The America Amplified team has moved on to other endeavors – now it’s up to you to keep the conversation going!
The case studies, playbook, blogs and instructional videos are great, but let’s be honest: Sometimes you just need a person to ask questions to, compare notes and bounce ideas around with. That’s where the Brain Trust comes in!
Here you’ll find community engagement champions we’ve worked with and admired over the years. These America Amplified alumni are experienced in community engagement, open to the need for ongoing experimentation and innovation, and familiar with the resources that America Amplified has created and curated. They have graciously agreed to volunteer some time to consult with and/or mentor other public media stations that need some help getting going on engagement.
If you have a burning question or want to run an idea past someone, look at our members’ areas of expertise and reach out to the engager who seems right for you!
Shereen Adel
Expertise: Community listening, training, digital engagement tools (Hearken, feedback surveys, emails, etc.)
Shereen has run newsroom operations at KALW with a focus on in-house training programs, which are integrally connected to our local news production. She’s now KALW’s Director of Impact, working with all program-leads to advance KALW’s mission to foster a greater sense of belonging within and across Bay Area communities.
Email: shereen@kalw.org
Scott Blanchard
Expertise: Listening sessions; engaging with rural communities; public events; texting; deliberative fora; email newsletters; journalism transparency and ethics online and on air; engagement-based election coverage; engagement-based reporting; focus groups; collaborations with news- and non-news partners.
As director of journalism at a state-capitol public media newsroom, Scott led the effort to make community engagement journalism part of every job description. Their staff stressed transparency, humility, listening and responsiveness as they worked in multiple ways to give more people a voice in creating the journalism that serves their communities.
George Bodarky
Expertise: Training, voicing, writing, sourcing, interviewing and sound gathering.
George is a Reporter Trainer on NPR’S Training Team. He previously served as the Community Partnerships & Training Editor at WNYC. During his time at WNYC, he led the Suds and Civics project for the 2024 election.
Email: gbodarky@gmail.com
Jenna Dooley
Expertise: Hosting live events, identifying win-win community collaborations, working with students, and building bilingual platforms
Jenna is the news director at WNIJ Public Radio which serves northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. As a small/medium-market station with limited staff and resources, they are a team that approaches listening sessions and live events with an eye on front-end strategy, efficiency, and enthusiasm.
Email: jdooley@niu.edu
Kateleigh Drumm
Expertise: Community Engagement, Rural Engagement, Solo Engagement, Digital Tools like Hearken, GroundSource, Adobe, Video Editing, Canva
Kateleigh is journalist with over 8 years of experience – half of which has been dedicated to community engagement work. She has built community engagement practices and projects from the ground up in a relatively small newsroom and across collaboratives.
Email: kateleighjourno@gmail.com
Zaki Hamid
Expertise: Listening sessions, digital engagement, collecting audience feedback and making it actionable for the newsroom and content creators, audience trust building, focus groups
Zaki has over 20 years of experience as a public media director, public programs producer, and media educator. For the past seven years, he have been working as the director of community engagement for KUOW Public Radio in Seattle, where he led a department whose main goal is to facilitate connections between the various communities of the Puget Sound area and the content division, so that KUOW’s news coverage is more holistic and informed by listeners’ needs.
Email: zhamid@kuow.org
Catherine Komp
Expertise: Audience research (on a budget), community listening, engaging new audiences, partnerships, community storytelling workshops, youth engagement
Catherine has been engaging communities throughout her 20+ year journalism career, including developing partnerships, community storytelling initiatives and ways to bring audience listening into everyday workflows. Currently, she serves as engagement director for NC Local and writes the weekly NC Local news and information ecosystem newsletter.
Mary Shedden
Expertise: Online engagement, listening sessions, voter surveys/outreach, long-term planning to use outreach
Mary is News Director at WUSF, the NPR affiliate in Tampa, Florida. The station has been tapping into engagement journalism since 2018. The 2020 pandemic was a turning point, and the newsroom discovered listening to the community – even remotely – made for stronger stories and better connection with the community.
Email: shedden@WUSF.org
Natalie Van Hoozer
Expertise: Long-term, bilingual Spanish/English community engagement strategy; WhatsApp newsletters; bilingual content production workflows, virtual and in-person live events; partnerships with community and news organizations; community-centered solutions journalism; content sharing; voter surveys; candidate questionnaires
Natalie piloted and grew bilingual (Spanish/English), community-centered news products and events at KUNR Public Radio in Reno, Nevada. She combines this experience with her work in media partnerships for Spanish-language fact-checking at Factchequeado and her current work in media entrepreneurship as the Community Manager for LION Publishers and as the U.S. ambassador for SembraMedia.
Email: ngvanhoozer@gmail.com