Hello, my name is Denise. I’m 36, Filipina-American. I love exploring and asking questions, especially when it leads to more questions.

I spent six years working at NPR DC headquarters as a producer/reporter for Weekend Edition and Weekend All Things Considered, notably covering stories with hosts Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Scott Simon, and Michel Martin. The stories I created for NPR were always community-centered. While it was important to hold decision-makers accountable, it was even more important for me to shine the spotlight on the people affected by those decisions: the disenfranchised, the poor, and the marginalized. As a result, our weekend programming had the highest rates of diverse sourcing across National Public Radio.

When I left public radio in 2020 to launch the Los Angeles Times daily news podcast, I led a team with host Gustavo Arellano to carve out a daily news podcast that centered audiences of color. We achieved this by integrating source tape directly from the people affected by the news. We also allowed Spanish speakers to speak without a voiceover, instead translating through narrative context. In a crowded podcast landscape, cultivating new audiences and sharing the stories of underrepresented communities continues the mission that I continue to live by.

Email: deniseimrad@gmail.com