Yasmin Bendaas

Host & Creator

Yasmin Bendaas grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in an Iranian-Algerian household, which was less confusing than it could have been. She studied anthropology at Wake Forest University and Science & Medical Journalism at UNC Chapel Hill. Her feature reporting has been published by AlJazeera, Reuters and the Pulitzer Center. She couldn’t have made this podcast without the contributions of the people listed here.

Liz Schlemmer

Producer

Liz Schlemmer is an audio journalist covering education at North Carolina Public Radio WUNC and has previously reported at Louisville Public Media. Her work has been aired on NPR and Here & Now. Liz and Yasmin met at UNC Chapel Hill while pursuing master’s degrees in journalism and became friends over their mutual love of anthropology and tea. Follow her news @LSchlemmer_WUNC.

Jerad Walker

Editor

Dale Ruffin & Grant Livesay

Original Music

Dale Ruffin & Grant Livesay are NC-based music makers whose talents merged at Wake Forest University (where they befriended Yasmin). Musicians in their own right, Dale can be found @TwinnZeus and Grant can be found at @proceduralrevelries. <<Listen to these guys.

Mohammad Alsalti

Illustrator

Mohammad Alsalti (aka Teddy) is a Raleigh-based designer specializing in branding, experience, and storytelling. He likes to see design as a way of bringing the creative visions of the people he works with to life. Teddy is also the designer behind the iconic Our Three Winners symbol (he didn’t put this in his bio, so I added it in for him). Follow him @teddycreates.

Al Wodarski & Sean Roux

Audio Engineers

Josh Sullivan

Social Media Producer

Josh Sullivan is a social media producer with WUNC’s digital news team. Josh comes to the Triangle from Boston, where he covered biotech and before that, worked for the local NBC station. Earlier in his career, Josh covered crime for the Killeen Daily Herald in central Texas, where he won a TAPME Award for his feature on drug trafficking. He is a graduate of the finest college in a town called Durham, the University of New Hampshire, where he also worked as an adjunct professor before his move to North Carolina. In 2020, Josh graduated from Northeastern University with his master’s in media innovation. When he isn’t working, you can find Josh outside, usually riding either his bike or his snowboard, depending on the season.

Previous MAMMF Contributors

Adhiti Bandlamudi | Producer | Season 1

Adhiti Bandlamudi joined this podcast as producer for Season 1 in 2018 when she moved to North Carolina to report for WUNC in Durham. Before joining the team, she worked at NPR as a Kroc Fellow where she produced work for Weekend All Things Considered, Planet Money and Hidden Brain. Now, she reports for KQED in San Francisco. When she's not reporting or producing, you can find her in her kitchen, baking up treats for friends. She has strong opinions about fondant. Follow her news @oddity_adhiti.

Katy Barron | Producer | Season 2

Katy has held various roles in print and audio journalism for 25 years, including with the National Journal Group, the Austin American-Statesman and North Carolina Public Radio. At WUNC she was a producer and Managing Editor of "The State of Things." She is a proud graduate of North Carolina public schools and Davidson College.

Lindsay Foster Thomas | Executive Producer | Season 2

Lindsay was a producer, then managing editor for The State of Things for WUNC. At Marketplace, she helped re-launch a weekend personal finance program and embedded with an investigative reporting team for the project "York & Fig," which examined gentrification through the study of one Los Angeles neighborhood. Lindsay was senior producer for the first iteration of On Second Thought at Georgia Public Broadcasting with host Celeste Headlee. She was also part of the national production team at WAMU in Washington that launched NPR's 1A with founding host Joshua Johnson, serving as its senior managing producer. She is a graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism and Hampton University. Her expertise includes innovative audience engagement, live events and serial storytelling with an attention to diversity. Lindsay's on Twitter @LFTeveryvoice.

Anita Rao | Editor | Season 2

Anita Rao is an award-winning journalist and the host and creator of "Embodied," a live, weekly radio show and seasonal podcast about sex, relationships & health. She's also the managing editor of WUNC's on-demand content. She has traveled the country recording interviews for the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps production department, founded and launched a podcast about millennial feminism in the South, and served as the managing editor and regular host of "The State of Things," North Carolina Public Radio's flagship daily, live talk show. Anita was born in a small coal-mining town in Northeast England but spent most of her life growing up in Iowa and has a fond affection for the Midwest.

Natalie Dudas-Thomas | Social Media Producer | Season 2

Natalie serves as WUNC’s Social Media Producer. Combining her background in journalism and digital marketing, Natalie previously worked at WGBH Boston and served as Social Media Producer for PRI’s The World. Most recently, Natalie managed her own business consulting with dozens of nonprofits and women-owned businesses to help increase their web presence. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and she's presented at SXSW discussing how the use of GIFs can help advance journalism.

Caitlin Leggett | Social Media Producer | Season 2

Caitlin Leggett is a Durham, NC based author, poet, journalist, and now social media producer. With her background in media and journalism, she got her start at her North Carolina Wesleyan College’s campus news and is currently interning for WHIG-TV and WUNC. She is graduating with bachelors in Mass Communications and Computer Science with a minor in Journalism. Caitlin is on Instagram @ya_dangskippy.

Anisa Khalifa | Producer | Season 3

Anisa Khalifa is a podcast producer at WUNC. She is a lifelong public radio nerd, and fell in love with podcasts around the same time her friends convinced her to start one about Korean dramas, Dramas Over Flowers, which she still co-hosts. She’s also the co-creator and co-host of Muslim in Plain Sight, a show exploring Muslims’ coming of age stories post-9/11. She has a master’s degree in Critical Asian Humanities from Duke University, and a dual B.A. in English and Diaspora & Transnational Studies from the University of Toronto. In her non-podcast life, she’s a culture writer, poet, visual artist and chronic insomniac. She's fascinated by the stories we tell about ourselves and each other

Charlie Shelton-Ormond | Producer | Season 3

Charlie Shelton-Ormond is a podcast producer for WUNC. His fascination for audio storytelling and radio journalism began as a broadcast major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He began his career as a reporter for Carolina Connection, UNC’s student-led radio news show, where Charlie’s work won multiple Hearst Journalism Awards. After college, Charlie worked as a producer for “The State of Things” with WUNC, where he developed programs on everything from state politics to popular culture. From there, he dove into the world of podcasting, and produced the long-running American history program “BackStory.” When he’s not putting together podcasts, Charlie enjoys hosting a weekly radio show about the history of music called “Keeping Time.”