Meet the Interns
Aaron Scott: Portland, Oregon
Science Desk
Aaron Scott recently graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with a broadcast concentration. His thesis was a half-hour radio documentary on the Science of Love, which, among its many vagaries, covered the brain on love, love online, and polyamory, or the act of loving multiple partners.
Before Columbia, Aaron lived in America’s final frontier, Portland, Oregon, where he directed publicity and marketing for the little orchestra Pink Martini — a perennial NPR favorite that has performed on Morning Edition, Toast of the Nation, and World Café. It was a time of musical adventures, pristine mountains, sustainable coffee, and civilized public transportation.
Outside the office, he wrote about culture and the arts for Willamette Week and Just Out. He has also interned and written for Out.
He is currently interning on the Science Desk.
Alex Fishman: Carmel, Indiana
Human Resources
Alex Fishman has joined the NPR family from her Midwest home in Carmel, Indiana. She studies nonprofit management and human resources through the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. This is her second time in D.C., and she is thrilled to be a part of NPR for two months as the human resources intern. She loves great music, skiing in Crested Butte, Colorado, traveling, finding the latest and greatest restaurants, and indulging her guilty pleasure in juicy celebrity gossip. Alex will graduate next year and hopes to find a job combining her two areas of focus and attend graduate school in the future.
Alexandra Gutierrez: Houston, Texas
Digitial Media, Arts Desk
Alexandra Gutierrez is the Digital Media intern for Arts. Born and raised in Texas, she has steadily been moving northward. Trading cowboy boots for seersucker suits, she resettled in McLean, Virginia. There, she performed the occasionally fun but often thankless task of reviewing high school theatre. She then moved further up the Eastern Seaboard to study at Harvard University, where she wrote her senior thesis on graffiti, punk music, and politics. She spent her free time deejaying a radio show and writing for the campus literary magazine.
Realizing that college radio only lasts until you graduate but that public radio is forever, she decided intern for PRI’s Living on Earth her senior year. Now, she has returned to the Mid-Atlantic and is excited to be working on all things book-film-and-art-related before starting graduate school studying Latin-American studies at Oxford University in the fall.
Amber Forrester: Hyattsville, Maryland
Library, National Public Broadcasting Archive
Amber Forrester graduated from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio in 2007 with a degree in history and American studies. She then returned to the Washington, D.C. suburb where she had grown up to attend graduate school at the University of Maryland. She will graduate in December with a Master of Library Science in archives and records management, after which she hopes to work as an archivist (or, as her family has taken to calling it, a glorified librarian).
Amber has previously interned with the National Park Service, the Feminist Majority Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, and Cleveland’s Western Reserve Historical Society. This summer she is working with records from the classical music show Performance Today at the National Public Broadcasting Archive.
Amy Young: Cupertino, Calif.
Audience Insight and Research
Amy Young is a proud native of Cupertino, Calif., home of Apple computers, Aaron Eckhart, and too many pearl milk tea places to name. A rising sophomore, she attends University of California-Berkeley (Go Bears!), where she hopes to earn degrees in business administration and rhetoric. She enjoys consulting for local non-profits and counseling community members on tenant rights in California during the school year, but can also often be found cheering at a Cal football game. A loyal NPR listener since kindergarten, she currently interns in Audience Insight & Research in the "other" building where she enjoys candy Fridays, free popsicles, and lively conversations with the friendly security guards. You can find her hiding from D.C. thunderstorms, quoting her favorite TV shows (Arrested Development and Entourage), snacking on peanut M&Ms to keep awake, and trying to rally groups of people into singing at random times throughout the day.
Andrea Domanick: Los Angeles, Calif.
All Things Considered
Andrea Domanick is one half of the dynamic duo that is the All Things Considered intern team. When not running scripts and pitching story ideas, she is working towards a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Wesleyan University.
A Los Angeles native, Andrea cut her reporter’s teeth writing music and features articles for the local publication LA Youth, and continues to participate in print journalism as Arts Editor for The Wesleyan Argus. She will take the place of news editor in the fall. Andrea is also a staff writer for the music web site TinyMixTapes.com.
Though her lifelong love of NPR developed during hours spent in L.A. traffic, Andrea’s passion for radio journalism was sparked while working for member station KPCC last summer. As intern for the local arts and culture show Off-Ramp, Andrea spent much time researching stories, producing original segments, and practicing her “radio voice” when no one was looking.
Thrilled to be in the company of some of today’s finest journalists, Andrea is eager to learn from her time with All Things Consideredand hopes to one day become a foreign correspondent for NPR.
Andrea Rane: Oakland, Calif.
