From the desk of Glenn Mitroff, Outgoing Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator
As I prepare for my retirement in June, I am excited to announce that Adrienne Ranney has been hired as WORT’s next Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator.
Adrienne will join the staff on May 31st, with an overlap with me until my last day on June 11th.
I would like to thank the Staff Collective, Board and the Hiring Committee for all of their focused work on updating the position description and conducting a well-designed recruitment and hiring process. I would like to especially thank presenters from the UW Diversity Forum for sharing resources from their session, “Designing a Fair and Equitable Hiring Process.”
I’d like to send a huge shout out to our Hiring Committee (Jane Richard, Cooper Talbot, Mary Jo Hussey, Stu Levitan, Gil Halsted, Doug Holtz and myself) for all of their time and excellent work, and to our “Chair Extraordinaire” Jane Richard for keeping us focused and organized.
We were fortunate to have a number of highly qualified applicants. The Hiring Committee unanimously recommended that the WORT Board of Directors offer Adrienne Ranney the position of Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator.
Now, (drum roll please) Adrienne will introduce herself…
From the desk of Adrienne Ranney, Incoming Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator
Hello WORT community,
I am so honored and excited to be stepping into the role of Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator.
Some of you may know me from the Access Hour, the Insurgent Radio Kiosk, or Programming Committee. Although, my Madison roots spread far beyond WORT, as does my love for radio. My grandfather, Austin, was a Political Science professor at UW-Madison from the early 60s through the early 70s. My grandmother, Elizabeth “Betsy”, was the first woman to graduate from Yale’s school of architecture and designed a number of houses on Madison’s West Side.
My father, Doug, has been a local carpenter for the past 20 years in Madison remodeling homes. He has also helped design and build many of the Food Fight restaurants’ bars and booths. My mother, Laurie, has been a nurse for over 40 years and is currently helping with the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine by vaccinating the Madison public.
After graduating Madison West High School, I worked at Nature’s Bakery on Willy St. while attending Madison College (formally MATC) before moving to Portland, OR, to finish my bachelor’s in Communication. It was in Portland that I rediscovered my love for radio. As a child and through my teens, and even now, I’ve collected radio shows from the 40s and 50s, the vast majority were only available on cassette tape. The total number of shows I’ve collected is upwards of 300. The horror and sci-fi shows were my favorite. X-Minus One, Weird Circle, Lights Out Everybody, and the Black Museum were my go-to’s. I had a radio show called “Cocktail Hour” for two years at my college radio station, KPSU. After moving back to Wisconsin in 2016, I worked at WTMJ in Milwaukee before returning to Madison to work at UW Madison in 2018.
In 2019, I applied for an Access Hour slot to play a curated music playlist with snippets of radio plays from the 40s interspersed between songs. Ken Rineer reached out to schedule a date for the show, and after some discussion, asked if I would consider volunteering at the station and Access Hour as an engineer. From there, I signed up for the Kiosk and then applied for the Programming Committee. In the summer of 2020, Ken Rineer formally retired from producing the Access Hour after 14 years, and I happily assumed the producer position. With every step I have taken through WORT, I have met incredibly kind and interesting people, which is why I applied for the Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator position. As I step into this position, I am thrilled to get to know all the amazing dedicated volunteers that make WORT what it is. Not all of us have had the ability of working remotely during the pandemic, and when the station begins its transition into opening back up, I can’t wait to get started on new projects that will be based on the power and passion of our volunteers.
The transition into opening back up will have different obstacles for everyone. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments on the process or what WORT is doing to keep everyone safe, I will be here to field your questions. Having receptionists back at the front desk, DJs cycling in and out of the sound booths, engineers thinking on their feet during live broadcasts, volunteers talking to community members at summer outreach booths, and pledge drive phone answerers chatting with our hosts over pizza in the back room. These are just some of the things we all have to look forward to when the WORT community comes together again. These are the things I love most about WORT, and I can’t wait to share them with everyone again.
