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Julia McEvoy,
the executive producer
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Biographies

Jad Abumrad

Jad Abumrad is the host and producer of WNYC's Radio Lab, an award-winning radio program that blends ideas, sound, and storytelling. Prior to joining WNYC, Jad worked as an independent producer/documentary-maker for a variety of local and national programs including All Things Considered, Morning Edition, On the Media, and Studio 360. He was also a member of the team that launched The Next Big Thing and has been a teacher-mentor for WNYC's Radio Rookies. Jad studied music composition and creative writing at Oberlin College.

Shawn Allee

Shawn Allee is an independent producer based in Chicago. He helped plan election 2004 coverage for Chicago Public Radio’s newsroom. He’s also reported and produced for All Things Considered and Morning Edition newscasts. Aside from contributing to National Public Radio, Shawn has contributed to several Chicago-area magazines and community newspapers.

Shawn is a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Kelsey Dilts

Lex Gillespie

Lex Gillespie is a freelance producer based in Washington, D.C. whose past credits on Chicago Matters include a profile of a South Side charter school and a history of the founding of the juvenile court in Chicago.

In 2001, he wrote and produced a series on rhythm and blues music, Let the Good Times Roll, which was broadcast on Chicago Public Radio and distributed by Public Radio International.

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Sonari Rhodes Glinton

Sonari Rhodes Glinton works in Chicago Public Radio's newsroom as an intern/newswriter. He has also contributed to NPR and BBC Scotland. Before joining the newsroom he was the intern/assistant producer for Chicago Matters: Our Next Generation. Sonari got his start in radio through Chicago Public Radio's Ear to the Ground Mentorship program.

To make money while interning, Sonari has spent the last year working as server at a popular Navy Pier restaurant.

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Robbie Harris

Robbie is the former news director of Chicago Public Radio and of WHYY in Philadelphia. As new director at WHYY, she hosted All Things Considered and did on air continuity for radio and TV. She also edited for Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

She was a reporter and Weekend Edition host for New Hampshire Public Radio before becoming the humanities reporter. Robbie became the humanities reporter at WHYY in 1991, where she created one of the first radio book discussion programs, Storyline, with a grant from the NEH. It won numerous national awards.

Robbie is an award winning documentarian. Her six hour radio recreation of Pearl Harbor day 1941, aired on the 50th anniversary, won best documentary from numerous organizations, including Public Radio News Directors Inc (PRINDI).

Other award winning documentaries include, the two hour Gathering of Poets, hosted by Noah Adams, as well as numerous long form news and feature reports.

Robbie is president of her own production company, Lucid Dream Productions, which specializes in environmental issues.

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Sandy Hausman

Sandy Hausman is a regular contributor to Marketplace, Living on Earth, and The World. Before launching her career as a freelance video and audio producer, she served as news director for a station in Chicago and produced Getting Personal, an evening talk show on relationships and sexuality. She also anchored afternoon drive-time newscasts for another Chicago station, and was a Benton Fellow at the University of Chicago. Hausman currrently hosts a national public affairs program called Viewpoints and is editor of Glenview Watch, a weekly Internet newsletter on politics and public affairs in that suburb.

Ann Heppermann & Kara Oehler

This Brooklyn-based duo has been producing national and international radio pieces for the past four years. Their work has appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition and Justice Talking, PRI’s This American Life and American Routes, WBUR’s Here and Now and Only a Game, Minnosota Public Radio’s Savvy Traveler, WPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, WNYC’s Radio Lab, CBC’s Outfront, Voice of America’s Our World, National Native News and Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight and Re:sound. In 2003, they were chosen by Chicago Public Radio to produce a 30-minute documentary about sex and the Internet for its Speaking of Sex series. That same year they were commissioned by Chicago Public Radio's Third Coast International Audio Festival to create a short documentary on thirst for the festival’s first ever ShortDoc series. And I Walked…Stories from the Border received a Golden Reel for “National News and Public Affairs Feature” from NFCB and first place honors for “Use of Sound” from RTNDA and the Arizona Associated Press. In 2003, the pair also received a grant from the Arizona Humanities Council to produce a 30-minute documentary on the “Harvey Girls and the American West” for Arizona Public Radio. This documentary won first place honors from both PRNDI and RTNDA.

