Staff
Jina Chung, Executive Director (she/her) jina@radioproject.org +1 (662) 471-8456 text/voice
Jina Chung
Jina Chung is a Korean-American nonprofit leader with over a decade of experience in fundraising and nonprofit management. She is a fierce advocate of Community-Centric Fundraising and helps mission-driven organizations use fundraising models rooted in equity and social justice to support their vision. She joined Making Contact as Executive Director in September 2022.
Previously, Jina served as the Senior Director of Development & Partnerships at the International Documentary Association (IDA), overseeing membership, institutional and individual giving, and corporate sponsorship programs. She also managed a diverse portfolio of income-generating programs, including Screening Series, IDA Awards, Awards Spotlight, and advertising. As a fundraising consultant, she has provided strategic advice and organizational planning on prospect research, institutional and individual giving, corporate sponsorship, and membership programs. Jina has a strong affinity and passion for building and implementing systems to expand an organization’s fundraising capacity. Outside work, Jina enjoys spending her free time with her husband and two sons, Atticus and Arlo, and indulging in her hobby of paper planning and pen collecting.
Jessica Partnow, Interim Senior Producer (she/her) jessica@radioproject.org
Jessica Partnow
Jessica is a nonprofit leader, educator, and former international public radio journalist. She was the founding executive director of The Seattle Globalist, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to elevating diverse voices through media. She earned her MBA with a focus on leadership, and now brings that education and nearly twenty years in the nonprofit sector to consulting work with small and growing organizations. She has worked with dozens of small nonprofits on corporate formation, organizational structure, board development, strategic planning, mission and vision development, program planning, operations, fundraising, and communications. Jessica specializes in interim leadership and leadership transitions for small nonprofit organizations. She was Interim Executive Director for Making Contact September 2021-December 2022.
Amy Gastelum, Producer (she/her) amy@radioproject.org
Amy Gastelum
Amy is a freelance radio producer/reporter, public health nurse, audio storytelling instructor and mother. She’s lived and worked in Indianapolis, New York City and Providence. Gastelum earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing from Indiana University in 2008. She began her nursing career on the antenatal unit at the county hospital in Indianapolis and has continued to work in underserved communities since. She has specialized in mother/baby care, primarily as a public health nurse, making home visits. In 2012 she graduated from the eight-week intensive Transom Story Workshop for radio storytelling and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Butler University. She has reported for PRI’s The World, NPR News, Undark, Side Effects Public Media, Guernica Magazine, and has taught audio storytelling at Indiana University. Gastelum co-produced a limited podcast, Mother, and is mother of two children.
Salima Hamirani, Producer salima@radioproject.org
Salima Hamirani
Salima is an Oakland-based radio journalist who earned her chops as a producer at KPFA’s Apex Express and as the Friday host and producer of their morning drive-time show Up Front. after being an intern and freelancer with Making Contact. Salima says she’s “at heart a rabble rouser, and believes in the power of social movements, the power of people coming together to protect one another and fight back and she producers radio with that possibility always on her mind.”
She loves research and her deepest journalistic beats are prison and surveillance, war and its legacies, Islamophobia and the war on terror, climate justice and immigration. She’s also a struggling fiction and speculative fiction writer. “ I feel a deep love for women, and people of color and queer people writing what’s usually called “genre fiction” — there’s some similarity between the ways those writers have reclaimed the narrative form, and how radio producers might one day reclaim the airwaves.” Salima doesn’t like sweet things but she loves popsicles. And mochi ice cream. And boba. And mochi ice cream stuffed with boba with a side of popsicles.
Lucy Kang
Lucy Kang, Producer (they/she) lucy@radioproject.org
Lucy is an award-winning audio producer and editor and currently a producer with Making Contact. Previously, they created the KPFA Storytelling Project to foster the development of narrative storytelling at the independent Pacifica station and produced KPFA’s news program UpFront. Lucy is a graduate of the Neon Hum Editors’ Bootcamp and the Transom Story Workshop. They got their very first start in radio as a KPFA volunteer news reporter. Outside of radio, they have a rich artistic practice and are in love with their roommate’s rescue dog.
Anita Johnson
Anita Johnson, Producer ajohnson@radioproject.org
Starting her journalistic career at Youth Radio in 1994, Anita was the senior producer for YR’s weekly talk show on WILD 94.9. She served as senior producer for 106.1 KMEL’s Street Knowledge, hosted by Davey D. By 1997, she was submitting national segments as a reporter for Marketplace and NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. Anita senior produced the acclaimed CD project 175 Progress Drive, which brought attention to the case of death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and Prisons on Fire: George Jackson, Attica and Black Liberation. In 2000, she co-founded KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio, a public affairs program, covering news, views and hip-hop.
In 2009, with the assistance of The Association of Independents in Radio, she founded Beyond The Odds, a multimedia arts project created to illuminate the impact of HIV and AIDS on low-income and minority young adults (under 25), through the use of the Web. In 2010, she co-produced the documentary film CoInTelPro 101. Aside from her many journalistic achievements, she also is a well respected Hip-Hop MC and has performed alongside Verve recording artist Ledisi and the legendary singer/guitarist Carlos Santana.
Jeff Emtman, Engineer (he/him) https://jeffemtman.com/
Jeff Emtman
Jeff Emtman is a Berlin, Germany based podcaster and artist. He makes Here Be Monsters (a documentary podcast about the unknown, 2012-present) and Neutrinowatch (a generative daily podcast, 2020-present). He also sound designs and mixes on limited audio series, including Audible’s The Sun King (examining Rupert Murdoch’s influence on news media), Maximum Fun’s The Outer Reach (a science fiction anthology), and Crooked Media’s Another Russia (the life and death of Russian dissident Boris Nemtsov). Jeff teaches at universities and community organizations about creative uses of sound. He also produces Reaper for Radio, a series of free video tutorials about editing with the audio software Reaper. He’s a long-time mentor with the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) with a focus on sound skills and independent podcast production.