Digital Media, Picture & Multimedia
Andrea Rane is earning a Master of Photojournalism degree at the University of Missouri. She is currently finishing photo-editing her masters project, titled 36 Hours in Columbia, a day in the life photo-essay of Columbia, Mo. Andrea is originally from the Bay area where she studied art history at the University of California-Berkeley. Raised by two hippies, she has seen her fair share of North and Central America from the backseat of a Chinook wagon.
Anna Kadyshevich: Calgary, Alberta
Office of the General Counsel
Proudly (and eternally) Canadian, Anna completed her undergraduate degree at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. She joined NPR’s General Counsel’s Office as a summer intern after finishing her first year of law school at Columbia University. While living in New York, Anna enjoys frequenting Broadway, Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway shows and taking strolls through Alphabet City.
Anna Heller Sebok: Cleveland, Ohio
Development
Since first listening to National Public Radio at the age of seven while en route to dance class with her mom, Anna Heller Sebok has been enthralled by what NPR stands for and is therefore thrilled to be joining the team as this summer’s Development intern, as well as the Intern Edition Communications Manager. Now an organizational and event planning wizard, Anna developed a passion for event planning last summer when she thrived as Company Management intern for New York Stage & Film at Vassar College’s Powerhouse Theatre summer season.
As a rising senior at Allegheny College, Anna is heavily involved in the recruitment process for all five sororities on her campus as Panhellenic Council’s vice president of recruitment. Additionally, she will be working at her school’s Alumni Affairs Center and serving as vice president of the communication arts honor society, Lambda Pi Eta, all while composing her senior thesis on the expansion and commercialization of Broadway theatre. After traveling from New York City to Budapest, Hungary, to Cleveland, Ohio, all by the time she was six, she cannot wait to graduate and travel the world once again, putting all of her event planning skills to good use.
Anna is also a huge theatre dork, spending much of her free time working on or attending various theatrical productions. Other loves of hers include film, photography, yoga, chai tea, and Rice Krispie treats.
April Fehling
Executive Producer, Intern Edition
April Fehling was once from Seattle, but having put down stakes in Port Macquarie, Australia (once) India (two or seven times, depending on how you count), New York City (once), DC (twice), and now Bethesda (OK, that’s practically DC), she’s not quite sure where home is now. She loves cooking (her favorite NPR-listening time), good beer (and only good beer---hey, she’s from Seattle!), thrift stores, yard sales, garage sales, stoop sales, and pretty much anywhere you can pick up great junk for pocket change. While she’s always wanted a dog, she’s settled for a cat that comes when called and will do anything for a belly scratch.
She spent several years studying women’s participation in village governance, researching reproductive health, and helping found a network of feminist Indian law professors, but eventually realized she was neither a villager, doctor, professor nor lawyer. So she finally listened to the voice in her head, went to J-school and interned as a reporter for WAMU 88.5. She now helps brilliant interns create fabulous stories for Intern Edition (when she’s not helping them find their way to NPR headquarters from 395 South….then North… then South). Despite her love for public radio, she also loves parentheses (ironic, isn’t it?).
Ashley Lau: Potomac, Maryland.
National Desk
Ashley Lau is a rising sophomore in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she is the cultural and religious affairs beat reporter for The Daily Northwestern and editor-in-chief of Northwestern's NuAsian magazine.
Her foray into the journalism world began in high school, when her love of reporting and writing led her to take on dual roles as both production manager for the school's paper, Silver Chips, and managing editor for the Opinions/Editorials section. In her senior year, she was awarded a scholarship from The Washington Post's Young Journalists Development Program.
Ashley currently lives in Potomac, Maryland, although she was born in Boston and considers herself a serious Red Sox fan and city girl at heart. After living in the Chicago area for a year and traversing the city's century-old elevated train system, she has a newfound appreciation for her D.C. Metro morning commute.
When not consumed by schoolwork and extracurriculars, Ashley enjoys running, going to concerts, cooking and relaxing with friends and family. She also enjoys traveling and exploring foreign places, eating any and all kinds of food, and meeting new people.
She is excited to be joining the National Desk this summer and is looking forward to an eventful and educational experience at NPR.
Ashley Lystne: Costa Mesa, Calif.
News & Notes (NPR West)
Ashley Lystne grew up in Orange County, California, and spent her high school years at a private religious school, developing her own liberal education after school with Ayn Rand and Judith Butler. She recently migrated north to Berkeley where she's now working on a degree in English, with a concentration on the literary study of gender and sexuality. To pay the bills, Ashley works as a writing tutor, but she spends most of her free time working as an editor for a nonprofit student publication, the Cal Literature and Arts Magazine, as well as writing poetry and agonizing over cupcake recipes.
Ashley's interest in politics and social justice have led her back south to NPR West in Los Angeles, where she's interning for News & Notes during the week and going to as many Hollywood events as possible on the weekends. Ashley's life dream is to find a way to utilize her interests in journalism and the arts while also making enough money to not have to live in the People's Park. She also hopes to someday open a vegan bakery and organic coffee co-op.
