2019 IAB Podcast Upfront

AG is the Executive Producer and Host of Mueller, She Wrote. In addition to being a veteran, PhD, and a federal government executive, she’s a comedian, author, and staunch advocate for the resistance. Her mission with the show is to employ her expertise in the absurd amount of Trump Russia news and wrap it up into tasty bites for human consumption; committed to doing it weekly until House Trump falls. Additionally, she’s very dedicated to the separation of facts and theory, and working hard to make sure everyone knows which is which.

Rund Abdelfatah is the co-host and producer of Throughline, a podcast that explores the history of current events. In that role, she’s responsible for all aspects of the podcast’s production, including development of episode concepts, interviewing guests, and sound design.

Abdelfatah joined NPR in 2014 as an intern and went on to become a producer on a number of NPR’s most popular podcasts, including How I Built This, TED Radio Hour, NPR Politics Podcast, Code Switch, and Pop Culture Happy Hour.

The concept for Throughline, launched in February 2019, was developed by Abdelfatah and her co-host, Ramtin Arablouei.

Abdelfatah got her start in journalism covering local and domestic politics at the Washington bureau of the BBC. She previously earned a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology, with a minor in Spanish, from Princeton University.

Ramtin Arablouei is co-host and co-producer of NPR’s podcast Throughline, a show that explores history through creative, immersive storytelling designed to reintroduce history to new audiences.

Arablouei got his start at NPR in 2015 with a three-week contract to produce a pilot for How I Built This with Guy Raz, and now produces, reports, mixes, and writes music for such top-rated podcasts as TED Radio Hour, Hidden Brain, Embedded, Invisibilia, The Indicator, Code Switch, Radio Ambulante, and the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal.

A trained audio engineer, Arablouei spent most of his early twenties in recording studios. He contributed sound design and music for films and commercials, including the IMAX trailer for 300: Rise of an Empire. He’s written music for many award-winning podcasts including “Los Cassettes del Exilio” (Radio Ambulante) and the “All Work. No Pay” episode of Reveal, which won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award for investigative reporting.

Born in Iran, Arablouei emigrated to the U.S. with his family as a child. He graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and history.

Lisa Baird is Chief Marketing Officer at New York Public Radio (NYPR) where she leads the marketing and audience development, data, membership, sponsorship and communications teams. In addition, she is also responsible for raising substantial revenue, increasing audience size and diversity across all programs and platforms, cultivating audience loyalty, and amplifying digital membership.

Prior to joining NYPR, Baird was Chief Marketing Officer at the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). During her almost 10-year tenure, she oversaw all commercial activities including the USOC’s media assets, sponsorship, licensing, advertising, hospitality, events and marketing and branding. She launched the Team USA brand, which is one of the most active digital sports brands, collaborated on the launch of an OTT channel with NBC and the International Olympic Committee, and achieved record revenues benefiting national governing bodies of sports and America’s athletes.

Earlier in her career, Lisa was the Senior Vice President, Marketing and Consumer Products, for the National Football League (NFL). She has a rich and extensive background in leading branding, development and marketing for several Fortune 50 companies, including managing iconic brands at IBM, General Motors, Warner-Lambert Company (now Pfizer), Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products, and the Procter & Gamble Company.

Lisa is member of the Board of Governors for the International Hall of Fame of Tennis and serves on the Board of Directors for Elite Sportswear, a Riverside Company and Soundview Paper, an Atlas Holdings Company.

Peabody and duPont-Columbia award–winning journalist Andrea Bernstein is Co-Host of the Trump, Inc. Podcast, a co-production with ProPublica, and is Senior Editor for WNYC News. She has previously served as Metro Editor, Political Director, Director of Transportation Nation, and Senior Reporter.

Bernstein covers the intersection of Trump and Kushner business and politics, and, with her colleague Ilya Marritz, has broken key stories, including those on how Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump avoided criminal indictment, Paul Manafort’s money-laundering and Michael Cohen’s fraudulent business practices.

