Judy Silber is the Lead Producer for The Spiritual Edge. After graduating from the science journalism program at Boston University, Judy got her professional start in journalism as a community reporter at the Orange County bureau of the Los Angeles Times. There, she learned the importance of local politics on land use issues. From Los Angeles, she migrated north to the Bay Area and the Contra Costa Times to cover biotechnology and the business of health care. At KALW, she has produced stories on children who meditate, veterans who meditate, birds, butterflies, and Parkinson’s disease. She also served a stint as the station’s grant writer. She comes to The Spiritual Edge with a strong curiosity about how religion and spirituality are changing in today’s culture, and how people around the Bay Area relate to them.
Jen Chien is the Editor for The Spiritual Edge. She is also Managing Editor for Crosscurrents and KALW News. She has been a contributor to All Things Considered, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, BBC/PRI’s The World, Making Contact, SF Public Press, East Bay Express, New America Media, and KPFA in Berkeley, where she took part in the First Voice Apprenticeship Program. She is the recipient of the 2013 Outstanding Emerging Journalist Award from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California. She holds a BA in American Studies from Smith College, and an MA in Interdisciplinary Performance from New College of California. Before entering the field of journalism, she has had a successful career as a professional dance and theater artist, teacher, and massage therapist.
Hana Baba is Contributor for The Spiritual Edge, and a Reporter and Co-host of Crosscurrents, KALW Public Radio’s evening radio newsmagazine. She reports on immigrant ethnic communities, poverty, health, culture, religion, and the arts. A special focus for her has been Muslim communities and Muslim women. She has reported on American Muslim women’s love lives, Muslim matchmaking, South Asian battered women’s shelters, the place of women in American mosques, and how Sudanese turn to spiritual healers for mental illness. Her work appears also on various NPR programs, including PRI’s The World, and New America Media. A Sudanese-American, Baba is fluent in Arabic.
Olivia Henry
Tom Levy is a Contributing Photographer to The Spiritual Edge. He is a former award-winning staff photographer at the San Francisco Chronicle, has shot freelance assignments from Honolulu to Honduras, and worked as a staff writer/photographer for nonprofits in Hawaii and California. His photography has appeared in national and international publications, helped to promote nonprofit organizations across the United States and been honored with inclusion in Graphis Photo, as well as in several Communication Arts photography annuals. Levy believes that good photography reaches into a viewer’s gut, bypassing their intellect, to speak directly to their emotions. His work can be found at https://www.tomlevyphoto.com.
Ben Trefny is the Managing Consultant for The Spiritual Edge. He also the News Director of KALW News. Ben Trefny earned an undergraduate degree in English literature from Pomona College and an MS in journalism, with honors, from the University of Oregon. While studying in Eugene, he began volunteering in the news department at public radio station KLCC. That launched a career spanning more than a decade, now, in public media. Ben’s work has been heard on NPR, the CBC, the BBC, and CBS radio, but most frequently on KALW, where he’s worked since 2004. Under his tenure as first executive news editor and now News Director, the KALW News Department has won many regional and national awards. Ben has also helped to create and incubate multiple podcast projects, including The Stoop, The Intersection, The Spiritual Edge and the San Quentin Prison Report (now evolved into Ear Hustle, winner of the PRX Radiotopia podquest).
We are also grateful to our fantastic web developer, Stacey Wilkinson, and the ever-creative Front Group for logo and website design.
