Founding Senior Producer (2003 - 2007). Created award-winning public media content, developing StoryCorps’ signature sound and style. With my team, we produced and edited the first hundred weekly broadcasts for NPR’s Morning Edition, culled from tens of thousands of interviews; launched the StoryCorps podcast; created the New York Times bestselling book Listening is an Act of Love; and an interactive website.
TWO IN A MILLION: DANNY AND ANNIE PERASA
Producer
Danny Perasa was a clerk for Off Track Betting in New York. His wife, Annie, was a nurse. To this day, their love story is one of StoryCorps’ most well-known pieces.
This piece also ran on P.OV. as an animated short.
SAMPLE OF THE FIRST 100+ BROADCASTS WHICH I SENIOR PRODUCED:
In 1985, at a time when AIDS was still entering America's consciousness, 40-year-old Tom Ward died of the disease. His sister tells the story of how the disease affected this one family.
An interview between a mother and her 12-year-old son who has Asperger’s Syndrome. The broadcast was turned into an animated short.
An early piece from the September 11th Initiative; one of these stories became an animated short and the September 11th Initiative was recognized with a Peabody award.
A retired Memphis, Tennessee sanitation worker and his wife were at the Mason Temple on April 3, 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous speech “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” One day later, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated. The couple remembers hearing the speech in person and then learning about the death of Dr. King.
A competitive eater recalls the thrill of winning his first competition.
THE GROUND WE LIVED ON: A FATHER’S LAST DAYS (13 min)
Producer
Premiered November 13, 2006, on All Things Considered
Journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc faces mortality and loss in recordings she made during the last months of her father's life. The Ground We Lived On is a 13-minute radio documentary on loving and losing a parent and the record of a father’s final gift to his daughter: helping her to conceive of a world without him.
Recipient of the Third Coast Audio Festival's Listener Impact Award.
