Staff Bios

Leonard Lopate studied painting with Mark Rothko and hosted a gospel music show in the 70's and early 80's. He also marketed records for Slim Whitman and Boxcar Willie, and knows enough Cantonese to order the best dim sum in Chinatown. As Lopate tells it, one of his most exciting guests was a mob guy in the witness protection program, who worked for both the Colombo family and the FBI. "He came in for a taping on a holiday when there weren't too many people around...I think it was Columbus Day...He was flanked by two armed bodyguards. I was fighting a terrible cough that day, and in the middle of the interview, my throat got so raspy, I pushed myself away from the mike, stood up and announced, 'Stop the tape! I've got to get some hot tea.' The mobster took my abrupt movement to be some sort of signal to an assassin and he threw himself on the floor to avoid being shot. The bodyguard in the studio reached for his gun, another guard was outside the door. Luckily, no shots were fired, otherwise I might not be here, but every so often I think about that guest, and wonder if there will ever be a time when he'll feel secure enough to stop throwing himself on the ground."

Before becoming the executive producer of The Leonard Lopate Show, Melissa Eagan was a freelance writer in Rhode Island. Her work appeared in publications like The Christian Science Monitor and Yankee, where she covered everything from windmills to shipwrights. She also edited the reissue of James Franklin’s historic Rhode-Island Gazette. A Greenwich Village native, she attended the Lyceum Kennedy Francais, and graduated from Barnard College with a double major in English and French. She has studied at the Art Students League, the Joffrey Ballet, and with Gary Restifo at Steps, and used to belong to the Collegiate Chorale. She has climbed the Northeast 111 highest mountains. And loves swimming, when she manages to get to the pool in the morning.

Sarah lives in Brooklyn, and enjoys cooking, cleaning, and cats.

Blakeney Schick joined the show in September 2004. She produces the Backstory series and keeps an eye on Washington politics. Blakeney went to Bowdoin College, where she studied Government and Spanish. She isn’t a big fan of roller coasters, but loves a good game of skee ball.

Scott grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Brown University in 2005 without ever having heard of public radio. He randomly came upon WNYC, and it happened to be an interview between Leonard and an historian of organized crime. He’s been hooked since. Scott enjoys neuroscience, movies, urban history, cycling, and getting lost in New York.

In addition to working for The Leonard Lopate Show, Virginia Dorris is a freelance writer who has written frequently about architecture, engineering and construction. She has a MS from the Columbia University School of Journalism and a BS in architecture from the University of Virginia. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and 3 sons.

Bonnie Lafave worked for many years as a producer of national news and current affairs programming with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. In 1996 she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship and spent a year studying at Harvard University. She subsequently moved to New Yok City where she now lives with her husband and two young sons.

Melissa Waldron Lehner has been a producer of television, film, and radio for more than 15 years. She is the founder of Lions Tooth Media, a niche radio and television production company that focuses solely on the political, economic, and cultural perspectives of food. Before working for WNYC, she was the Co-Producer of a PBS current affairs TV series called World @ Large with David Gergen. series.

Brigid Bergin will graduate from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in December 2007. When she's not at WNYC or in class, she can be found swimming in the Hudson River, cycling around Central Park or running from here to there. She is a proud Western New Yorker by birth. Although from Rochester, Brigid insists she has never used the word "pop" to describe carbonated beverages.

Rory Bernstein, a reformed HTML jockey, is also an artist who studied painting at Wesleyan University and the University of Illinois of Chicago. She has lived in the country's best public radio cities, which is how she got hooked. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her divine husband and two adorable daughters.

Barbara studied art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and New York University, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras. She is also a contributing producer for WNYC's Survival Kit. When not at WNYC, she can generally be found making pottery in her Greenwich Village studio.

Paula Crossfield is a freelance writer and chef who lives in the East Village with her husband and cat. She enjoys traveling, finding strange characters and writing about their lives, trying new recipes out on family and friends and musing about food, health, the environment and other cultures.

Sara-Rivka Davidson loves coffee, the beach, and Australia. She has a master's in journalism from RMIT University in Melbourne, and hopes to be a public radio producer.

Kim Gittleson is a senior at Harvard University where she has a weekly morning jazz show on WHRB. She's enjoyed doubling her library with her Underappreciated selections and she hopes she'll be strong enough to lug all of those books back up to Boston.

Samantha likes to consider herself a world citizen. Though she is originally from New Jersey, she lived half her life abroad in Switzerland and Holland. She began working on the Lopate Show in 2006, and in June 2007, she went to Sierra Leone to help develop local radio. Having recently graduated from NYU, she can often be found sitting in coffee shops around the village, trying to write poetry.

Sophie is a student and a math tutor in New York. She likes making clothes, hiking, and banana cream pie. She lives in Brooklyn.

Tanya Wiedeking worked for many years in the BBC's publishing division. She studied English and Italian in Berlin, and lived in England, Germany and Italy before coming to New York. Her dream is to become a country music star, but in the meantime she listens to live country music whenever she can.

Additional information on staff biographies for all of WNYC's shows