Bernstein has covered six national elections including the 2016 election, and her beats have included government, politics, transportation, environment, housing, and policing. At various points she’s been assigned to cover Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, Chris Christie, Bill de Blasio, and Andrew Cuomo. Her investigative reporting on the Bridgegate scandal with Matt Katz won WNYC News its first-ever Peabody award.

Bernstein was one of 12 US Journalists to win a prestigious year-long 2007 Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. She has won over 50 awards for her work, including the duPont-Columbia Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors award for radio, the National Press Club award for environmental reporting, and national Murrow (RTNDA) and Society for Professional Journalists awards for investigative reporting.

She has taught journalism at City College, was the Jack Newfield Professor of Investigative Journalism at Hunter College, and led trainings for journalists in several venues, including preparing reporters in Bhutan to cover their first-ever political campaign in that country’s transition to democracy.

She was a political correspondent for the New York Observer for eight years, and her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, New York Magazine, The Nation, and the New York Daily News.

She graduated from Yale University, cum laude, with honors.

She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and two children.

Jordan Coburn is a co-host of Mueller, She Wrote. Coburn brings astute observation with a healthy dose of wit to the table. In addition, she is a comedian. Her dry, often tongue-in-cheek contributions are balanced by her solid grasp of the subject matter. In addition to being a successful comedian, she is also an author, performer, and all around awesome human being. She can be found performing at the Comedy Store, the Mad House and any other major comedy home.

Dana Elmquist develops multiplatform, data-driven sponsorship campaigns for national and global businesses, augmenting Market Enginuity capabilities for client stations and producers. Additionally, he evangelizes the power of public media to marketers not currently considering it in their marketing mix, and introduces brands to new ways of leveraging their marketing spend.

Dana works with blue chip clients in the finance, energy, CPG and automotive categories, bringing sponsor and ad agency together for creative executions that advance both brand and publisher.

Dana’s corporate and business development experience includes roles at New York Public Radio, Brooklyn Public Library and Africa Center. At Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences he teaches: communications and marketing; social purpose businesses; ethics and governance for nonprofit organizations.

Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.

Previously, Garcia was the U.S. editor of FT Alphaville, the flagship economics and finance blog of the Financial Times, where for seven years he wrote and edited stories about the U.S. economy and financial markets. He was also the founder and host of FT Alphachat, the Financial Times’ award-winning business and economics podcast.

As a guest commentator, he has regularly appeared on media outlets such as Marketplace Radio, WNYC, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, the BBC, and others.

Gina Garrubbo is President and CEO of National Public Media (NPM), a subsidiary of NPR owned in partnership with PBS and WGBH. As a full-service corporate sponsorship organization, National Public Media supports the continued growth of NPR and the public media system via funding from corporate sponsors across multiple platforms, from broadcast radio and podcasts, to the NPR app and NPR.org. National Public Media includes NPM Creative, its in-house creative studio offering brands long-form custom audio production, including branded podcast production. NPM Creative won the 2022 PR Daily Content Marketing Award for Best Branded Podcast in partnership with YouTube.


Outside of National Public Media, Garrubbo sits on the IAB Executive, IAB Finance and IAB Audio Committees, working with leaders across the industry to build industry standards, best practices and resources for audio marketing.


Prior to NPR, Garrubbo spent more than 20 years growing marketing and sales teams, launching brands and building companies, with extensive experience in both legacy and emerging media. She was one of the builders of women.com, one of the first websites for women, and BlogHer, a network of bloggers which brought independent voices to millions of readers. Garrubbo built advertising sales teams for Oxygen Media, Discovery Communications and in syndicated television. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and Glen Highland Farm.

Ira Glass is the host and creator of the public radio program This American Life. The show is consistently one of the top three most downloaded podcasts anywhere, with 3.6 million downloads per episode. Another 2.2 million listeners hear the show each week on more than 500 public radio stations.

The team that creates This American Life also created Serial, the most listened-to podcast in the history of the medium, with over 19 million downloads for each episode of its first season. Glass is an editor on the show. Serial is widely credited for changing the face of podcasting. As The New Yorker put it: “Serial was the first show to induce advertisers to take podcasting seriously. The creative and economic accomplishment of Serial has spawned countless imitators, and many have shamelessly echoed its tropes.”