Aylin Zafar: Cupertino, Calif.
Communications Resources
A proud native of the San Francisco Bay area (Cupertino, home of Apple computers, to be exact!), Aylin Zafar is about to start her senior year at the University of California- Irvine. She is a double major in English and drama, which is turning out to be far more useful than anticipated, contributing to both her love of storytelling and helping people escape their own lives, even if for just a little while. This desire to bring light to issues and people whose stories are not often told led her to her first journalistic experiences as an editor for her high school newspaper. Since then, Aylin has been exploring new mediums for telling stories, including an internship in 2006 with San Francisco film company Momentum Cinema, where she spent a good portion of her time in the streets of the Tenderloin at 3 a.m. during filming (if you know where this is, you know it's not the best idea ...).
When not prowling dark streets late at night, Aylin can be found walking backwards as a tour guide and setting up networking events for her fellow Anteaters as President of the Student Alumni Association. She also spends a great deal of time plotting her return to Paris, where she studiedabroad and found that baguette, cheese, and wine was a perfectly legitimate diet.
Ben Phelps-Rohrs: Pittsburgh, Penn.
Day to Day (NPR West)
There’s a Facebook application that claims Ben Phelps-Rohrs has visited 12 percent of the world. He can’t decide whether that number makes the planet feel tiny or huge, but eagerly anticipates the other 88 percent and whatever else in the solar system he can get to. Born under Halley’s Comet, Ben plans to be alive for awhile before dying ancient and wise, surrounded by hordes of great-great grandchildren.
Blake Bishton: Los Angeles, Calif.
News & Notes (NPR West)
Nineteen-year-old Blake Bishton is preparing to go into his third year at Bard College in New York where he is majoring in theater with a concentration in playwriting. A native of Los Angeles, he has grown up listening to NPR and is now interning at NPR West with News and Notes.
Blake’s passion for theater has been lifelong, and he is looking forward to continuing his studies abroad in London next semester with the British American Drama Academy. His interest in writing, though a more recent development, is strong. He is very excited about the various “writing for the media” related experiences that he has been exposed to at his internship.
Brian Johnson: Union Bridge, Maryland
Science Desk
Hailing from the grassy hills of western Maryland, Brian recently graduated from Haverford College (go, Black Squirrels!) with a degree in geology and East Asian studies. His college career took him from the alley markets of Beijing to the fossil-laden plains of South Dakota – each place offering a host of interesting characters that Brian relishes remembering.
While all this may sound exotic, Brian insists that he is simply a country boy who wants to help break the mystique surrounding scientific research. Besides, what's so complicated about the serpentinization of ultramafic rocks? It's only, like, the oxidation and hydration of low silica-content rock under relatively low pressures and high temperatures. Geez.
Carina Giamerese: Washington, New Jersey
Audio Engineering
Carina Giamerese bears the illustrious distinction of being the first audio engineering intern in an undisclosed amount of time. She comes from the Philadelphia neighborhood of Francisville, where all the roads are on a diagonal, and recently graduated from Temple University with a mouthful of a degree in broadcasting, telecommunications, and mass media. She originally hails from Northwest New Jersey, which is quite different from South Jersey, Central Jersey, or even Northeast Jersey. Trust her.
She comes to NPR from member station WXPN 88.5-FM where she interned with the World Café and learned that Thurston Moore is very, very tall. At NPR, she has the pretty sweet gig of getting paid to hang out with the engineers and not touch anything, but she really wishes her friends and family would stop asking when she’s going to be on the air.
Chessie Gruen: Bethesda, Maryland
Marketing and Stations Relations
Raised on public radio, Chessie Gruen is really enjoying her work at the corporation behind the magic. As a Marketing and Stations Relations intern, she’s excited to have a hand in some actual broadcasting with Intern Edition. She currently attends the beautiful College of Charleston in South Carolina, where she is a corporate communications major with a minor in Having Wholesome and Responsible Fun. For someone who goes to school so near the beach, you are probably wondering how she’s so pale. It’s called SPF 30. Use it. Love it.
In addition to hoping you stay melanoma-free, Chessie trusts that you will love listening to Intern Edition as much as she has loved creating it.
Conor McKay: Falls Church, Virginia
All Songs Considered
A rising senior at College of William and Mary, Conor McKay is an avid music listener and journalist. He got his start in music journalism writing and editing reviews for his college paper and went on to publish stories with Pastemagazine.com and CMJ before joining NPR’s All Songs Considered.
