Web Staff Bios

Kevin has worked as a member of WNYC Digital since 2006. Finding himself online by way of a Bachelor's in Anthropology from SUNY-Binghamton, Kevin still thinks the best example of social media is the Kula Ring. Kevin also holds a Master's degree from Parsons in Communications Design & Technology. Aside from the WNYC family of sites, Kevin has worked on web sites and interactive features for news, good government, arts organizations, publishing, Community Supported Agriculture, and a number of artists and musicians. Offline you will not find Kevin stalking native trout in remote locations.

Christine has produced online news and documentary sites for over a decade, most recently for PBS.org. She chanced upon New Media via death row. After several years as an investigator in the criminal justice system, Chris received her master's degree, graduating from Columbia Journalism School's first New Media class in 1995. She went on to work at Time Magazine as multimedia producer and to co-found an online production company Candide, where she produced sites for PBS.org, Time, Fortune, and Discovery. True to its name, the Candide crew spent merry years in globe-trotting, hair-raising adventures throughout Africa, China, and the Middle East. Chris left Candide to spend a year teaching online storytelling at the University of Barcelona. She has a BA in Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley.

Glenn Mohre was born and raised in Brooklyn. He has lived here all of his life, except for a small stint in San Diego, which was quickly abandoned due to the lack of frequently shifting weather patterns. At Brooklyn College, Glenn was involved in the Computer Music Ensemble, and to this day has continued interests in sounds which may cause spinal damage.

Amy's journalism career spans two centuries and three genres: print, radio and the web. She started work in 1985 as a copy kid at the New York Post and went on to cover the police beat for the Manhattan Spirit and Our Town. Amy split her college years between the U.S. and Japan, studying at both Cornell University and the Kyoto center for Japanese Studies. After graduating in 1994, she was hired by WNYC, where she successfully made the transition to radio as the producer of New York Beat and later the assistant producer and audio engineer for On The Line. In the year 2000, Amy thought it appropriate to click over to the web. She packed up her Rolodex and joined the Interactive team in the Spring of 2000.

Valentina Powers relocated to New York city from Boston and joined the WNYC interactive media department in the fall of 1999. Valentina was born in Florence, Italy. In 1990, she came to the U.S. for college, where she studied French Literature and later Journalism. Her radio career began at Monitor Radio, where she worked for Weekend Edition. After getting her masters, she assisted in the production of several projects with an independent radio producer, including Living Islam and Trespass. Valentina was also the editor of a non-profit educational current-events resource magazine for Social Studies & Geography high school teachers. She designed and maintained websites for her previous employer.

Jacob Smullyan (www.smullyan.org/smulloni/) is a developer of open source software for UNIX systems. As well as keeping wnyc.org up and running, he currently maintains SkunkWeb, the application server that powers wnyc.org. His educational and much of his professional background is not in computer science or programming, but in classical music, which he studied at Yale and Rutgers; he continues to teach piano and occasionally give piano recitals.

Michael started in the online news business in Boston. After graduating from college, with a philosophy degree, he was hired by Community Newspaper Company to be a content producer at TownOnline.com, the umbrella Web site for its 89 weekly newspapers in eastern Massachusetts. Over the next few years, he worked his way up to Senior Editor and, after CNC was bought by the Boston Herald, he managed all of TownOnline.com for Herald Interactive Media. In 2003, he left Boston to return to his native New York. He was hired to help launch the Metro New York newspaper and became the Editor of the New York edition. Now, he's a freelance writer and editor, working as a content prodicer for WNYC but also as a copy editor for the Daily News. His writing has appeared in the Village Voice and Time Out New York, and may be found at michaelpventura.tumblr.com.

Before joining WNYC, Benjamen Walker was an affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and the creator and host of the weekly radio program/podcast Theory of Everything, which aired on public radio stations around the country and was the first weekly public radio program to start podcasting. Aside from being WNYC's Senior Culture Producer, Benjamen now does a music version of TOE on WFMU.

Bryan Young was born in Boston, Massachusetts during the Reagan administration. He attended Emerson College, where he studied the radio business, as well as working for both on-campus stations, WERS-FM and WECB-AM. After spending countless overnight shifts drinking tea and eating clam chowder, Bryan thought it best to pack up for New York in 2007. Before joining WNYC, he worked in the Film & TV Licensing Department at Matador Records, as well as being a Project Manager for an IT firm based in New Jersey. He joined the Digital team in June of 2008.

People at WNYC