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Learn more about City Visions and the people behind the scenes.
Rose Levinson first produced and hosted City Visions in 1991. Over the years, she has trained and worked with a number of talented and dedicated producers. After being City Visions's sole anchor for over fourteen years, she looks forward now to sharing host duties while continuing her involvement as executive producer and anchor host.
Along with the public policy concerns that inform City Visions, Rose has a deep and abiding passion for literature. She taught literature at the College of Marin, and currently facilitates literary seminars with a focus on nineteenth and early twentieth century British and Russian writers. Recently, she began a Ph.D. program which will deepen and strengthen her knowledge of both theory and primary text.
Rose has published a number of essays focusing on identity issues in contemporary life, and was recently chief author of a book which addresses the issue of diversity within the Jewish community.
She also does a great deal of public speaking, on topics both literary and policy related. Along with her life-partner David, she travels extensively each year--and is almost able to get by in France speaking only French, a fact which continues to astound her.
Daphne became a City Visions producer in 2004. She enjoys producing shows on a variety of topics ranging from California's mixed race baby boom to the ethics of eating to the politics of reproductive medicine. In addition to her work as producer (and now website manager) for City Visions, she is a phone counsellor at the TALK Line Family Support Center. Daphne's educational background is in linguistics and Romance languages, with extended visits to Morelia, Mexico and Venice, Italy. Before becoming a parent, her career was in high tech where she experienced first hand the surreal chaos of the boom and bust of the late '90s.
Morgen is a Bay Area native who lived in England, Costa Rica and even Illinois before coming home to roost in San Francisco. By day she works as the Director of Training and Research for the Bay Area nonprofit Seneca Center for Children and Families. Six years ago she left the for-profit world to get her MSW at UC Berkeley. She also has a BA degree from UC Santa Cruz in psychology. She joined City Visions as a producer in 2003. Her programs for City Visions reflect curiosity about everything from foster care reform and immigration to paperless voting and fad diets. She delights in the forum City Visions provides for engaging us all in discussions about the micro and macro issues affecting our community.
When Lauren Meltzer was 8 years old she was given a tape recorder for her birthday. She became a self-proclaimed reporter, covering events on missing cats, family dilemmas and curious neighbors. Lauren now is a free-lance producer and reporter in the San Francisco Bay area. She reports weekly for the evening news at KPFA. Her work has also aired on KQED and Free Speech Radio. Lauren received a masters in education from Harvard University, where she focused on the use of technology in education. In addition to radio, she writes, designs, produces and conducts usability tests for interactive educational software games for children. Lauren also serves on the Board of the non-profit Performing Arts Workshop which seeks to teach underprivileged youth critical thinking skills through dance and drama. Her programs for City Visions focus on education, public safety, healthcare and economics.
Yumi Wilson is an assistant professor in journalism at San Francisco State University. Prior to that, she spent 11 years at the Chronicle where she held various titles, including: deputy readers' representative (deputy ombudsman); Open Forum editor and City Hall reporter. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 1990.
She joined City Visions in 2005 as a producer and host, and her favorite topics are politics, public policy and multiracial issues. Yumi is currently working on a book that traces her Japanese mother's footsteps back to Japan where she met her African-American father, who was an Army soldier at the time. Her research began at the University of Michigan where she studied history, political science and creative writing as a Knight-Wallace Fellow for the 2000-2001 academic year. She continued her research in Japan as a Fulbright research scholar in the fall of 2001. She wrote about her journey for the San Francisco Chronicle in March 2002.
Lisa Malaney called more than a dozen cities home before moving to San Francisco at the end of 1998, determined to roam no more (except on vacation). In pursuit of tidbits to help her hold her own in debates with natives, Lisa joined the City Visions team in early 1999, producing shows on perennial San Francisco issues - housing, parking, and growth - as well as topics ranging from healthcare to commercialization in schools. She was executive producer and fill-in host from 2001 to 2005. An academic and professional background in communications has resulted in a satisfying work life including marketing, PR, editing, fundraising, education, and program and content development for multinational companies and non-profits in the United States and in Japan, though Lisa's favorite job is raising her daughter.
Safa Awad Shanneb, the newest addition to City Visions' production crew, is a 2004 graduate of the Political Science department at the University of California at Berkeley. Libyan born, her family's exile has taken her to many places, creating in her an international citizen with an unending curiosity about human nature, socio-political, and economic dynamics.
Shanneb moved to San Francisco after living and working in the last Libyan city her father had seen before fleeing in 1978: Tripoli, Libya. She then lived in the United Kingdom, Egypt, and the US states of Pennsylvania and Missouri before heading West to California in 1992 and returning in 1998.
Safa takes to heart her lessons from life and hopes to bring at least one to City Visions: A liberal democracy is a beautiful ideal that can only be sustained by a society's involvement and can never be taken for granted.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jill Slater is a lover of great cities, on the clock and off. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1992 with an interdisciplinary degree in Urban Studies and attended graduate school at UC Berkeley. Her interests have expanded from "all things urban" to collecting acorns, kayaking, bouldering, film festival volunteering, surfing, political and community/bike activism, making video shorts, and, last but not least, mastering the accordion. She imagines City Visions as a vehicle for such issues as the changing economic state of San Francisco and the continuing role of the arts in the City. Now back in New York City, Jill remains tethered to the San Francisco Bay Area and City Visions in particular.
Irene was born and raised in Michigan. Her day job is as a research epidemiologist at UC San Francisco, focusing on how neighborhood environments and social and economic circumstances affect health and well-being. She has bachelor's degrees in microbiology and political science from Stanford University. Her graduate training is in epidemiology from UC Berkeley. Past jobs include health worker in an STD clinic, ESL teacher, editor, and project director of a spina bifida study in China. She joined City Visions as a producer in 2004. She has been fascinated by radio programs ever since her childhood days of listening to Dick Estell's Radio Reader program.