Diane S.W. Lee: Honolulu, Hawaii
Morning Edition
Diane S.W. Lee hails from Hawaii, often known to outsiders as "paradise." Many of her local friends chose to move nearby to places like California, but Lee itched for a real change. Feeling adventurous, she took a risk and landed in Peoria, Illinois. She quickly learned to adapt, piling on layers of clothing to combat fluctuating temperatures and below-zero wind chills. She experienced some of her firsts: snowflakes, winter coats and four seasons.
While battling the bitter and often windy weather, Lee successfully juggled full-time school and part-time work at member station WCBU. There, she learned to file Freedom of Information Act requests, decipher jargon-speak and ask plenty of questions. A recent graduate from Bradley University, Lee is interning for Morning Edition. Despite listening to Hawaii Public Radio stuck in traffic traveling between home and school, Lee never imagined a career in public radio. She got her start reporting for newspapers and online media, making the tough transition from passive to active voice. Still, she is excited about the news industry’s transformation from a traditional platform to more multimedia. Lee believes the changing landscape provides journalists with more ways to tell a story.
In her spare time, she enjoys capturing candid (and often embarrassing) moments on her camera. Lee has big plans to land a career as an investigative reporter and/or multimedia producer. Wherever she ends up, she'll be ready for her next big adventure.
Elizabeth Anderson: Los Angeles, Calif.
Talk of the Nation
Elizabeth Anderson hails from a place filled with sunshine, oranges, Hollywood and smog. Liz grew up in Los Angeles, where her interest in journalism took hold in the seventh grade while she was working for the school yearbook. Her love for radio sparked as a college freshman when she accompanied a classmate to the school radio station and landed an on-air position. Liz worked in radio for nine years, including her college days. She also studied abroad in Spain and worked as an elementary school teacher. After six years with the Los Angeles Unified School District, the call of journalism was too strong … She decided to return to graduate school. Liz studies Journalism and Public Affairs at American University.
She loves public radio because the audio storytelling is so rich and awakens the imagination… and because a smidgen of lip gloss is the only makeup she needs.
Liz interns with Talk of the Nation.
Elizabeth Page: Lexington, Kentucky
Audience Insight & Research
Elizabeth Page is a Kentucky native who decided to make a big move to Beantown for school. She’s an odd duck at MIT in that she isn’t a scientist, per se, and she doesn’t want to work in the wilds of Wall Street. Here in D.C., she works in the Audience Insight and Research department exploring her second favorite pastime: turning words into numbers. This activity is narrowly surpassed by baking pies. Oh, and reading. And walking the city. Needless to say, Elizabeth has many favorite things and is fairly loose about her labeling.
Eric Krewson: Philadelphia, Penn.
Digital Media, Music
Eric Krewson is an NPR Music intern. Before opting to spend his youthful summer days editing web pages, he attended Drexel University. This fall, he will be heading back to Philadelphia to pursue a master’s degree in music history from Temple University.
Eric enjoys listening to music on shellac and vinyl discs; he records music in his spare time and even plays an occasional show in Philadelphia. Last January, while playing World Café Live, his group started a rather “noisy” piece that prompted an audience member to stand up from his dinner table, wave his hands wildly in the air and protest “Stop! Stop!” For Eric, life has been downhill since.
Geoff Willard: Lexington, Mass.
Library- Music
After drifting aimlessly for 16 years, Geoff Willard found himself working at a mediocre record store in Burlington, Mass., during his last two years of high school. He quickly caught the collecting bug, and began spending too much money on plastic discs he would sell off six years later. Not entirely sure what he wanted to do with his life, he applied to a handful of colleges and was accepted to Carnegie Mellon University. As a bright-eyed, liberal arts freshman, he could not find any particular major that appealed to him. The music bug was still strong, so he decided that self-defining a major was the best course of action. Geoff left Pittsburgh with a degree in Music and Culture, still unsure where he was headed and what a Music and Culture degree would mean to employers.
Returning to the Boston area, he began working at Newbury Comics, a 27-store-strong independent music chain located in the Northeast. Following a stint working in the music fulfillment portion of the warehouse, he moved up to the web division to head their burgeoning eBay business. Geoff sold everything from women’s nightgowns to Coke signs, partially completed box sets, damaged goods, rolling pallets, trend items, and vinyl records. While the job was great fun, Geoff had a nagging feeling that he should head back to school. Remembering the joy he had as the record librarian for WRCT (CMU’s radio station), he thought a library degree was in order. Austin, the land of Whole Foods and South by Southwest, seemed like the place to be so he packed his bags and headed south to the University of Texas.
You can often find Geoff in record stores unintentionally buying the same record twice.
Read the Daily Texan article that featured Geoff here.
Holly Tylenda: Detroit, MI
Library- Spoken Word
Holly Tylenda has been in graduate school at Wayne State University in Detroit for the past two-and-a-half-plus years working on her master’s degree in library and information science and archival administration, while also working full time as a librarian at the College for Creative Studies.
