About

Doug Mitchell

Doug Mitchell is the founder and project leader of NPR’s “Next Generation Radio.” It’s a series of digital media professional development projects for college students, recent graduates, and early career professionals.

Also, Doug is Board Chair for the Center for Collaborative Journalism. on the Board of Trustees for the American Press Institute, Advisor to the Board for A Beautiful Mind Foundation, and an advisor to the Founder of Adonde Media, a Spanish-language podcast company.

Alisa Barba

Alisa Joyce Barba is an award-winning journalist, producer, writer, and editor with 25 years’ experience in both network and public broadcasting.

She is currently the Managing Editor for American Amplified, a CPB-funded initiative aimed at bringing a different kind of reporting into public media coverage of the 2020 election and beyond. America Amplified focuses on providing resources for public media to meaningfully engage with the communities they cover.

Brenda Salinas Baker

Brenda Salinas Baker is a writer and audio producer. She started her professional career as an NPR Kroc Fellow and has filed dozens of stories for NPR, Marketplace, PRI and a number of podcasts including Life of the Law. She manages the Google Podcasts creator program in partnership with PRX and is the board president of the Association of Independents in Radio. She has served as a judge for Spotify’s Sound Up, the Arias and the British Podcast Awards. Brenda has a B.A. in Economics with a Special Concentration in Francophone Studies from Columbia University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction from St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn. She was selected for Poynter Leadership Academy for Diversity in Media in 2019. An avid reader, she is currently working on a novel and a collection of short stories.

Jeb Sharp

Jeb Sharp (she/her) is an award-winning audio journalist and educator with deep experience in public radio and podcasting as a reporter, producer, and editor. She attended the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and started out as a reporter and news director at Raven Radio, KCAW, in Sitka, Alaska. She went on to report for WBUR in Boston and later for The World at WGBH which became her professional home for 20 years. Her work there won numerous honors including a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. Jeb is currently producing and editing podcasts, and teaching audio at the School of Journalism at Northeastern University. She is also a member of PMJA’s Editor Corps.

Debraun Thomas

DeBraun Thomas is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to Lexington, Kentucky in 2008. After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 2012, he began working as an intern at Lexington’s NPR station WUKY, was brought on staff part time in 2013 and has been full time since 2019. He produced The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (2012) a documentary on the March on Frankfort (2013), and Kentucky’s Pancake Queen: How Nancy Green Became Aunt Jemima (2021) for WUKY. DeBraun is the morning host of Rock & Roots, Monday-Friday from 9am-Noon and is also the host of the Crunkadelic Funk Show which airs Saturdays at 9pm on WUKY. In 2016 DeBraun founded the Take Back Cheapside Movement, a coalition of various organizing groups that led to the removal of two confederate statues located at Cheapside, the site of a former slave market in Lexington and in 2020, Cheapside was renamed Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park. In addition to producing radio features and organizing, DeBraun also spends his time writing and performing music. He released his first album, All My Colors Are Blind, in 2015 and continues to perform regionally with his band.

Diana Williams

Diana loves telling stories about the human experience. She’s the founder of Williams Multimedia, a production company specializing in audio storytelling. Her reporting has focused on histories of people of color, LGBTQ+ people and the intersections where those two communities meet. Diana holds an MA in journalism and public affairs from American University.

Diana and her husband Clarence have lived with their two sons in the Shenandoah Valley since 1997. She is on the Board of Directors for the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge and the Virginia School Boards Association. She is also Vice Chair of the Waynesboro School Board.

Marea Chaveco

The golden thread throughout Marea’s career is her overarching desire to make the world a better place which has compelled her to associate herself with organizations that aspire to do good.

Marea’s passion for life and connecting with others along with her intrinsic acumen for finance and business administration has allowed her to grow the organizations where she has devoted her time. She has held senior management positions at Big Bad Boo Productions, Futuro Media Group and Joan Garry Consulting where in addition to day-to-day operations she was responsible for strategic planning as well as managing multimillion-dollar budgets. She is
looking forward to starting a new adventure at Sonoro Global Media as part of their executive leadership team. Marea looks forward to contributing to the important work being done by Headway.

Marea is a lifelong New Yorker and lives in Brooklyn with her family which includes
multiple fur babies.