Spring 2022 Edit Mode Fellows Announced!
Association of Independents in Radio and the Editors Collective Announce Fellows for Edit Mode, a Training Program to Expand and Diversify the Audio Editing Landscape
March 2, 2022—AIR and the Editors Collective (Jen Chien, Julie Caine, Leila Day, and Casey Miner) are proud to announce the second class of 10 fellows in the second Edit Mode: Story Editor Training for Narrative Audio, a paid intensive program hosted on AIR’s training platform, SoundPath.
Whether establishing and maintaining style and standards, enforcing journalistic ethics, contributing to audience development strategy, or providing high-level editorial direction, narrative audio editors make crucial decisions that shape how a story gets told, who’s compelled to listen, and whose work is supported behind the mic.
Edit Mode was conceived to challenge the assumption of employers that there is an editor talent pipeline problem. This program is designed to bridge the experience and opportunity gap for audio editors-in-training from underrepresented backgrounds, and, longer-term, to diversify the pool of working editors in the industry at large.
The ten selected fellows will each receive a $1,000 stipend to participate in six weeks of training, followed by four weeks of hands-on mentorship, during which they will work on projects slated for publication, gain firsthand experience in the narrative audio editing process, and build their networks and resumés.
As Jen Chien of the Editors Collective, incoming Director of Podcasts at KQED in San Francisco, told Hot Pod last year, “We can’t tell companies who to hire, but we can try to make that pool bigger. We believe people are ready. They just haven’t been given the chance yet. We want to give them that extra lift to push their head up and say, ‘I’m ready, and I’ve proven it.’”
Congratulations: Erisa Apantaku, Tracy Egbas, Bethel Habte, Chris Hambrick, Carolina Hidalgo, Nicole Kelly (NK), Jed Kim, Rahima Nasa, Elena Rivera and Laura Ubate.
Meet the 2022 Edit Mode Fellows
Erisa Apantaku (she/her) is a Black/biracial, queer multimedia producer/educator from the lands of the Three Fires Confederacy of the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi (Chicagoland). Erisa is a producer on the Invisible Institute’s Untitled Yohance Lacour podcast. Erisa also produces short audio documentaries. Her work examines topics including race and sexuality through a process that centers curiosity and seeks to be vulnerable and generative. As an educator, Erisa has trained individuals of different ages through South Side Weekly, Blok by Blok, IndyKids, and After School Matters. In her spare time, she enjoys playing guitar and watching and talking about film and television.
Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Tracy Egbas (she/her) has a Masters in Film Production from USC. As a storyteller, Tracy strives to weave elements of different cultures and experiences with deeply human stories, to create narratives that both inspire and entertain. She is currently an Associate Producer at Wondery.
Bethel Habte (she/her) is a producer and associate editor* at Gimlet (*tba). She’s worked on Resistance, Radiolab and produced podcasts and breaking news for Reuters. She’s a proud graduate of the Transom Story Workshop, Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Virginia, where she studied political philosophy, edited the news section of The Cavalier Daily, and danced a lot of salsa.
Chris Hambrick (she/her) is a San Francisco Bay Area based media producer and wordsmith. She produces scary stories for Spooked Podcast, hosts The Tracklist on KGPC, and the podcast White Rabbit Story Hour. She's contributed to KALW, KQED, and facilitated for the national oral history project StoryCorps. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can catch her on the Mortified, LitCrawl or Moth stages.
Carolina Hidalgo (she/her) is an audio producer who leads Radio Rookies, WNYC’s youth journalism program. She works with teenagers and young adults to produce radio documentaries about their lives and communities. Previously, she covered justice reform, social movements and immigration issues at St. Louis Public Radio. In 2020, she won a Third Coast award for a 70 Million podcast episode about the fight to shut down a notorious St. Louis jail. Carolina has taught an introductory audio course at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and volunteers as a mentor for NPR’s Next Generation Radio program.
Nicole Kelly (NK) (she/her) is a multimedia storyteller working mostly in sound and prose. She has produced and edited narrative audio work for VICE, The Believer, & Transmitter Media, and she co-created bitchface, an experimental audio project. bitchface produced the 2020 season of The Heart, and the 3 part series “Divesting From People Pleasing” — an audio memoir about unlearning — was called “a shockingly intimate portrait of what it means to be alive in a human body” (New York Times). NK received an MFA from the Programs In Writing at UC Irvine and is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. The “chaos of our strongest feelings” (Audre Lorde) is her most enduring muse.
Jed Kim (he/him) is an independent radio and podcast producer. He has worked in public radio for more than a decade, in all sorts of roles. He was a sustainability reporter for Marketplace and an environment reporter for KPCC in Pasadena. Most recently, he was the co-creator and host of the APM kids' podcast "Million Bazillion." He was also the host of "In Deep," an APM podcast about water infrastructure. He is a regular contributor to the kids' podcast "Smash Boom Best," which he greatly enjoys doing, because he gets to be ridiculous.
Rahima Nasa (she/her) is a producer at Three Uncanny Four and is part of the team that produces The Passion Economy, Do the Work and helps develop new shoes. She's been working in journalism for over five years but got her start in audio journalism as a producer at WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show. Then, she went on to cover hate crimes and the rise of white supremacist violence for ProPublica. Most recently, she helped tell longform investigative news stories for PBS’s documentary film series, FRONTLINE. Her twitter is @rararahima and she often tweets revelations she's had while eating.
Elena Rivera (she/her) is the health reporter at KERA, North Texas' NPR station. Previously, Elena covered health in Southern Colorado for KRCC and Colorado Public Radio. She has won awards for arts and culture reporting, podcasting and team coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Colorado from the Society of Professional Journalists. Elena got her start as a reporter and producer at KBIA, Mid-Missouri’s NPR station. She has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. Outside of her public radio work, she coordinates and serves as the captain for the Association of Independents in Radio's New Voices program.
Curious and trascendental, Laura Ubate (she/her) is a Producer at Adonde Media. Awarded with the Diversity Fellowship by the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. She was the former leader of the Podcast Department at the National Public Radio of Colombia, the first woman to occupy this position. There, she also served as producer and host for 3 years at the Public Radio member station: Radionica. In 2018 she founded the first podcast community of Colombia: Cafe Podcastero. Then, she became PR for the Latin American podcast community Podcaster@s. She speaks Spanish, English and Portuguese. Her personal podcast is called Viajes Inmoviles.
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About AIR
AIR is a growing talent network of audio industry professionals integral to public media, journalism, podcasting and narrative storytelling.
Since our 1988 founding by a group of freelance producers, AIR has advocated for and supported independent audio storytellers in public radio and podcasting. Today our vibrant community includes 1,400+ journalists, podcasters, editors, documentarians, engineers and sound designers that span 47 states and 30 countries.
About SoundPath
Launched by AIR in March 2021, SoundPath offers pre-recorded and real-time video classes in audio-making, skills, craft and ethics for both working audio professionals and newcomers to the craft. Classes are taught by industry peers who inspire, share and establish standards for making great work for public radio and podcasts.
Learn more about SoundPath and explore upcoming programming at soundpath.co.
About the Editors Collective
The four co-founders of the Editors Collective—Jen Chien, Julie Caine, Leila Day and Casey Miner—met at KALW in San Francisco, where they experienced a rare and valuable model of training, mentorship and real-world experience that allowed them to learn from the best, practice their craft and edit countless narrative audio stories for podcast and broadcast. They have continued to work together in the years since, collaborating, editing each other's work and lifting each other up as they each pursued paths as editors.