Holly graduated in May, and working in NPR’s Broadcast Library has been a great culmination of all her hard work. Now that she has completed her degree, she is slowly remembering life before grad school. She is looking forward to getting her “chops” back on the cello, as well as traveling as much as time and income will permit (which will probably be very little). Iceland, Argentina, Big Sur and the Pacific Northwest are at the top of her list, and she is excited to be living in D.C. this summer.
Jackie Cartier: Apple Valley, Minnesota
Communications- Media Relations
Jackie Cartier comes to the Media Relations Department of NPR this summer in Washington D.C. from the northern most shores of Lake Superior, where she recently graduated from the University of Minnesota-Duluth with a Bachelor of Arts in communication and foreign studies. During her time at UMD, she was able to spend a year studying in Birmingham, England, and traveling throughout Europe and Asia. This opportunity instilled in her the commitment to learning through experience, which led her to internships with local radio stations KKCB, KLDJ, and KBMX. Then onto the local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS Eight), working with the television promotional staff, and now onto NPR.
Coming from the Land of 10,000 Lakes and summers spent at the family cabin, Jackie loves anything outdoors: swimming, running, tennis, and skiing. She is thrilled to spend this summer in Washington, D.C., with the opportunity to explore all that our nation’s capital has to offer. She loves being in such a historic and busy city where something is always going on!
Jeremy Hunt: Mount Pleasant, Michigan
Office of the General Counsel
Legal intern Jeremy Hunt was brainwashed by public radio from an early age. The conditioning was so thorough that he has probably not gone a day in the past decade without listening to at least an hour of public radio programming. It was only natural that he would wind up here at NPR eventually. WCBU, WKAR, WUOM, WDET, WDUQ, WHYY, WHRV, WAMU … His favorite member stations are like a mantra he repeats when he travels across country.
His past is shrouded in mystery, though he will on occasion make reference to his experiences with tear gas and the music of Carl Orff, or the time he gave riflery instruction to a convicted armed robber, or a history of dancing and swordsmanship that would put a Renaissance nobleman to shame. It is clear that undergraduate life at Michigan State University was hardly dull. In quiet moments he can be seen meditating upon the glory that is caffeine or, as he calls it, the Water of Life. He has the cynical smile of an academic administrator, the haunted stare of a collections agent, and the poor posture that can only be acquired through hours of study in William & Mary's law library.
Some say – when they dare speak his name at all – that one day he will walk the land, an itinerant lawyer, dispensing justice wherever his feet might carry him. He will advocate, he will mediate, he will arbitrate, and wherever he goes tortfeasors will tremble.
Jessica Wanke: Brookfield, Conn.
Digital News
Jessica Wanke is the editorial intern in digital media this summer at NPR. She is fresh off a two-week reporting trip in Afghanistan sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She fell in love with Mazar-i-Sharif and is hoping to go back soon.
She is currently in the middle of a two-year master’s program in international affairs at Columbia University. She spent her year before graduate school pursuing a certificate in Middle East studies in Jerusalem, while also interning for NPR’s Israel/Palestine bureau, where she worked with correspondent Eric Westervelt.
Prior to her stint in the Middle East, Jessica worked for three years as a staff reporter at The Arizona Republic. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University.
She is currently living with her fiancé in Washington, D.C. After five years of long distance, she is ecstatic about living in the same city as him.
Jessie Gasch: Saint Louis, Missouri
Managing Editor, Intern Edition
Jessie Gasch likes live jazz and long walks on the beach … whoops, that’s not right.
Let’s try again: A graduate of Truman State University in northeastern Missouri, conveniently located a zillion miles from everything, Jessie has learned to appreciate D.C.’s blistering sunshine, pavement and consistent Internet access. She did manage to escape the Midwest for five months to study in Aix-en-Provence, France, but will be sucked back in August for law school at Saint Louis University. She’ll need a break after her first year, so she’s prepping for a yearlong stint in Dakar, Senegal – made possible by Rotary International – where she’ll actually put to use her French and linguistics degrees. (Told you, Mom.)
With more the 250 articles in print, she’s freelanced, managed her university’s newspaper, contributed to a magazine, researched for a trade journal, interned at a public television station and has never been happier to work anywhere than here at NPR’s Intern Edition.
Her biography is a perfect example of horrible radio writing.
Julia Simon: Santa Monica, Calif.
Weekend All Things Considered
Julia Simon is an intern at Weekend All Things Considered this summer. A native of Santa Monica, she is a rising fourth-year at the University of Chicago where she studies Middle Eastern languages and history. Julia speaks Spanish and has been studying formal and colloquial Arabic since high school. A lifelong yogi, she's also picked up a little Sanskrit along the way. Julia has worked in print at The New York Observer, in television at the Sundance Channel, and in movies as a production assistant on an American horror flick filmed in the Moroccan desert. She is happy to finally be working in her favorite medium: radio. Julia will research alternative energy in Egypt for six months next year and she looks forward to having tea with her NPR colleagues in the Middle East.
