The Spiritual Edge Team
Judy Silber, Executive Editor & Host
Judy Silber is the Executive Editor for The Spiritual Edge and Host of the Sacred Steps series. Judy got her start in journalism as a community reporter at the Orange County bureau of the Los Angeles Times. From Los Angeles, she migrated north to the Bay Area where she covered biotechnology and the business of healthcare for the Contra Costa Times. At KALW, she produced stories on children who meditate, veterans who meditate, birds, butterflies, and Parkinson’s disease before starting The Spiritual Edge.
Hana Baba, Producer & Host
Hana Baba is a producer and host for The Spiritual Edge podcast. She is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist with 20+ years experience in radio. She is a reporter and a consummate podcast host, and currently produces and co-hosts The Stoop. Her interviews and reporting range in topics from ethnic community issues, poverty and health to culture, religion, politics, and the arts. An Arabic speaker and Sudanese-American, Hana reports from and about Sudan and Sudanese communities. Hana’s freelance work has appeared in PRI's The World, BBC World Service, and New America Media.
Jeb Sharp, Editor of Becoming Muslim and A Prayer for Salmon
Jeb Sharp is editor of Becoming Muslim and A Prayer for Salmon. She started her career as a reporter and news director at KCAW in Sitka, Alaska, and later reported for WBUR in Boston and for The World at WGBH, where she was also an editor. She has won several of journalism’s highest honors including the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club of America, the Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, and awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 2005-2006. Jeb is now a freelance journalist, radio and podcast consultant, and a member of PMJA’s Editor Corps.
Loretta Williams, Editor of A Prayer for Salmon
Loretta Williams is the editor for A Prayer for Salmon. Loretta is an award-winning public media writer, producer and editor whose work tackles some of the most important issues of our day – climate change, race, and hot button topics that divide America. She has mentored a number of early career journalists, who went on to become regular contributors to national, regional, and local public radio. She’s worked for NPR and SoundVision Productions, and been a freelance journalist since 2008.
Cheryl Devall, Editor of Sacred Steps
Cheryl Devall is editor for KALW’s Sacred Steps series. She’s edited for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Southern California Public Radio, along with the Daily World in Opelousas, Louisiana, the birthplace of Zydeco music. Cheryl has reported for National Public Radio, and for newspapers from Boston to Louisville to Chicago. She has shared in three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards and has helped to shape audio documentaries and podcasts on the lives of Asian Americans, California’s effort to change the standard for police use of deadly force, and a Peabody Award-nominated series on the gospel music roots of rock and soul.
Tom Levy,
Photographer for The Spiritual Edge
Tom Levy is a Contributing Photographer and Photography Editor for The Spiritual Edge. A former award-winning staff photographer at the San Francisco Chronicle, he has shot freelance assignments from Honolulu to Honduras, and worked as a staff writer/photographer for nonprofits in Hawaii and California. His portfolio website is www.tomlevy.net.
Photo from left to right: Adreanna Rodriguez (producer), Judy Silber (reporter/executive editor), Michael Preston (advisory member), Joseph Orozco (advisory member), Marc Dadigan (advisory member), Tom Levy (photographer), Les Hall (advisory member) and Shorty
Our advisory committee for A Prayer for Salmon is Marc Dadigan, Joseph Orozco, Brendan Lindsay, Les Hall and Michael Preston.
Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is the co-host for A Prayer for Salmon. She is an Indigenous musician, author, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. Her multi-genre presentation style has engaged audiences across the globe towards personal, collective, and ecological healing. She blends her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.
Lindsay Rae Myers-Humlie manages digital content and social media for The Spiritual Edge. She is a freelance digital marketing specialist who has worked extensively in public broadcasting.
Chris Egusa is an audio engineer for A Prayer for Salmon. He is also a reporter, producer, photographer, and musician. As a journalist, he focuses on disability, mental health, and healthcare inequities. His work has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Public Media Journalists Association, and the San Francisco Press Club. He has contributed to KALW, KQED, NPR, Science Friday, WNYC, and Craftsmanship Quarterly. Before working in public radio, Chris was a strategy consultant who helped nonprofits and foundations create programs to advance social change.
Tarek Fouda is a sound engineer who works on sound design for The Spiritual Edge. Apart from KALW, he also works on the Smithsonian’s Sidedoor and Airspace podcasts and has previously contributed to This American Life, Audible’s Thicker Than Water podcast and many other projects, including sound design and mixing for documentary films and commercial work.
Katie McCutcheon helped with research for Becoming Muslim and A Prayer for Salmon. She is an audio producer at SOUND MADE PUBLIC, a creative agency based in San Francisco, where she produces and sound designs podcasts and audio experiences for artists and art institutions, such as The Guggenheim Museum and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Adreanna Rodriguez helped with research for A Prayer for Salmon, an upcoming season of The Spiritual Edge. She is a Lakota/Chicana artist based in Oakland, CA. As a storyteller, her research, writing, and filmmaking revolve around issues of social/climate justice for indigenous communities, as well as femme stories.
Ben Trefny is the Managing Consultant for The Spiritual Edge and the News Director of KALW News. Ben’s work has been heard on NPR, CBC, 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, the project that evolved into Ear Hustle on Radiotopia.
Contributing reporters for Sacred Steps, Season 1 of The Spiritual Edge include Daysha Eaton, Jude Joffe-Block, Maria Martin, Monique Parsons, Shaina Shealy and Heidi Shin.
Contributing reporters for Sacred Steps, Season 2 include Monique Parsons, Maria Martin, Jenee Darden, Jess Engebretson, Athar Ahmad, Heidi Shin, and Shaina Shealy.
Contributing reporters for Becoming Muslim include Hana Baba, Jahd Khalil, Imran Ali Malik, and Natasha Haverty.
Danya Abdel Hameid provided fact-checking for A Prayer for Salmon.
Additional Credits
Our wonderful logos were designed by Jeffrey Burke Whitten.
Operations, marketing, and digital consulting from Megan Jones for our podcast debut.
Thank you to Elka Karl for public relations help for A Prayer for Salmon.
We are grateful to our first website developer, Stacey Wilkinson, and the Front Group for our initial logo and website design.