Station Leadership Team
Steve attended the University of California, Santa Barbara and began his radio career in the newsroom of KFWB in Los Angeles, where he was a Desk Assistant, rising to writer, producer and Assistant News Director. He served as News Director and Executive Editor of 1010 WINS in New York City before moving into station management at WTOP in Washington, DC. Shortly thereafter, CBS asked him to return to New York where he was VP and General Manager of two all news radio stations, 1010 WINS and WCBS Newsradio 880. In 2011 he moved back to DC to be Senior VP and Market Manager for the six CBS Radio stations. Steve was named President and CEO of Nashville Public Radio in April, 2019. He and his husband Stewart, an accomplished Young Adult author, singer songwriter and college professor, have four wonderful children and a French Bulldog who light up their lives. Anita J. Bugg graduated with a B.A. in journalism from Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. In that college town, she worked for commercial stations and discovered her first public radio "home" with WKMS. The station hired her as a reporter, eventually promoting her to news director. She's been with Nashville Public Radio since 1995, serving as Morning Edition host, assignment editor and then news director for fifteen years. In that time, WPLN went from a "rip and read" newsroom to one focused on original reporting. In a news world rampant with staff reductions, Bugg is particularly pleased WPLN has doubled the number of full-time reporters. She became the station's VP of Content in 2016. An avid sports fan, Bugg is also a slow but steady runner and a relatively new motorcycling enthusiast.
Steve Swenson
President and CEO
sswenson@wpln.org
Anita Bugg
VP of Programming
anita@wpln.org
Administrative Staff
Darcie Kincaid grew up in a small town and loves living in Nashville, where there's always something fun going on — like a new restaurant to try or standup comedy at Zanies. Darcie says she chose to work for Nashville Public Radio because she wanted to have a sense of purpose in her work and to be able to give back to the Nashville community.
Darcie Kincaid
Financial & Administrative Coordinator
darcell@wpln.org
91Classical Staff
Nina Cardona holds a degree in music history from Converse College. Just two days after graduation, she started playing classical music as a part-time host on Nashville Public Radio. She was WPLN’s All Things Considered host for eleven years, during which time her reporting focused on arts and culture stories. Nina is a classically trained singer and open water swimmer who dabbles in photography and a variety of needle crafts. Ed is a native Nashvillian and host classical music on 91.1 weekday afternoons. He also worked as a board operator and announcer at the Talking Library, a radio reading service for the visually impaired. He joined the staff in 1997 while working at the Ben West Library Children's Division where he performed marionette shows with the Tom Tichenor marionettes. Ed and his wife Michele share their home with dogs and cats that they have rescued from the streets. Ed is a collector of antique bicycles, Japanese motorcycles, scooters, radios and air-cooled Volkswagens. A Wyoming native, Kara relocated to Tennessee in 2005 to earn an undergraduate degree in voice performance and composition from Belmont University and a master’s degree in musicology from MTSU. In addition to hosting on Classical 91.1, she has taught courses in music history and appreciation at Belmont and MTSU. She is also a singer-songwriter, an active member of the Nashville theatre community, and a lover of photography, books, and dogs. She and her husband Ryan live in Nashville with their daughter, Rooney, and goldendoodle, Wallace. Colleen Phelps is the host of Live in Studio C on 91Classical and the and Classically Speaking podcast. The percussionist and singer was a founding member of award-winning chamber music ensemble Sound Riot and has recorded an album of new music for marimba, dedicated to recently born zoo animals. She is also a faculty member at Nashville State Community College.