Katherine Burk: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Creative Services
Katherine, a lifelong resident of Louisiana and recent graduate of Louisiana State University with a B.F.A. in graphic design, flew the coop, took a trip to Israel and moves to DC all within two weeks. She is the NPR creative services intern and adores every minute of it.
During her college years, Katherine was involved in organizations such as the LSU Graphic Design Student Association and the American Institute of Graphic Artists, as well as the Greater Baton Rouge Arts Council. She won awards from AIGA and the Greater Baton Rouge Advertising Federation. She also happened to visit 23 of the 50 states, work weekends as a face painter, and become a vegetarian.
When Katherine isn't going through her eraser collection or wailing on her bass clarinet, she's romping around at the park with her dog Charlie. She is passionate about day dreaming, keeping organized, and as inspired by her father many years ago, listening to her local NPR station.
Kristen Lee: Grand Rapids, Michigan
Tell Me More
Kristen Lee celebrated her 13th birthday in a radio station. Since that glorious first appearance on Radio AAHS, she has been fascinated with the rhythmic pace and harmonious storytelling of radio.
A recent graduate of Michigan State University, Lee is applying her broadcast journalism degree to its fullest potential at NPR. With a specialization in Asian Pacific American studies, Lee hopes to offer a fresh multicultural perspective to the Tell Me More team and Intern Edition.
Lee earned the 2007 Airstaff Award at MSU’s student-run radio station and recently completed her first research project – “Media’s Racialization of Hawaii-born Barack Obama: A Cross-Media Analysis.”
Listen to Kristen Lee's personal essay on cultural identity, which aired on NPR's Tell Me More, here.
Meena Ramamurthy: Mission, Texas
Bryant Park Project (NY)
Meena Ramamurthy is a lot of things, one of which is an intern for NPR's Bryant Park Project. She enjoys writing short stories with goofy themes, such as what happens when forks and spoons fall in love (they create sporks!), and hopes one day (soon) to write for children and adolescents. Meena is also a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where she somehow managed to get a degree in radio-television-film and English while not attending a single football game. Previously, Meena interned with the Disney Channel on their preschool block, Playhouse Disney, and hosted a radio show called Listen Up! where she read short stories with sound effects.
Meena's made a few short films in her day, including The Red Snapper, the story of a boy who loves to snap, and King of the Streets, the story of a homeless man and his struggle to create the perfect cardboard sign. Currently, Meena is looking forward to creating stories for Intern Edition and especially to adding real sound effects that don't just come from her mouth. She secretly hopes one day to be ridiculously famous but for now will settle for a New York apartment with air conditioning.
Mike Sacks: Yardley, Penn.
Legal Affairs
Mike Sacks is this summer’s Legal Affairs intern, or, more accurately, the Nina Totintern. A native of the Philadelphia suburbs, Mike is a rising 2L at Georgetown University Law Center and received his undergraduate degree from Duke University in 2004. In 2004-05, Mike served as the Colet Fellow at St Paul’s School in London, where he taught English, drama, and his self-designed courses in screenwriting and history of rock and roll.
Upon his return stateside, Mike was a freelance reporter for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, a political polemicist for the 18to24bracket.com, a professional wrestling essayist at PopMatters.com, and a campaign manager for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training. To supplement his legal studies, Mike competes as “Juris Rocktor” on the US Air Guitar circuit.
Molly Messick: McConnellsburg, Penn.
Bryant Park Project (NY)
Molly Messick earned her master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism this spring. She has worked at The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and interned with NPR's Talk of the Nation. She also spent two years reading manuscripts and assisting authors at Little, Brown and Company. Her work has appeared on PRI's The World, as well as in The Village Voice and Daily News. Molly graduated from Brown University in 2003. She grew up on a blueberry farm in Pennsylvania.
Natalie Friedman: Bethesda, Maryland
Washington Desk
Natalie Friedman is extremely excited to be a part of the Elections Unit this summer, covering such an eventful presidential race. It provides a much-needed contrast to quiet, uneventful Williamstown, Mass., where she is an undergraduate at Williams College.
Natalie grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and she is happy to be back in her hometown after a year filled with travel. Natalie spent last summer in Dakar, Senegal, studying photography and a month in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, working at a center for AIDS orphans. If there are any Wolof speakers out there, Natalie is always eager and in need of practice.
Paul Littleton: Kinhasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
NPR Labs
Paul Littleton grew up in Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), and moved to the United States in 2007. Paul has dreamed of becoming an engineer since he was five years old, but his mother still holds out hope that he'll be a priest. After attending a seminary high school, Paul switched gears, studying applied technology in college. Paul enjoys studying and working in a technical environment, so NPR Labs is a perfect place to hone his skills. In addition to tinkering with engineering toys, he likes sports, especially soccer and judo.