The style of narrative journalism invented by This American Life and Serial – emotional story arcs, compelling characters, humor, surprising ideas, all delivered in a chatty conversational tone – have been copied by a generation of podcasts. The team’s programs (including S-Town) have won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including ten Peabody awards.

Andrew Golis is Chief Content Officer at WNYC where he leads all content efforts—from editorial strategy and program development to the continued integration of digital and radio—across WNYC News, WNYC Radio, and WNYC Studios, the organization’s podcasting and national program distribution arm.

Prior to joining WNYC, Golis was General Manager of Vox and the Vice President of Network Development for Vox’s parent company, Vox Media. During his tenure, he oversaw a team setting and supporting business strategy across Vox Media’s editorial networks, which include Curbed, Eater, Polygon, Recode, SB Nation, and The Verge. At Vox, he spearheaded the partnership that created its daily news podcast Today, Explained, helped the team grow into TV and set up partnerships to expand Vox’s journalism with everyone from ProPublica to the Rockefeller Foundation.

Early in his career, Golis was named as The Atlantic’s first “Entrepreneur in Residence” and was on the management team at PBS’ FRONTLINE. During his tenure overseeing digital at FRONTLINE, it was awarded six Webby honors, two Emmy nominations for digital storytelling, and an Overseas Press Club Award for digital innovation.

Rayna Greenberg is the co-host of Girls Gotta Eat. She is also a writer and photographer.

Ashley Hesseltine is the co-host of Girls Gotta Eat. She is also a standup comedian, writer, and founder of the Instagram accounts Bros Being Basic and Fashion Dads.

Jaleesa Johnson is a co-host of Mueller, She Wrote. Johnson delivers her unique brand of comedy with the flow of a professional and the focus of a woman fueled by purpose. She has performed at the World Series of Comedy, Burbank Comedy Festival, OC Pride Festival, and San Diego Pride Festival. Jaleesa has also been featured in outlets like Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post, and can be seen performing regularly all over Southern California.

A seasoned public media ambassador and one of the early leaders in the podcast industry, Jim Lally leads national sales to drive results on behalf of Market Enginuity clients.

Prior to Market Enginuity, Jim led the national sales strategy at WNYC and was responsible for revenue from all local and national platforms including broadcast, podcasts and digital. As senior director of media platforms and brand partnerships, Jim’s oversight included a team of 14 that created unprecedented growth for the organization across all platforms.

Jim held senior sales roles at Advance Digital Media, Sherwood Outdoor and The New York Times. While at The New York Times, he was part of the integration team that developed programs for advertisers to purchase digital and print in tandem, and helped make digital advertising a more significant part of the overall revenue stream.

His sales experience includes multi-million-dollar installation sponsorships at 1 Times Square, the iconic building where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

Jim graduated from Boston College and holds a M.S. in marketing from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business. A passionate music fan, he moved to New York in the early 90’s, to work for TVT Records helping introduce then unknown, pop industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Later, in 1995, he became a part of the team that launched alternative arts and culture magazine Time Out New York.

Peter Morris is CEO of leading podcast network, PodcastOne, which features a roster of more than 300 of today’s most popular podcasts including Adam Carolla, Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Austin, Kaitlyn Bristowe, Dan Patrick, A&E’s Cold Case Files, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Spencer and Heidi Pratt, Scheana Shay, Heather and Terry Dubrow, Jim Harbaugh, Ladygang, Dr. Drew, Chael Sonnen, Rich Eisen, Barbara Boxer and hundreds more.

Prior to joining PodcastOne, he held senior management roles in business development and business affairs across film, television and digital media, most recently serving as Executive Vice President of Barstool Sports. Morris also previously held posts as EVP of Entertainment at IMAX, and Head of Business Affairs & Strategy and General Counsel at Funny or Die.