Nina Cardona
Music Director / Host
nina@wpln.org
Ed Lambert
Classical Music Host
ed0961@91classical.org
Kara McLeland
Classical Music Host
kara@91classical.org
Colleen Phelps
Host
colleen@91classical.org
WPLN News Staff
Emily Siner is the news director at Nashville Public Radio and host of the Movers & Thinkers podcast. She also reports on a wide range of topics, including higher education, science and veterans. She's traveled around Tennessee to tell national news stories for NPR and Marketplace. Emily began at the station in 2014 as an enterprise reporter. She soon launched the station's first podcast and has since helped the station develop a whole fleet of shows with live events. She became the newsroom's assistant news director in 2016 and news director in 2017. She has been named the Associated Press Radio Journalist of the Year and has received three regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for her reporting. Emily is passionate about storytelling on all platforms and spoke at TEDxNashville in 2015 about the station's efforts to share audio online. Before joining the news staff at WPLN, Emily worked in print and online journalism at the Los Angeles Times and NPR. She was born and raised in the Chicago area, so she's not intimidated by Nashville winters. Emily is a proud graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chas joined WPLN in 2015 and became an editor in 2018. Previously, he covered state politics for Nashville Public Radio and The Tennessean, and he’s also reported on communities, politics and business for a variety of publications in Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C. Chas grew up in South Carolina and attended Columbia University, where he studied economics and journalism. Rachel Iacovone (YAH-kuh-VOAN-ee) is the morning host for Nashville Public Radio. Rachel began her public radio career covering politics in Florida during the 2016 presidential race. Rachel was outside as the eye of Hurricane Irma passed over Southwest Florida and on air for WGCU, the same station she listened to as a kid as Hurricane Wilma tore the roof off her childhood home. Rachel is a Florida Gulf Coast University alumna (wings up!) and an avid AP Style enforcer. When she’s not hosting or reporting, Rachel can be found cooking and posting her creations to social media, all while watching true crime shows. Blake Farmer is Nashville Public Radio's senior health care reporter. In a partnership with Kaiser Health News and NPR, Blake covers health in Tennessee and the health care industry in the Nashville area for local and national audiences. Blake has worked at WPLN throughout his career, most recently serving as news director and primary editor for the newsroom. Previously, his reporting focused on education and the military. He's also enjoyed producing stories about midnight frog gigging and churches holding gun raffles. Growing up in East Nashville, Blake attended Lipscomb Academy. He went to college in Texas at Abilene Christian University where he cut his teeth in radio at KACU-FM. Before joining WPLN full time in 2007, Blake also wrote for the Nashville City Paper and filed international stories for World Christian Broadcasting. Tony Gonzalez, a reporter in Nashville since July 2011, covers city news, features inspiring people, and seeks out offbeat stories. He is the executive producer of the Curious Nashville podcast. He’s also an award-winning juggler who lives in East Nashville with his wife and daughter. During his time at The Tennessean newspaper, his investigative reporting and feature stories were honored in the state and nationally. Gonzalez grew up near Chicago and came to Nashville after three years reporting and editing at Virginia's smallest daily newspaper, The News Virginian. Meribah Knight is a journalist who relocated to Nashville from Chicago, where she covered business, the economy, housing, crime and transportation. She is the host of The Promise podcast. Most recently she was a staff reporter with Crain’s Chicago Business covering manufacturing in the Rust Belt, aviation and transportation. Prior to Crain’s she was a staff reporter with the Chicago News Cooperative, producing the Chicago section of The New York Times. There she covered a wide range of topics from arts & culture to education to poverty. She was an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her writing has appeared The New York Times, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, Utne Reader, American Craft, Chicago Magazine, Crain’s Chicago Business and The Chicago Reader. Her radio and multimedia work has been featured on WBEZ, The PBS News Hour and Chicago Public Television. A native of Cambridge, Mass., Meribah has a Masters of Journalism from Northwestern University and a BA from New York University. She lives in Donelson with her husband, a photojournalist with the Tennessean, and their four cats. Sergio Martínez-Beltrán is Nashville Public Radio’s political reporter and host of The Tri-Star State podcast. Before moving to Nashville, Sergio covered education for the Standard-Examiner newspaper in Ogden, Utah. He is a Puerto Rico native and his work has also appeared on NPR station WKAR, San Antonio Express-News, Inter News Service, GFR Media and WMIZ 1270 AM. In his free time (once in a blue moon), Sergio can be found playing volleyball or in Flamenco Beach in Culebra, Puerto Rico. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and the coolest uncle (feel free to fact-check) to Olivia and Jimena. Samantha Max covers criminal justice for WPLN as a Report for America corps member. This is her second year with Report for America: She spent her first year in Macon, Ga., covering health and inequity for The Telegraph and macon.com. Previously, she was an investigative reporting intern for the Medill Justice Project and a bilingual multimedia news intern at Hoy, Chicago Tribune’s Spanish-language daily. She returned to her hometown of Baltimore in 2015 and again in 2016 to work as a newsroom intern for NPR-affiliate WYPR. Damon Mitchell is a journalist from Detroit, currently WPLN's Emerging Voices Fellow. Previously, he was a fellow at Detour Detroit, where he wrote about urban farming, education and inequity in Detroit's Brightmoor and Lafayette Park neighborhoods. He's also written for Next City, JSTOR Daily, Business Insider and Narratively. Damon graduated with a bachelor's degree in Public Relations from Wayne State University. Sam Zern is a journalist currently located in Nashville, where she is also a senior at Vanderbilt University. She is currently WPLN’s podcast intern. Originally from Austin, Texas, Sam’s reporting background includes covering education, business, and Vanderbilt University news. Joshua Moore is the host of Nashville Public Radio's podcast Versify, a show where a person tells a story, and in a matter of minutes, that story becomes a poem. In each episode, Joshua guide listeners through this journey. Joshua is also currently at MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University.
