Show Staff

• Wendy Blake

  Wendy Blake is a freelance writer who has written about restaurants and travel. She was previously an editor at Crain's New York Business and has a BA in English from Barnard College. She makes photographs and collages, and suffers for her art.

• Barbara Cahn

  Barbara studied art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and New York University, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras. When not at WNYC, she can generally be found making pottery in her Greenwich Village studio.

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  Julia Corcoran - Associate Producer, The Leonard Lopate Show

  Julia Corcoran joined the show as an intern in spring 2007 after listening to the show for many years, and joined the staff full-time in February 2009. She produces the Please Explain series, the Leonard Lopate Show Book Club, and other segments on topics ranging from root vegetables to politics and the economy to the musical stylings of Weird Al Yankovic. She has reported and produced radio features for WAMC Northeast Public Radio in Albany and for WSHU Public Radio in Connecticut. Julia studied literature and art at the University of New Mexico, and has an M.S. from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. In her spare time, she enjoys escaping the city to climb up and ski down mountains.

• Virginia Dorris

  In addition to working for The Leonard Lopate Show, Virginia is a freelance writer who has written frequently about architecture, engineering and construction. She has an MS from the Columbia University School of Journalism and a BS in architecture from the University of Virginia.

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  Melissa Eagan - Executive Producer, The Leonard Lopate Show

  During the time Melissa has been Executive Producer, the program has won three AP Awards for Best Interview and three James Beard Awards, among others. Before that, she wrote for publications including The Christian Science Monitor and Yankee, covering everything from windmills and stained glass studios to tugboat captains. 

• Debbie Fountain

  Debbie Fountain has been with the show since 2005. She comes to us from freeform station WFMU in Jersey City, New Jersey, and hosts a 24-hour webstream of solid gold hits at http://wfmuichiban.blogspot.com. Her motto: "Don't piss off the sound guy."

• Bonnie Lafave

  Bonnie Lafave worked for many years as a producer of national news and current affairs programming with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. In 1996, she was awarded a Nieman Fellowship and spent a year studying at Harvard University.

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  Leonard Lopate - Host, The Leonard Lopate Show

  Leonard Lopate studied painting with Mark Rothko and hosted a gospel music show in the 70's and early 80's. He also marketed records for Slim Whitman and Boxcar Willie, and knows enough Cantonese to order the best dim sum in Chinatown.

• Blakeney Schick - Associate Producer, The Leonard Lopate Show

  Blakeney joined the show as an intern in the fall of 2004, before becoming an Associate Producer in 2007. She contributes to the Underreported and Backstory series and keeps an eye on national and international politics, and produced the year-long States of the Union series during the 2008 presidential campaign. Blakeney went to Bowdoin College, where she studied Government and Spanish.

• Steven Valentino - Associate Producer, The Leonard Lopate Show

  Steven contributes to the Underreported and Backstory series. Before joining the Lopate team as an Assistant Producer in 2008, he produced two radio documentaries for Pacifica and Sirius Satellite Radio, one on the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and another on gay marriage called “Regulating Love,” for which he won the 2005 NLGJA Student Journalist of the Year Award. He graduated from UC Davis in 2006 after a two-year stint as General Manager of KDVS, his college radio station. He joined the show as an intern shortly after stumbling off the plane. A California native, Steven currently resides in Brooklyn.

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  Judy Yi Zhou - Intern

  Judy Yi Zhou is a writer and student journalist with special interests in international relations, social conditions, and cultural criticism. She is studying English and American Literature, French and Web Programming at NYU, and enjoys going to the theatre, cinema, and opera.