Who we are
Franciscan Media’s Board of Directors
Margaret Carney is a member of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities. Her education in theology and Franciscan studies took place at Duquesne University, the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University and the Pontifical University Antonianum in Rome. She served on the commission responsible for the revisions of the Rule of the Third Order Regular in 1982 and completed her research on the Rule of St. Clare in 1988.
From 1999-2004 she was the Director of the Franciscan Institute and served as a founding member of the Commission on the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition. Her presidency of St. Bonaventure University began in 2004 and she retired from that post in 2016. She continues to serve as a lecturer and leader for Catholic higher education and Franciscan organizations of the United States.
Her most recent book is Light of Assisi: The Story of Saint Clare.
Father Dan Kroger, OFM, is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio. Ordained in 1973, he taught at Roger Bacon High in Cincinnati until 1979 when he received his first assignment as a missionary in the Philippines. There he served as a rural pastor in the province of Biliran. Assigned again to teaching in 1987, he earned a doctorate at the University of Notre Dame in Christian Ethics.
He returned to the Philippines in 1992. He taught at De La Salle University, where he worked with college students and graduate students from all around Asia. He gained tenure and held the Estrada Chair of Catholic Theology. He taught at seminaries as well. He lived in Manila in an international Franciscan community of friars from the Philippines, Vietnam, China, Korea, and Japan.
In June, 2007, he became the Publisher/CEO of Franciscan Media in Cincinnati. He lives in the friar community at St. Anthony Shrine.
David O’Brien is the Chief Financial Officer of the Province of St. John the Baptist, the Order of Friars Minor, a religious order of men founded in 1209 AD by St. Francis of Assisi and affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. O’Brien is responsible for planning, organizing, directing and evaluating the Province’s system of financial management and business administration, including annual budgeting, financial reporting, investments monitoring, and financial analysis of all Province sponsored ministries. Mr. O’Brien acts in an advisory role to the Province Board of Trustees on a variety of business matters, and is Chair of the Province Investment Committee.
Prior to his tenure as CFO for the Province of St. John the Baptist, Mr. O’Brien served as Chief Executive Officer of Renwick and Associates, where he executed operational and general management duties while serving as one of the firm’s leading consultants, specializing in real estate market analysis, economic damage analysis, business valuation, and economic development services.
John O’Connor is a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and graduated from Northwestern University. He began his career as an equity portfolio manager at Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh. He continued his career at Fort Washington Investment Advisors where he worked for 27 years. He retired from Fort Washington and currently serves on six non-profit Boards. John and his wife Heidi have four children and six grandchildren.
John is a member of the Secular Franciscan Order.
Mark Stepaniak is counsel to the law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP. As a partner, Mark represented employers in all aspects of labor and employment law, including litigation for employers in the federal and state courts involving wrongful discharge, sexual harassment, race and age discrimination, retaliatory discharge, and wage and hour matters. He is experienced in trade secret and non-competition agreement litigation. He also represented religious organizations in alleged abuse cases across the country. Mark is an honoree of Best Lawyers in America since 1995, and was voted “Lawyer of the Year” for Management Labor Law in 2016.
Mark represented clients in the broadcast, music, automotive, soft drink beverage, plastics, logistics, distributing, dairy, and paper industries and for public sector employers, including hospitals, the Cincinnati Public Schools, and the University of Cincinnati. Mark has served as a director or trustee for various nonprofit entities including the Convalescent Hospital Fund for Children, St. Ursula Academy, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio. In 2021, Mark received the Francis Medal for service to the Province of St. John the Baptist.
Michael Vanderburgh is executive director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Dayton, Ohio. A native of Dayton, Michael’s career path included police officer and corrections officer positions, ownership of a life insurance agency in northern Ohio and northwestern Illinois, and since 1999 nonprofit leadership in financial development and executive positions in Iowa, Kentucky, and Ohio.
Michael is a graduate of The George Washington University (M.A.), Wright State University (B.A), and Sinclair Community College (A.A.S.), and attended law school at Ohio Northern University and the University of Dayton.
Over a decade of service for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Michael planned and led the historic One Faith, One Hope, One Love capital campaign, which raised over $165 million in pledges to benefit regional ministries of the Catholic Church in western and southwestern Ohio.
