as Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner credentials. He holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees, in Political Science and Communications, from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (2013), and a Master of Public Affairs from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota (2016). He completes his capstone and MBA portfolio at Bethel University in August 2026 and graduates in the fall.

Heather Cannon – Director

A lifelong Minnesota resident who had the opportunity to live and volunteer in Liberia, Heather is currently the co-founder of Uniting Distant Stars, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that serves Liberian youths in Monrovia, leveraging a Liberia-centered approach. She teaches aspiring volunteers about bookkeeping, social media, and other ways to support the organization. Heather graduated with an individualized degree in culture and legal studies from Metro State University and also earned a Mini-MBA in Non-Profit Organizations from St. Thomas. She currently works as a tax manager at U.S. Bank’s Global Corporate Trust in Minneapolis.

Mamadou Thior – Director

Mamadou Thior is a veteran Senegalese journalist and the former President of CORED, Senegal’s Council for the Observation of Rules of Ethics and Professional Conduct in the Media. For more than a decade, he has been the public voice of media self-regulation in Senegal, defending press freedom through one of West Africa’s most consequential periods, training the next generation of journalists, and representing the Coordination of Press Associations (CAP) on the regional and international stage. Like our founder, Mamadou is a Permanent Journalism Fellow at the World Press Institute (WPI). Mamadou currently serves as Editor-in-Chief at Senegal’s national television, RTS, based in Dakar.

Lane Ayres – Director

Lane (J.D.) is the director of the Jack Mason Law and Democracy Initiative at Books for Africa. Lane coordinates the shipment of vital law books, legal libraries, and democratic resources to African universities, judiciaries, and law societies. Lane operates out of the Minneapolis–St. Paul metro area and regularly travels and collaborates with high-level international legal and academic entities, such as the Malawi judiciary and the dean of Zanzibar University.

Helena Gbasanna – Director

Hisenburg Tokpah – Director