Staff

Radio Rookies senior producer Kaari Pitkin first became interested in radio at the age of thirteen, when a radio host told her she had a good voice for the air. Now, of course, it’s not her voice on the radio but the Rookies’, and she loves nothing more than helping them tell their stories. Kaari started at WNYC in 1997 as an intern and went on from there to become the newsroom’s senior producer. During her tenure in the newsroom, Kaari produced and edited everything from major breaking news events to coverage of the most quotidian aspects of life in New York. She has been involved in Radio Rookies both as a mentor and a producer since 2000. Kaari graduated magna cum laude from Smith College in 1994. She is originally from Cambridge, MA and now calls Brooklyn home.

Sanda Htyte is Radio Rookies Associate Producer. She has been with Radio Rookies since interning at the Elmhurst workshop in summer of 2005. She is also a freelance video producer, director, editor and a CUNY Professor. While interning at Radio Rookies, Sanda was completing her MFA in documentary producing. Having studied both video and radio production at her Alma Mata, Brooklyn College, CUNY, she was asked to teach introduction to radio production as Adjunct Professor in Fall of 2006 as well as Spring 2007.

It was by chance that Sanda enrolled in a radio production class. She had no idea just how fulfilling this would turn out to be. This one class had made a remarkable impression, and led her to pursue a career not only in video, but also in radio. Video did not kill the radio this time. She lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Courtney Stein is an Assistant Producer. A proud native of Minnesota, Courtney comes to Radio Rookies with a background in social work and radio production. Beyond her work for Rookies, she runs a radio workshop to teach young girls who've been commercially sexually exploited how to document their lives in sound. In the past, Courtney has done production work for American RadioWorks and StoryCorps.

John Keefe is Executive Producer for News and Information at WNYC New York Public Radio (AM820 and 93.9 FM), where he leads the station's news coverage, documentary and investigative projects, "The Brian Lehrer Show,” and "NPR's On The Media," and Radio Rookies. Before leading the WNYC news efforts, Keefe was responsible for developing new programs at WNYC and was a co-producer of the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning documentary, "The Execution Tapes." In the early 1990's Keefe was co-creator and senior producer of Kinetic City Super Crew, an educational radio-drama series for children, for which he won the George Foster Peabody award.

Marianne McCune was a documentary and educational filmmaker before sliding over into the world of public radio. She worked in Gambia, Estonia, Croatia, London, San Francisco, and New York, focusing as often as possible on programs for and about young people. Her documentary "Memories Do Not Burn," about a summer camp for refugee children from Bosnia and Croatia, won numerous awards. In 1998, she began freelancing in public radio and discovered how well sounds and words alone can paint pictures and tell intimate stories. Marianne is the founder of Radio Rookies and has been both producer and editor in the past. She's a full-time reporter now, but she remains an important part of the Radio Rookies program.

Czerina Patel started her career in radio with Radio Rookies, after completing her Masters of Science at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She was the Senior Producer of the program and was involved since its inception. Czerina helped build and guide the program through its first six years, and in addition to running Radio Rookies, she taught the workshops, produced the stories and developed strong relationships with the Rookie participants. During her tenure at WNYC, Czerina built the Radio Rookies program into one of the most well known youth media programs in the country, with regular broadcasts on NPR and receiving numerous prestigious radio awards including the George Foster Peabody Award.

At the beginning of 2006, Czerina left Radio Rookies to start her own organization - YenzaTM - which creates and supports media and development projects to make positive social change in the world. Czerina currently works between New York, her native South Africa and the rest of the world, but her love for the program and the Rookies remains. Czerina retains the title of Senior Producer Emeritus, and is still involved in aspects of Radio Rookies from time to time.

Wayne Shulmister began his professional career as host of Woody's Morning Jam at WORT FM in Madison, Wisconsin. He then moved on to assistant engineer at NYC's legendary Power Station recording studio. From there he jettisoned to The Juilliard School where he served as the Assistant Director of the Recording Department. Currently, he resides in Control Room 8 of WNYC Radio where he mixes news, Cultural and Radio Rookies features.

Short Wave Staff

Mikkel Clausen is a Danish radio and television producer, who has been working as a freelance producer in New York for the past year. In Denmark, he produced numerous programs for kids and young people. Mikkel is currently working on a radio documentary for Danish Broadcasting about Harlem and the 2008 presidential election. He won a Prix Italia award for the documentary film 'The Healing' in 2007.

Veralyn Williams is a playwright, radio journalist and a media studies student at Hunter College. In 2004, Williams joined WNYC’s youth journalism program, "Radio Rookies." Her radio documentary about her struggle to identify her immigration status, "Legal Status," is one of three Rookies pieces that won the 2005 George Foster Peabody Award. "Legal Status" and Williams’ second work, “The N-Word,” have aired locally on WNYC 93.9 FM / AM 820 and nationally on National Public Radio (NPR). Williams was born in Sierra Leone and grew up in the Bronx. She strives, in everything she does, to give the world an inside look at what she sees and experiences as a Black African Woman in America.

