Selected Portfolio
These examples show how programming strategy becomes audience service: clarifying the purpose, building the team, shaping the format, connecting platforms, and creating durable public media assets.
An audio series and podcast developed as WHRO's multi-platform audio initiative supporting the 250th anniversary of the United States, created in connection with the VA250 Commission and Colonial Williamsburg.
The 250th anniversary of the United States created a public service opportunity for WHRO: tell regional stories from the American Revolution in a format that could work across broadcast, podcast, education, live events, and public history partnerships.
Led programming strategy, secured funding support through Virginia Humanities and the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, assembled a five-person production team, and shaped the editorial tone and format of a weekly short-form series.
Built the project as a multi-platform initiative from the start, designed for WHRO broadcast properties, podcast platforms, smart speakers, NPR, live events, online archives, the Public Radio Exchange, and free availability to other broadcasters and public history partners.
Since launching in July 2025, the podcast has reached more than 48,000 active listeners and become a durable public media asset connecting broadcast, education, history, and community service. WHRO Education also adopted the series for institutional learning.
Journalism Showcase
After WHRO's journalism department grew from its first reporter and national story into an 18-person newsroom, the organization needed a consistent broadcast vehicle to showcase the depth of local reporting produced each week.
Community Service Programming
Created as a weekly guide to local events and weekend happenings, Can Do gives community organizations free visibility while adding a lighter, service-oriented counterbalance to the news cycle.
Guiding a regional audio portfolio across WHRO Classical, WHRV News/Talk, and WFOS, with a programming strategy built around news, information, arts, culture, memory, civic life, and digital reach.
WHRO Classical was already a strong, clearly defined 24-hour local classical service. WHRV, however, needed a sharper identity as local journalism across the region was shrinking and audiences needed a trusted source for regional news, context, and civic information.
Helped guide WHRV's transformation into a focused news and information service through schedule strategy, talent development, audience messaging, local journalism integration, and digital expansion.
In 2018, approved a FOIA request that produced WHRO's first-ever original news story. The story gained national attention and helped support board investment in a formal newsroom.
WHRV grew into one of the region's respected news and information outlets, while the broader portfolio gained clearer identity, stronger staff alignment, expanded digital reach, and record membership, giving, and revenue support.
Programming Grid Artifact
This February 2026 sample shows what WHRV's matured news/talk architecture looks like now: a structured schedule balancing national programs, regional journalism, local hosts, public affairs, specialty programming, and audience-focused dayparts.
Leading WHRV's shift toward news and information required more than schedule changes. It required helping people understand the direction, grow into new expectations, and see themselves inside the future of the station.
Arriving from commercial media created early skepticism. Some staff worried that public media would become louder, flashier, or more sensationalized, even as WHRV needed to evolve from an eclectic station into a clearer civic news and information service.
Clarified leadership across the audio portfolio by promoting a strong internal leader to Program Director for WHRO Classical, giving that team clear daily direction while creating room to focus more deeply on WHRV's transformation.
Overcommunicated the purpose, direction, and stakes of the change with unusual transparency, giving staff room to use their knowledge of the audience and community to help define how the station could make the transition successfully.
Worked with hosts and producers through airchecks, regular coaching, daily check-ins, direct feedback, and repeated explanation of why the changes mattered, while listening closely to their knowledge of the audience and community.
Staff who were not trained as traditional journalists began producing meaningful local stories, stronger hosts and producers emerged, and the station developed the confidence and discipline needed for live election coverage, weekly news programming, deeper features, and daily execution.
The real measure of leadership is building a team that can carry the work with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
The shift depended on transparency, repetition, staff agency, and a more intentional programming culture focused on preparation, forward promotion, story selection, listener value, and consistency across the broadcast day.
As AI tools began affecting media, education, production, administration, and creative workflows, WHRO needed a practical way to reduce confusion, build staff confidence, and establish shared expectations.
Staff entered the AI conversation with different levels of comfort, curiosity, skepticism, and concern. Some departments needed room to explore practical uses, while journalism required stricter boundaries to protect trust and editorial standards.
Structured the committee through monthly meetings, department representation, subcommittees, and clear charges, creating shared language and practical guidance without forcing a one-size-fits-all answer across the organization.