Sam Sanders is an award-winning reporter, radio host and podcaster. He currently cohosts Vibe Check from Stitcher Podcasts, with Zach Stafford and Saeed Jones. In 2022, The New York Times named Vibe Check one of the 10 best podcasts of the year and the show was awarded with a Signal Award in 2022 for best pop culture podcast. Previously, Sam Sanders launched and hosted the NPR radio show and podcast It’s Been A Minute, in which Sam was heard on over 400 public radio stations across the country every week, interviewing luminaries ranging from JLo to Maya Rudolph to Beto O’Rourke. Sanders was also a founding host of the NPR Politics Podcast while covering Election 2016 for NPR. Sanders founded the pop culture podcast Into It at Vulture and New York Magazine, and it was named a best podcast of the year in 2022 by both Spotify and VOGUE. Sanders has been named best podcast host by both the Ambies and the IHeart Podcast Awards, and his work has been honored by the LA Press Club, the National Association of LJBTQ+ Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists. His written work has appeared in New York Magazine, Politico Magazine, and the Columbia Journalism Review. Sanders has a bachelor’s degree from the University of the Incarnate Word and a Master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and has taught radio at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Shankar Vedantam is NPR’s social science correspondent and the host of Hidden Brain. The focus of his reporting is on human behavior and the social sciences, and how research in those fields can get listeners to think about the news in unusual and interesting ways. Hidden Brain is among the most popular podcasts in the world, with over two million downloads per week. The Hidden Brain radio show is featured on some 250 public radio stations across the United States.

Before joining NPR in 2011, Vedantam spent 10 years as a reporter at The Washington Post. From 2007 to 2009, he also wrote the Department of Human Behavior column for the Post.

Vedantam and Hidden Brain have been recognized with the Edward R. Murrow Award, and honors from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the International Society of Political Psychology, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Austen Riggs Center, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Webby Awards, the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, the South Asian Journalists Association, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the American Public Health Association, the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion and the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship.

From 2009 to 2010, Vedantam served as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Vedantam is the author of the non-fiction book The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives. The book, published in 2010, describes how unconscious biases influence people.

Outside of journalism, Vedantam has written fiction and plays. His short story-collection, The Ghosts of Kashmir, was published in 2005. The previous year, the Brick Playhouse in Philadelphia produced his full-length comedy, Tom, Dick and Harriet.

Vedantam has served as a part-time lecturer at Harvard University and Columbia University. He has also served as a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington.

Tom Webster is a partner at Sounds Profitable, the leading voice of significance for the digital audio industry, devoted to growing the podcast sector through audio insights, education and connections. As a 25-year audio research veteran, he is a trusted advisor to the biggest companies in audio and has dedicated his career to the advancement of podcasting for networks and individuals alike. Tom has been a co-author and driver behind some of audio’s most influential studies, including the Infinite Dial® series, Share of Ear® and The Podcast Landscape. Additionally, he has led hundreds of audience research projects on six continents, for some of the most listened-to podcasts and syndicated radio shows in the world, from Howard Stern to All Things Considered. He’s done a card trick for Paula Abdul, shared a martini with Tom Jones, and sold vinyl to Christopher Walken. With Tom’s partnership at its helm, Sounds Profitable is dedicated to set the course for the future of the audio industry.

Notes from America with Kai Wright is a show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future. In addition, Wright served as one of the hosts of Indivisible, a national live radio call-in show that WNYC convened during the first 100 days of the Trump Administration to invite Americans to come together across divides. The show aired on 165 public radio stations across the country.

He has also hosted other WNYC Studios limited-edition podcasts with social justice themes: Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice, which was honored with an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award; The Stakes; and There Goes the Neighborhood, a podcast about gentrification and development. After a first season focused on Brooklyn, There Goes the Neighborhood went on to partner with KCRW in Los Angeles and WLRN in Miami to produce seasons focused on the same issues in those cities. 

Wright’s journalism has focused on social, racial, and economic justice throughout his career. As a fellow of Type Investigations, he covered economic inequality, access to healthcare, and racial inequity. Wright is the author of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York, as well as two surveys of black American history. Most recently, he was a contributor to the New York Times bestselling collection 400 Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019.