Emily Siner
News Director
esiner@wpln.org
Chas Sisk
Senior Editor
csisk@wpln.org
Rachel Iacovone
Morning Host
rachel@wpln.org
Blake Farmer
Senior Health Care Reporter
bfarmer@wpln.org
Tony Gonzalez
Editor
tgonzalez@wpln.org
Meribah Knight
Growth & Development Reporter
mknight@wpln.org
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán
Political Reporter
sergio@wpln.org
Samantha Max
Criminal Justice Reporter
Damon Mitchell
Reporter / Emerging Voices Fellow
Sam Zern
Podcasting Intern
szern@wpln.org
Joshua Moore
Versify Host
joshua@wpln.org
Development & Marketing
Beth has been part of the Development Team since July 2016. Beginning as the Capital Campaign Manager, she completed the $4.5 million campaign by the end of 2018 and transitioned to be our first-ever Major Gifts Officer. Kat Drinkwater is thrilled to be a part of the Nashville Public Radio team. As a long time listener of public radio, she's looking forward to helping such a great organization continue its amazing growth while giving back to the Nashville community. Kat began her career in non-profit development in 2007 with the grass-roots organization, Sweet Home New Orleans & Renew Our Music Fund as the Communications & Development Director. While completing her Master's degree in Arts Administration from the University of New Orleans, Kat began her new role as Assistant Director of United Way of Oxford & Lafayette County in Oxford, MS. After falling in love with the Nashville area, she and her husband relocated to Nashville, TN and joined Gilda's Club Nashville as Development Manager. Zea grew up listening to NPR from the backseat of her parents' station wagon, and jumped at the opportunity (quite literally, she leapt into the air when the call came through) to work for Nashville Public Radio. She joined the Membership Department in 2012, and has been instrumental in growing the Sustaining Member Program. When she's away from the station, she can be found brewing award-winning homebrew beer, or telling her Scottish Terrier that he's the cutest little fur demon yes he is.
Beth Fernandes
Major Gifts Officer
beth@wpln.org
Kat Drinkwater
Development Manager
kat@wpln.org
Zea Miller
Membership Manager
zea@wpln.org
Business Support
Kyle joined the corporate support team in 2009. Previously, he worked at several ad agencies in Chicago and as a television Research Director in Nashville. A native of Goodlettsville, TN, Kyle graduated from MTSU with a degree in communications. Kyle serves on the board of The Brooks Fund. In his off time you'll find him cheering on the Blue Raiders, playing softball and hanging out with "Army" (Armistead Maupin), the world's best Dachshund.
Kyle Bradley
Corporate Support Representative
kbradley@wpln.org
Operations
Cameron Adkins is WPLN's Chief Engineer, otherwise known as the guy who keeps us on the air. (He also seems to be the only one who knows where we keep the Megahertz.) Cameron grew up in Middle Tennessee and showed a "knack" for all things technical while still in high school. After working with stations in Nashville, Denver, Cincinnati and Tampa, Cameron joined WPLN in 2015. He, his wife Teresa, and son CJ live with a spoiled cat in Hendersonville.
Cameron Adkins
Chief Engineer
cameron@wpln.org
Digital Services
Mack is WPLN's Director of Digital Services. He oversees digital content strategy and creation for wpln.org. He works closely with reporters and the news director on editing, writing headlines, reimagining radio stories for the web, producing web-exclusive news content, and using social media to engage the community. He started working for WPLN in 2003, holding positions in membership and marketing, before leaving to start a freelance web development firm in 2008. He returned in 2010 as new media director. Mack studied Anthropology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He has also been a touring musician, released albums, and had his songs published in film and television.
Mack Linebaugh
Director of Digital Services
mack@wpln.org