People at WNYC

Web Staff Bios

Jacob Smullyan (www.smullyan.org/smulloni/) is a developer of open source software for UNIX systems. As well as keeping wnyc.org up and running, he currently maintains SkunkWeb, the application server that powers wnyc.org. His educational and much of his professional background is not in computer science or programming, but in classical music, which he studied at Yale and Rutgers; he continues to teach piano and occasionally give piano recitals.

Valentina Powers relocated to New York city from Boston and joined the WNYC interactive media department in the fall of 1999. Valentina was born in Florence, Italy. In 1990, she came to the U.S. for college, where she studied French Literature and later Journalism. Her radio career began at Monitor Radio, where she worked for Weekend Edition. After getting her masters, she assisted in the production of several projects with an independent radio producer, including Living Islam and Trespass. Valentina was also the editor of a non-profit educational current-events resource magazine for Social Studies & Geography high school teachers. She designed and maintained websites for her previous employer.

Amy's journalism career spans two centuries and three genres: print, radio and the web. She started work in 1985 as a copy kid at the New York Post and went on to cover the police beat for the Manhattan Spirit and Our Town. Amy split her college years between the U.S. and Japan, studying at both Cornell University and the Kyoto center for Japanese Studies. After graduating in 1994, she was hired by WNYC, where she successfully made the transition to radio as the producer of New York Beat and later the assistant producer and audio engineer for On The Line. In the year 2000, Amy thought it appropriate to click over to the web. She packed up her Rolodex and joined the Interactive team in the Spring of 2000.

People at WNYC