Josh Gleason is an independent radio producer. He has told stories of unlikely ingenuity and other matters for This American Life, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Day to Day and Weekend America. Before his production stint with Radio Rookies he was a producer with the Blunt Youth Radio Project, a teen-hosted public affairs show that airs on WMPG in Portland, Maine and a teaching assistant at the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies.

Posey Gruener is an independent radio producer. She lives in Brooklyn, and happily splits her time between making radio and writing grants for a youth media organization. She used to live in Seattle, where she taught teens to make films and to write poetry. Actually, she used to live a lot of places. Like: Portland, Maine; Portland, Oregon; Palm Beach, Florida; Salt Lake City, Utah; Northport, Washington; Sun Valley, Idaho; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; Dakar, Senegal; and Grinnell, Iowa. But that's another story, entirely.

Jen Poyant began her radio career at Virginia's NPR member station WVTF. After she moved to the New York area she began reporting for public radio stations in the region, including WBGO, WHYY and WNYC. She's contributed to NPR news as a feature and spot reporter. Her beats have included the State House in Trenton and the culture and politics of Newark. Jen has served as a production intern for the Leonard Lopate show and is a contributing producer for WNYC's The Takeaway. She holds a masters degree in Cultural and Critical Studies from the University of London, Birkbeck College.

Former Staff

Before joining Radio Rookies Melissa Robbins worked as an independent radio producer and as an associate producer with The Kitchen Sisters and Homelands Productions. She has reported and produced pieces for NPR, BBC World Service, Third Coast Festival and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Prior to radio, Melissa worked as a newspaper reporter in London and New York City. In 2005, she left bright lights and big cities for a quiet life in Woods Hole, MA, but was lured back by this opportunity to work with the amazing Rookies.

Stacy Abramson is the now the Executive Director of Reboot, a non profit that is working to help redefine the conversation around Judaism for the next generation. At WNYC Radio, Stacy was the Executive Producer at Large, which included overseeing Radio Rookies. She landed at WNYC Radio by way of the New York-based production company Sound Portraits Productions, where she was a producer and Managing Director of the non-profit. During her six years there, she produced a number of radio documentaries including "The Jewish Giant," the Sunshine Hotel, and Witness to an Execution” (Peabody Winner).

Janelle Lewis joined Radio Rookies back in the summer of 1999, when it was called The Harlem Radio and Photography Project. She did a story that was close to her heart --about her cultural identity. She went to college for one year, took a break and during this long break she interned on On The Line (The Brian Lehrer Show) and in 2002 she had her first daughter Jandora (also the first Rookie baby). The running joke around WNYC is that while in labor, Janelle asked for a tape recorder instead of painkillers (Janelle says that's the reporter in her). In fact, the tape of Janelle's labor and Jandora's delivery aired on WNYC on Janelle's first Mothers' Day. Janelle is considered a "big sister" to many of the Rookies.

Miguel Macias is a radio producer, sound designer and musician from Sevilla, Spain. For the three and a half year before became the Radio Rookies Associate Producer, Miguel worked as the assistant to the director of the Radio Studies Program at CUNY's Brooklyn College, helping college students learn radio, while simultaneously earning his Master of Fine Arts degree at the Department of Television and Radio. During that time he was deeply involved in the construction of the new studios of Brooklyn College Radio and the development of the Radio Studies Program, and he produced The Search for Intelligent Life a weekly radio magazine. Miguel also worked as a radio instructor at Camp Ballibay for the Performing Arts where for two consecutive summers he coordinated more than two hundred shows produced by teenaged campers. Miguel has produced long format radio pieces as well as live radio. Among the most important to him is Chasing Love, a one-hour radio documentary that explores the relationship between capitalism and romantic love in western society. Miguel is also an electronic music composer and a multimedia and video artist. Miguel is absolutely thrilled to join the Radio Rookies team and continue doing what has been the main motivation of his life: helping young people produce radio and find a way to express themselves.

Karen Michel, Radio Rookies Editor, is an upstate New York- based independent radio producer who got her start in media as a guest on Art Linkletter's "Kids Say the Darndest Things." She's lived and worked in Alaska, Mexico, Japan, Greenland, India, Canada, Kenya, Nepal, Madagascar and other geographies real and imagined. Her academic training is in visual arts and cross-cultural education; she's been an exhibiting artist (jewelry, photography, drawing, and holography), and a teacher. Since falling into a job in public radio, in Fairbanks, Alaska long ago, she's been committed to sound, as an audio artist and as a journalist. There've been many awards and fellowships : Peabody, Robert Wood Johnson, NEA, CPB, NFCB, the Japan Foundation and the Fulbright/Indo-U.S. Subcommission among them. Perhaps radio is a calling, maybe it's craziness or compulsion; maybe there's no difference.

Volunteer Interns

Dan Cayer joined Radio Rookies soon after his move to Brooklyn in the fall of 2006. As an intern, Dan has had the opportunity to work with New Brighton’s brave Rookies at the workshop and on interviews throughout Staten Island. Before Rookies, Dan was an associate producer at WSHU in Fairfield, CT. He’s led teenagers on bicycle trips across New England and Europe, and biked from Mississippi to California (getting rained on only once). Dan graduated with a degree in Philosophy from Connecticut College.