Meet the Speakers of One Small Step: Bridging the Political Divide – Tami Graham, Matthew Brown, Adam Burke, and moderator Ernesto Aguilar.
America is a country politically divided. Through StoryCorps’ One Small Step initiative, community radio stations have attempted to bridge the political divide and bring people with different views together in conversation to learn and remember the human. Stations will share what they learned through the project, how they engaged listeners, and the stories they’ve shared. Panelists include Tami Graham (KSUT), Matthew Brown (WTIP), and Adam Burke (Independent Producer). (Livestream)
Tami Graham
Tami Graham has been KSUT’s Executive Director since 2016. She successfully led a $2.5M capital campaign that resulted in KSUT moving into a new 5,000 sq. foot home in 2020. Under her tenure, a new Tribal Media Center was created, which offers training and storytelling opportunities to Native American and Indigenous community members and a local news department has been developed and is now serving the news desert of the region. Tami won Woman of the Year in 1996 for her leadership of KSUT Community Radio at Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. She’s a fifth-generation Coloradoan and lives with her partner and lots of farm animals in Mancos, Colorado at the foot of Mesa Verde National Park.
Matthew Brown
Matthew assumed the duties of Executive Director at WTIP in Grand Marais, MN
in June of 2018. He started with WTIP as a volunteer host in 2002, took over as
host of their music show Sidetracks in 2008 and then Program Director in 2014. He
has lived in the County for over 20 years and has an affinity towards Lake Superior
and large bodies of water.
Adam Burke
Adam Burke is an award-winning journalist and audio producer with over 25 years of experience in public radio. His field reports and documentaries have aired on National Public Radio, American Public Media, BBC, CBC-Canada, and ABC Australia. He is the co-founder and creator of Native Braids, a storytelling archive project he launched in partnership with KSUT Tribal Radio in 2018. In 2022, Adam led KSUT’s One Small Step project for the Four Corners region of the US in partnership with StoryCorps. Adam’s narrative sound design was recognized by the Third Coast International Audio Festival in 2007 for his story Sucked Into the Tunnels Beneath Las Vegas. Adam met his first radio mentors at an NFCB conference way back in 2000.
Ernesto Aguilar
Ernesto Aguilar is Director of Radio Programming at KQED, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition, he writes the newsletter OIGO, which covers the intersection of public media and its efforts/challenges in serving, learning from, and speaking to Latino audiences. Ernesto served at NFCB as its executive director; as a director on the boards of the Association of Independents in Radio and PRPD; and on the original organizing committee of Public Media for All. A Maynard Institute and Sulzberger Executive Leadership fellow, Aguilar has worked in community radio, daily newspapers and alternative newsweeklies.