Defined different levels of appropriate AI use by department and risk level, while keeping one organizational principle consistent: human first, AI as a tool, human review, then human implementation.
Increased staff confidence, clarified expectations, reduced uncertainty, and created a larger cultural benefit: people from different departments talking more, sharing ideas, and collaborating outside their normal silos.
Systems work is where strategy becomes usable: clear charges, decision paths, budget logic, repeatable workflows, and standards people can understand under pressure.
A year-one operating plan for ethical, intentional AI adoption across departments with different risk profiles, responsibilities, and comfort levels.
Staff were experimenting unevenly, departments had different risk levels, and WHRO did not yet have shared language, organizational guardrails, or department-specific guidance around AI use.
Created a 13-person committee with monthly meetings, department representation, subcommittees, and clear charges tied to each group's discipline and responsibility.
Organized the work into Departmental Standards and Ethics, Staff Training, and an Innovation Lab focused on low-risk automation and workflow support.
The committee creates the framework, subcommittees develop details, departments define their specific rules within the broader standard, and larger recommendations move to leadership.
Human first, AI as an assistive tool, human review before implementation. AI supports people; it does not replace judgment, authorship, accountability, or mission.
More clarity, less fear, safer experimentation, fewer ad hoc decisions, stronger leadership visibility, and a repeatable structure for responsible organizational learning.
A portfolio-wide budget review during public media funding pressure, focused on protecting core work while making resource decisions more intentional.
WHRO faced significant public media funding pressure after the loss of Corporation for Public Broadcasting support affected the organization's budget by approximately 11%.
Led a full audio portfolio budget audit across programming, staffing, contractors, rights fees, shows, services, equipment, production needs, grants, podcasting, and digital distribution.
Reprioritized resources, defended core spending, negotiated with content suppliers, and restructured parts of the programming grid without treating the challenge as a blunt content cut.
Coordinated closely with the Chief Content Officer and Chief Financial Officer while keeping the CEO informed, balancing programming value, financial reality, and organizational mission.
Tied spending more directly to audience service, public value, membership support, journalism, digital growth, stronger programming, and long-term sustainability.
Reduced operating costs by approximately 12% year over year without staff layoffs, created room to pursue an additional hire, and strengthened the foundation for future programming and partnerships.
The success of AI inside an organization will not come from chasing tools. It will come from ethical implementation, clear standards, transparent use, and disciplined human oversight.
Organization-wide guardrails paired with department-specific rules, recognizing that journalism, education, production, membership, development, finance, compliance, programming, and administration carry different levels of risk.
Lunch-and-learns, LLM basics, privacy guidance, copyright guidance, practical demonstrations, handouts, department examples, and support for nontechnical staff so people can ask better questions and use approved tools responsibly.
A practical effort to identify low-risk, repetitive “time burglar” tasks where AI can reduce friction, return time to staff, and support mission-focused work without replacing human judgment.
Journalism has the strictest boundary: no generative AI for published journalism, no AI-generated facts used as sources, and no interviews, transcripts, source material, unpublished reporting, or journalism work product entered into open AI systems.
WHRO does not put confidential donor, member, personnel, financial, proprietary, or compliance-sensitive information into open AI tools. Public-facing AI-shaped work requires human review and, when material, transparency.
The strongest AI use cases have often been internal and unglamorous: reducing administrative drag, making technical systems easier to use, and returning time to people for work that requires human judgment.
A standalone local transcription application saves nearly $100,000 a year while keeping the process outside open internet-based AI systems.
House-designed copy reference GPTs help underwriting staff check whether proposed copy appears to meet FCC non-commercial language standards.
Internal GPT support for the automation system gives staff step-by-step operational guidance in plain language and reduces dependence on institutional memory.
A digital log workflow for underwriting, promotional, and broadcast satisfaction reporting communicates issues as they happen and creates a durable record for review.
Internal tools help ensure required air studio documents print automatically each morning, reducing manual dependency around recurring operational tasks.
The digital log process alone saves roughly 35 minutes a week while reducing paper waste, storage needs, and delayed end-of-day reporting.