Milano | CNYCA: Feet in Two Worlds: About the Team

About the 2008 team

Aswini Anburajan, blog editor/reporter

Aswini Aswini Anburajan just completed eight months on the road as a campaign reporter covering Sen. Barack Obama's presidential bid for NBC News, MSNBC and the National Journal Magazine. Prior to that, Aswini was an associate producer at ABCNews.com. She grew up in Connecticut after immigrating from India at the age of four with her family. As an international relations major at Brown University, she focused on the shaping of identity and its relation to ethnic conflict. Her studies led her to South Africa, where she became immersed in grassroots AIDS work. During the 2004 presidential campaign, she was an organizer in New Hampshire for Dean for America and later became an opposition researcher for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. She then moved to New York and worked for NBC, first as a news associate and then as a researcher for the Today Show.

Mandalit del Barco, mentor

Mandalit del Barco is a general assignment reporter based at NPR West, where she has covered stories on a wide variety of topics ranging from immigration, race relations, police, and street gangs to Latino politics, Hollywood, and urban street culture (including hip hop dance, music, and art). She has also produced half-hour documentaries about gangs in Central America, Latino hip hop, L.A. Homegirls, Frida Kahlo, New York's Palladium ballroom, and Puerto Rican "Casitas." Her news reports and feature stories filed from Los Angeles and abroad can be heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition Saturday, and Day to Day.

Jocelyn Gonzales, technical advisor and mentor

Jocelyn Jocelyn Gonzales is freelance radio producer in New York City. Her work has been featured on WNYC News, Studio 360, Soundcheck, Marketplace, Weekend America, Sound Money, Radiolab, Musicians Radio, Ear Studio, Minnesota Public Radio, Strange Music andRe:Sound. She was part of the team that created Studio 360, and she was the producer for ‘Dish, Now Hear This!’ and The Conversation on WNYC. For a long time, she was an audiobook director, editor and production manager for Simon & Schuster Audio, and prior to that she juggled broadcast services for ABC Radio Networks with working for The Radio Stage. Gonzales is a full-time faculty member at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the sound design department and was the principal advisor to the campus radio station, WNYU AM/FM, for several years.

Martina Guzmán, reporter

Martina Guzmán is currently a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. For the past ten years, she has specialized in organizing and outreach within Latino communities, and particularly on building relationships with nonprofit organizations, other minority groups, and the Democratic Party. In 2004, she served as the first-ever director of Hispanic outreach for the North Carolina Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign and prior to that, she worked as campaign manager for a Michigan State Representative. She has served on the Boards of Directors of the Mexican Town Community Development Corporation and the Detroit ACLU. In 2006 she produced and directed a sixty minute documentary in Mexico about women, migration, and microfinance.

Pilar Marrero, reporter

Pilar Pilar Marrero is La Opinión’s political editor and columnist, a radio talk show host, and international news service writer. Marrero has been a reporter for La Opinión since 1990, where she has extensively covered the city government, immigrations, and state and national politics. She is currently co-host of ‘Nuestra Voz’ a ground breaking public affairs program in Spanish for KPFK-Radio Pacifica in Los Angeles, and a writer for both BBC World Service and Pacific News Service. Pilar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She graduated in Communications from Andrés Bello Catholic University in 1986, with a specialization in print journalism. An avid world traveler and music lover, she resides in Los Feliz.

Lorenzo Morales, reporter

Lorenzo Lorenzo Morales is a Colombian journalist who recently moved to New York. He is a metro and political reporter for ElDiario/La Prensa, the main Spanish-language newspaper in New York. Previously he worked for Semana, the most prominent weekly current affairs magazine in Colombia and has extensive experience writing about human rights abuses and the evolution of the armed conflict in his country. He holds a M.A. from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Toulouse, France and a M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Suman Raghunathan, project consultant

Suman Raghunathan is an experienced immigration and public policy analyst. Her experience in immigration policy and programs spans the grassroots, advocacy, and policy worlds, and included a stint as the Drum Major Institute’s immigration project coordinator and as interim executive director of Chhaya Community Development Corporation. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Suman has several years of experience in the immigrant rights movement, largely in the arenas of strategic communications and encouraging immigrant involvement in the political process as a tool to advance larger goals of justice for immigrant communities. Suman has developed and coordinated programs to involve immigrant voters in the electoral process at the New York Immigration Coalition and Hate Free Zone Washington. She received her undergraduate degree in International Relations from Brown University, and received a Masters degree in Nonprofit Management from Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy.

John Rudolph, executive producer

John Rudolph has produced award-winning reports, documentaries and special programs for WNYC, New York Public Radio, National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Monitor Radio and many other radio stations and networks. Mentoring young journalists is an important part of his work. Over the years he has guided numerous aspiring reporters, many of whom have gone on to successful careers in public radio and other media.

Andrew White, project director

Andrew White is director of the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. He writes on New York City politics, government and social policy, and teaches courses on the news media, the politics of policy, New York City government and criminal justice. White is a co-founder of the Independent Press Association and IPA-New York, a former chief editor of City Limits magazine and founding director of the Center for an Urban Future.