Over 40 freelancers file segments for Making Contact from around the country and across the globe. See our Submission Guidelines if you are interested in joining our network of freelancers. See our Community Storytelling Fellows.
Stephanie Daniels
Stephanie Daniels and We Heart Finance provide financial services on contract for Making Contact
“At the age of 12, my single mom gave me the responsibility of balancing our checkbook and creating monthly budgets for our household. Over the last 10 years I have been the Finance Director of some amazing nonprofit organizations, balancing budgets up to $1.3million. Now that I have obtained an MBA, I want to help businesses and nonprofit organizations surpass their financial goals.”
Board of Directors
Oriana Bolden, Secretary
Oriana Bolden is a documentary filmmaker, digital media producer and educator. Her work tackles social and economic injustices at both interpersonal and systemic levels. Bolden’s films have been screened nationally as well as internationally through broadcast, community and digital platforms. As a facilitator of media production, Oriana has worked extensively with youth, interns and community based programs, teaching media production and digital literacy in schools and community centers across the country. She currently produces professional development modules for a national non-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Mickey Ellinger, President
Mickey Ellinger is a writer committed to making complex information accessible. As a print journalist she writes regularly for News from Native California and other California-based publications. She also edits material in the fields of community health, public education and transportation to make the findings of experts accessible to advocates and community members. She has served as treasurer of the Bay Area chapter of the National Writers Union and is a member of the board of the Bay Area Community Land Trust.
Susan Gleason, Treasurer
Susan is the Media and Outreach Manager at YES! magazine. For twenty years she’s worked as a media activist, media-maker, trainer, and community organizer, and she maintains an unyielding commitment to the importance of independent and community media. She DJ’d and produced for several years at WMPG 90.9 FM, Portland, Maine, and as a Board OP she played Making Contact each week. She has produced independent features for KBCS 91.3 FM, Bellevue/Seattle and other radio and print outlets. Her work with the Seattle Independent Media Center, Reclaim the Media, Earth on the Air Radio Works and other groups has included community organizing and engagement, communications and marketing, independent book publishing, new media development, and organizational development.
Yuko Kodama, member 
Yuko is the News & Public Affairs Director at KBCS in Bellevue WA. She has over 27 years of experience in Audio News Production and has received a Walter Cronkite School of Journalism 2017 Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability. She was also the Producer of Listen Up! Northwest, a syndicated weekly program that highlighted the work of community radio stations throughout the Pacific Northwest. Yuko loves that radio is a medium which encourages the listener to use their imagination to participate in stories and art. She also loves the possibilities that radio has to offer in informing and connecting people. She enjoys mentoring people into audio storytelling.
Former Executive Directors
Sonya Green
Sonya is an award-winning journalist and community media leader committed to telling the stories of historically excluded communities. She received her Masters of Science in Organizational Leadership from Mercer University with a thesis focusing on the experiences of journalists of color receiving fellowships, “Inclusion in Fellowships But Exclusion In The Industry?”. Sonya was awarded the prestigious Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship from the University of Michigan, where she researched how language, attitudes and approaches in journalism narratives can perpetuate stereotypes about race, class and identity.
Sonya has served as Engagement Coordinator at the Center for Collaborative Journalism at Mercer University, as News Director and Interim Assistant General Manager at 91.3 KBCS in Bellevue/Seattle WA, and as a news producer at ABC affiliate television stations in Seattle and Denver. Sonya serves as the Board President for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters.
Lisa Rudman
Lisa brings over 30 years of experience in production and management in community radio and public television. Her video documentaries on political prisoners in the U.S. have won several awards, and the team she led at Making Contact consistently garnered awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.
At Making Contact Lisa expanded the program’s reach to new audiences, increased the organization’s funding base, sustained the paid-fellowships for community activists and forged collaborative partnerships with community groups and media outlets. Lisa built a staff and freelancer pool representative of the diverse communities that Making Contact serves. She initiated the transition process to Executive Director Green as part of that work.
Lisa has served Making Contact in a variety of capacities including Women’s Desk Director, Co-Director of Live Wire Independent News, and production trainer. She also served on the coordinating committee of The Media Consortium, a network of 80 print, TV, web and radio outlets. Lisa believes in “practicing journalism for justice.” Lisa’s insights, passion and humor make her an edu-taining speaker, strategic thinker and collaborative partner.
Founders
Peggy Law, Founding Director and Development Advisor Activist, organizer, visionary. Peggy is a journalist with broad experience in non-profit management. She is an organizational consultant and a Board Member of the Institute for Public Accuracy and IF (a social change organization). Peggy is an Executive Committee member for the MediaWorks Initiative, and has also had a career as a mental health professional.
Norman Solomon Nationally syndicated author and columnist on media and politics; Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) associate; Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. A collection of Norman’s columns won the 1999 George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. He has authored ten books, including “The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media and The Power of Babble,” “Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You” (co-authored with foreign correspondent Reese Erlich), and his latest book, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
David Barsamian Author, lecturer, founder and director of Alternative Radio. David’s interviews and articles appear in The Progressive, The Nation, Z and other journals and magazines. David is author of numerous books with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Eqbal Ahmad, and Edward Said. His series of books with Chomsky, America’s leading dissident, have sold in the hundreds of thousands and have been translated into many languages. David’s latest books are “Propaganda & the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky” and “The Decline & Fall of Public Broadcasting.”
