Sharon Maeda has been involved in community radio and media advocacy for 40 years. She was station manager of KRAB-FM in Seattle, a former executive director of Pacifica Radio, a member of the early NFCB Steering Committee and the Public Radio Satellite Interconnection System Charitable Trust, where she continues to serve today. In 2017, Sharon came out of retirement to help get the LPFM in her neighborhood on the air.
This December marks the end of Sharon’s last term serving on the board of directors for NFCB. She has contributed so much to public media and specifically community radio, whether through direct service at a station, or through advocacy and education in her roles at NFCB and PRSISCT. We are so grateful to have had Sharon in our corner and look forward to witnessing the great things she continues to do for NPOs and broadcasters alike.
Serah Mead: Hi Sharon! I’m asking out out-going board members to give us readers a quick history lesson. Tell us: how did you come to be involved with NFCB?
Sharon Maeda: In 1975, I became Director of Community Involvement at KCTS/9 public television. I received a CPB Minority Training Grant to become a producer, and became a member of the CPB Minority Task Force. By 1978, I filed a race/gender discrimination suit against KCTS/9. After my CPB Minority Training grant was over, the station had no place for me. I was the only woman and person of color out of 14 full time staff producers. There was one woman who got her own grants and produced her documentaries at the station, but they never put her on their regular payroll. Things got very chilly for me at the station – friends afraid to talk to me at work – so I decided to leave the station until the lawsuit worked its way through the EEOC. I found a job as station manager of KRAB-FM, Lorenzo Milam’s first station.
BTW, my lawsuit never came to a trial. The director of CPB’s Minority Task Force, W. Ed Mansfield, came to KCTS unannounced and demanded to see its staff roster, recruitment, retention and hiring practices. While CPB had no authority, per se, Mansfield’s presence at the station caused a real buzz. Suddenly, all 6-7 open positions were filled by people of color. At that point, my attorney and I visited the CEO together and I told him I would drop the charges, but would be watching the station to see if I needed to reactive my lawsuit. I went back to KRAB.
Within weeks of being at KRAB, I realized that radio is so much more immediate and democratizing than television. But the station had serious problems. KRAB was located in a historic firehouse with no running water and no heat! I was hired to get the station back on track OR close the station with dignity. During my first week, Nan Rubin, Director of Station Services at NFCB called to introduce herself and NFCB. My only question, “how soon can you get here?” She came and helped and continued to be moral support only a phone call away. Fortunately, at the time, I had a spouse to support me as KRAB couldn’t pay me anything for the first six months!
By sheer coincidence, the next national NFCB conference was down the I-5 corridor at Evergreen College in Olympia, so I could afford to attend. But, to my dismay, of a couple hundred participants, there were only 13 BIPOC folks. I wish I could remember who was there; anyway, we stayed up half the night writing a “third world manifesto” and presented it as a resolution at the full conference the next day. That became the outline of NFCB’s priority to become inclusive at all levels. That’s how I got elected to the Steering Committee, before we ever had a Board of Directors.
Sharon interviewing presidential candidate Julian Castro in 2020.
Mead: You’ve been closely connected to several stations throughout your career. How have you seen your role in the community radio world be impacted (if at all) by your involvement with NFCB?
Maeda: NFCB was everything. I was trained in art and filmmaking and was a local political activist. I had no radio experience. NFCB helped me get KRAB requalified with CPB, and we moved to a building that we purchased from the City of Seattle. I met a lot of great community radio people at NFCB conferences which led to some of the Pacifica team recruiting me to apply for the Executive Director job a couple of years later. I never returned to TV and the rest is history.
After six intense years at Pacifica, I returned home to Seattle and found that not one radio or television entity had a job for me. Never mind that I took Pacifica from $1 million in debt to $400,000 in the bank. And, Pacifica became the only broadcast network to go from a white male organization to a women/people of color led network. To pay the bills, I started doing consulting projects and eventually created a nonprofit and media management firm, Spectra Communications. CPB hired me to assist “radio stations with serious problems.” I became known as the station doctor.
I eventually went on to do media work under HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and head up the communications shop for the global mission board of the United Methodist Church. That gave me the opportunity to fund and/or create media projects around the global south. From backpack to suitcase radio stations for communities living in the shadow of dictatorships, to HIV/AIDS awareness radio programs in English/French beamed into sub-Saharan Africa where national governments that controlled media were in denial about the epidemic.
When I retired in 2017, I was asked to help get KVRU, an LPFM station in my neighborhood, on the air. We had less than a month to mount the antenna, test the system and program the airwaves, with a lot of help from folks all across the city, we got on the air with less than 24 hours to spare! The first thing I did was for the station was to join NFCB. I was so moved by the much more diverse and younger folks at the NFCB conference that I spontaneously decided to run for the Board. I recognized that we were in a country that was getting more and more divisive, and that saving democracy is real. But, at 80, it’s time for me to step aside.
Sharon (sitting) with some of the great folks who helped get KVRU on the air by the deadline.
Mead: You’ve no doubt bore witness to many significant changes, challenges, and wins in the community and public media sector throughout your life. When you think about that history, what comes to mind for you in this present moment? The context being the rescissions act, defunding CPB, attacks on the first amendment but also record donor numbers and deeply engaged audiences. While you consider this, as you segue out of your duties as board member, what are your hopes for the future of NFCB and its member stations?
Maeda: The demise of radio has been called with the advent of television, the internet and more recently, social media. I’ve always said that the people who lead grassroots nonprofit organizations are far more resilient that organizations that are flush with money and resources. And, yet again, community radio is helping to lead the way for survival and a long-term future. The demise of CPB has been frustrating and painful, not to mention probably illegal. Despite 2025 being a horrendous one for public media as we know it, I am very hopeful. With the loss of CPB, the best minds in community radio played a huge role in not only salvaging the system, but leading new efforts. Large urban stations are being supported like never before. Allies brought together major foundations to pledge millions of dollars to especially save bilingual, tribal and other rural stations. New entities were formed to also bring more funding and expertise to help.
And, while it was never really a spoken priority, we now have the very real possibility of a community radio network that is totally independent and not subject to the whims of any current or future occupants of the White House.
