Sandra Rattley's Bio

Sandra Rattley launched the Africa Learning Channel (ALC) for WorldSpace Foundation in 1999, and currently serves as the Executive Producer of this 24-hour satellite radio, digital service, which provides an estimated 60 million listeners in 51 African countries with programming to inform choices in HIV/AIDS prevention, health care and sustainable development.

Prior to her tenure at WorldSpace, Sandy was the Director of Communications for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and previously served as Executive Director of the Program Strategies Board at National Public Radio, responsible for strategic planning and program acquisition and development; as well as NPR's Vice President of Cultural Programming from 1993-1996. Some of her notable accomplishments as an Executive at NPR include instituting educational outreach, founding NPR's Special Projects Unit, and conceiving and conducting a ground-breaking national research study of public radio's African American audience.

Sandy is also an award-winning producer and documentarian. She received two Peabody Awards for two twenty-six part radio series: Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions, hosted by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, and Making the Music, hosted by trumpeter, jazz aficionado and educator, Wynton Marsalis. She served as Executive Producer for both series. She created and managed NPR's Hothouse project, designed as an incubator for new and experimental national programming beginning in 1972, birthing new programs, such as Heat hosted by John Hockenberry.

Rattley's international activities are broad, with project-partners that include the African National Congress of South Africa, Amnesty International, the Women's Health Project, and The Committee for the Eradication of Chronic Poverty. She served as spokesperson for the first national US tour of former South African President, Nelson Mandela in 1991, and served as press agent for Winnie Mandela during her US visits. Also included in her accolades, Sandy founded the Paul Robeson Fund for Radio for the Association of Community Foundations; and served as Director for the Satellite Program Development Fund from 1983-1987, disbursing over $3 million to independent producers and public radio stations. The SPDF was a pre-cursor to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Radio Fund. She has provided program development, strategic planning, audience research and fundraising support to recent clients such as the Rockefeller Foundation and World Music Productions.

Rattley began her radio career at WHUR-FM, Howard University Radio in Washington, DC as Reporter, News Director and talk show host. As an independent producer and staff for WHUR and NPR, she has reported and produced numerous documentaries on cultural, political and social developmental issues in Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, as well as the US. She hosted a weekly show on WPFW-FM and served on the Board of Directors for Pacifica Foundation. She is also a contributor to ESSENCE magazine.

For over ten years, Sandy has spent considerable time in Africa on a genealogical quest. As a member of the Quanders, one of the oldest documented African families in the Americas, she has followed her lineage to Cape Coast, Ghana and re-established ties with ancestral families there.

Audio
  ALC Program Samples

Note: These are full-length samples of shows from the Africa Learning Channel. Each show is an MP3 file that is about an hour long and can be listened to with any available MP3 player. The average file size is 24MB.