Lynette Kalsnes

Alex Kotlowitz

Alex Kotlowitz has contributed to the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and Chicago Public Radio's This American Life. His articles have also appeared in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone, the Atlantic, and the New Republic.

Alex, who has been a distinguished visitor at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal from 1984 to 1993, writing on urban affairs and social policy. Prior to joining the Journal, he freelanced for five years, contributing to the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, All Things Considered, and Morning Edition, as well as various magazines. His journalism honors include the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the George Polk Award. He is the recipient of two honorary degrees and the John LaFarge Memorial Award for Interracial Justice given by New York's Catholic Interracial Council.

Alex's most recent book is Never a City So Real. He also is the author of The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America's Dilemma, and the best-selling book There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America.

Larry Massett

	© 1984 Scott Carrier

Larry Massett is a senior independent radio producer. His documentaries on a wide range of topics have appeared on All Things Considered and other vehicles.

His documentary about the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, On the Edge of Reason, won the l993 AAAS-Westinghouse science journalism award. His 13-part CPB/Annenberg series on the modernization of China and Japan won an Armstrong Award. He produced several of Dupont-award-winning DNA Files programs.

His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Town Creek Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, and others. He was, with Jay Allison and Bill Siemering, one of the founders, and for many years the host, of the award-winning documentary series Soundprint.

Todd Melby and Diane Richard

Todd Melby and Diane Richard are independent radio producers and print journalists based in Minneapolis. For the past three years, they have collaborated as senior writers and producers of Contemporary Sexuality, the national monthly newsletter of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists.

In 2004, Diane and Todd's documentary for Chicago Public Radio's Speaking of Sex series won a national 2004 Radio and Television News Directors Edward R. Murrow award for best radio news documentary. You can listen to their production Spirit and Body Willing about seniors and sexuality here.

Todd's radio work has aired on The World, Marketplace, The Savvy Traveler, Great Lakes Radio Consortium, and KFAI community radio. He is a stringer for Reuters and an editor of two neighborhood newspapers.

Diane's radio work has aired on The Savvy Traveler, Great Lakes Radio Consortium, and KFAI community radio. She has written for HOW magazine, the Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly, Architecture Minnesota, and CityBusiness, among many others.

Todd got his bachelor's degree from Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota, and his master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Diane got her bachelor's degree from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, and her master's in journalism from the University of Missouri­Columbia.

Jonathan Menjivar

	Photo by Richard Frank

Jonathan Menjivar is an independent producer in Chicago, Illinois. He has reported and produced work for This American Life, Re:sound, The Savvy Traveler, KCRW, Michigan Radio, and the Peabody Award-winning Web site transom.org, where he was an artist-in-residence in Winter 2002. In 2004 he coproduced the Chicago Matters documentary Dream of Democracy with Barrett Golding.

Monique Parsons

Monique Parsons is a freelance religion reporter based in Chicago. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, she studied comparative religion at Princeton University and holds a master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She has contributed stories to Chicago Public Radio, NPR's Morning Edition, and Beliefnet.com, as well as an on-line journalists' guide to Islam. She is a former religion and ethics reporter for the Home News Tribune of central New Jersey, where her work was honored by the New Jersey Press Association, the Garden State Association of Black Journalists, and the Religion Newswriters Association.

Linda Paul

Linda Paul started out as a volunteer for Chicago Public Radio. She was then hired, where she served consecutively as a talk show producer, executive producer of talk programming, executive producer of Chicago Matters’ 1993 series on race and racism, and acting program director.

Her stories have appeared on Chicago Public Radio, Marketplace, NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, and Day to Day.

Linda has been awarded the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, a PRNDI (Public Radio News Directors Inc.) award, a Mental Health Media Award from the National Mental Health Association, and several Peter Lisagor Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Chicago chapter.

She attended Grinnell College in Iowa.

Jason Reblando

Prior to assisting with Chicago Matters, Jason Reblando was an intern with Chicago Public Radio’s Eight Forty-Eight.

Jason is a freelance photographer in Chicago. His photos have been published in The Chicago Reporter, Catalyst: Voices of Chicago School Reform, The Journal of Ordinary Thought, Northwestern University’s Of Good Report, and The New England Journal of Medicine. He is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Award.

Jason is a graduate of Boston College.