Rebecca Tapscott: Seattle, Washington
Weekend Edition Sunday
Rebecca Tapscott grew up in Seattle, Washington, and has become familiar with D.C. during her studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Rebecca graduated this spring with a degree in international politics with focus in political philosophy.
This summer, she is interning for Weekend Edition Sunday (WESUN) with host Liane Hansen. Rebecca will be working on WESUN's political blog, the Soap Box. She has worked in radio and print journalism in Seattle, at KUOW, an NPR affiliate station, and The Stranger, a weekly independent newspaper.
Some of Rebecca's interests include education, community development and ethics. In her spare time, Rebecca likes to cook, throw dinner parties, walk around D.C., people watch, and attack her book list.
Rebekah Lewis: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Office of the General Counsel
Rebekah Lewis is a die-hard Tarheel, born and raised on college basketball in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. After many years doing battle with the Cameron Crazies in nearby Krzyzewskiville, Rebekah followed her love of the game to Washington, where she received her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 2004. She enjoyed working as an online editor and producer for two publications in the Metro area for several years, but eventually tired of her inner turmoil between the forces of Hoya and Carolina blue, precipitated by the recent revival of Georgetown basketball.
Rebekah hoped to find tranquility in the Midwest, moving to Ann Arbor in 2007 to pursue a degree in law amid football-obsessed Michiganders. She is happy to be back in Washington during the offseason.
Ryan Lindsay Arrendell: Washington, D.C.
Human Resources
A fresh face among many, Ryan Lindsay Arrendell is working hard to make a name for herself, making sure that she’s not confused for a “he” in the process. A D.C. native, but no stranger to New Mexico, North Carolina, and Maryland, Ryan is glad to be back home and most recently, to be a part of the NPR family.
Always in search of the next best thing and the stories not yet told, Ryan feels her career lies in the vast, ever-changing world of journalism where she can indulge in her many interests. In journalism she can wield the power of the pen, capture a thousand words in one picture, and be a voice to the unheard, while meeting many new people along the way.
The future seems bright for this young intern as she continues living her life like it’s golden, all the while thanking God for how far He’s brought her.
Sara Bokhari: Bourbonnais, Illinois
Finance
Drawn in by the familiar voices of Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Sara Bokhari joined NPR as an intern in the Finance Department (someone has to fund all that great programming!). Sara’s interests and experiences are varied, ranging from participating in an eco-tourism consulting project in Guatemala, working for six months with an NGO in Pakistan, volunteering with a financial literacy nonprofit in Washington, D.C., and teaching fifth grade at a middle school in the South Bronx.
Sara is currently working toward completing her MBA at the George Washington University School of Business and aspires to continue building up the strength of the nonprofit sector through business principles after graduating.
Sarah Delia: Herndon, Virginia
Arts & Information Desk
As a rising senior at James Madison University, Sarah is starting to feel a little old. In the process of accumulating a double major in English and art history with a concentration in creative writing, Sarah is feeling right at home at the Arts desk in NPR. Spending most of her life in the northern Virginia area, Sarah has returned to live at home and work her dream job for the summer.
For two years running, Sarah has been elected the Programming Director of WXJM, JMU’s student-run radio station which features and promotes independent and underrepresented bands. She is also a senior writer for the JMU paper The Breeze, producer for a women’s talk show and co-host of a weekly progressive rock music slot on WXJM. She is an avid supporter of independent music, volunteering at music festivals like MACRoCk (Mid-Atlantic College Radio Conference) and supporting CMJ, hosted in New York City every fall.
When Sarah is not being consumed by college radio, indulging herself in journalistic pursuits, or running to class, she enjoys doing power yoga. Sarah also likes cooking vegetarian meals, Japanese woodblock prints, Indian food, cats, art, poetry, literature from and about the Beat Generation, and shows in the D.C. area. Sarah can also play drums on a Meg White level. She is a fan of the current music scene in Philadelphia and is really loving the city life.
Sarah is a firm believer in the quality and sacredness of vinyl records and looks forward to learning as much as possible this summer to avoid living in a cardboard box after she graduates next spring.
Sarah Whites-Koditschek: Columbia, Missouri
Morning Edition (NPR West)
As a child, Sarah stared at the sun for so long that her mouth still tastes burnt. She brings this tireless, indiscriminate dedication to everything she does – whether it is calling wild pigeons, breaking the world record for continuous pancake eating, or cracking open the infamous mushroom-investigators scandal of '02. At once incisive and obtuse, her reportage has changed the way she thinks of news.
After interning for NPR, Sarah hopes to publish her exposé on the secret hazing rituals of the program, with a chapter outlining the compulsory attendance of Steve Inskeep's dreaded scrapbooking workshop.
Sean Bueter: Elkhart, Indiana
Morning Edition
Sean Bueter was born and raised in Elkhart, Indiana, a stone’s throw from Michigan and in the shadow of the University of Notre Dame. While it disappointed the Catholic nuns in his family, Sean opted out of Notre Dame and attended Ball State University instead. He graduated with honors in 2007 with a degree in telecommunications and is set to finish an M.S. in television, radio and film from Syracuse University in 2008.
Before coming to NPR, Sean worked several summers as a reporter at member station WVPE in Elkhart. In 2007, he won awards from the Indiana Associated Press and Indiana Society of Professional Journalists for a piece about the World Whiffleball Championships.
Besides storytelling, Sean enjoys table tennis, comedy, quantum physics and whistling.
Shauna Stuart: Atlanta, Georgia
All Things Considered
Shauna Stuart is an undergraduate student at University of Maryland studying broadcast journalism and French. At the university, she enjoys working with Terp Weekly Edition, University of Maryland's weekly radio newsmagazine, as well as helping to air Maryland Nightly Newsline, its nightly news broadcast. She also writes for two monthly campus publications. She absolutely loves All Things Considered,especially sitting less than ten feet from hosts Michele Norris, Melissa Block, and Robert Siegel.
Shauna initially wanted to be a print journalist, but fortunately for her (and all widely circulated national newspapers), she saw the light and switched to broadcast. She made the switch not only because she enjoyed the art of creating a package, but also because she realized that she had fallen in love with the sound of her own voice.
Shauna ultimately wants to report and produce long-form documentary news stories and eventually create documentary films, hoping to one day work collaboratively with Spike Lee and Aaron McGruder.
Hopefully her name will be grouped with the likes of Lisa Ling, Charlayne Hunter Gault, and Christiane Amanpour in years to come.
Besides reading, eating desserts, and shopping for shoes, Shauna enjoys being a crusader for mankind. After she spends the day saving humanity from injustice and degradation, she usually likes to come home and take a warm bath.
Sofia Ijaz: Toronto, Ontario
Office of the Ombudsman
Sofia Ijaz is a daughter of a multiethnic immigrant family, a visible minority, a believer of the misunderstood faith of Islam, a product of urban Torontonian society and a citizen of America.
Her true loves in life are her family, chocolate, foreign accents, and rain. And of course, Tupac Shakur. Her inspirations are her grandfather and Sir Chaudhry Zafarullah Khan. In rare moments, her younger brother can be inspiring too. Her life and family circumstances have given her a great appreciation for the privilege of her education at the University of Virginia, where she is double majoring in foreign Affairs and Middle East studies and minoring in economics. This aspiring foreign correspondent is taking her first steps into the journalism world here at NPR.
Victoria Chao: Dublin, Ohio
Weekend Edition Saturday
Victoria Chao grew up in Dublin, Ohio — home of Wendy’s Hamburgers and these giant cement statues of corn.
Before she graduating from Brown University this past May, Victoria reported on a wide range of topics including seal tours in Narragansett Bay, Liberian immigrants in Rhode Island, and a Columbus, Ohio, man who tried to break the world hula hooping record of 90 consecutive hours.
The best day of Victoria’s life occurred in April 2007 when she was deemed attractive enough to sit in an aisle seat at a taping of the Tyra Banks Show. (Note: She was not deemed pretty enough to sit in the front row.) This summer, she intends to recreate the pure ecstasy of her Tyra experience by working for Weekend Edition Saturday.
After her internship at NPR, Victoria will spend a year on a Fulbright scholarship in Taiwan. While in Asia, she hopes to eat stinky tofu, freelance, and convince the Taiwanese Economic and Cultural Organization to find a better tourism motto than “Taiwan: Touch Your Heart.”
Whitney Jones: El Paso, Texas
Newscast Unit
Whitney Jones joins the Newscast Unit of NPR from El Paso, Texas. Whitney is always on the move: originally from Atlanta, she moved to El Paso to attend school in nearby Las Cruces, New Mexico. Whitney recently received her bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications along with a minor in marketing from New Mexico State University. This is not Whitney's first stint in Washington – she interned in the fall of 2007 with Capitol News Connection, where she covered issues and events on the Hill, including the Dalai Lama's visit.
Before and between her internships in Washington, Whitney worked as a reporter for NPR member station KRWG in Las Cruces. She was also invited to study photography with her professor and noted photographer, Sterling Trantham, in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico. Whitney's experiences on the border and her travels to Central America give Whitney a knack for covering immigration and border issues. She hopes to one day be working for NPR.
In her spare time, Whitney likes to travel, backpack, and investigate just about anything outdoors.