I always felt at home on center stage — an occasion to rise to. I knew that performing would have some role in my life. I did find a tape that my brother and I made of a radio show that we improvised for half an hour and we would both change personalities and we were reporters and interviewers and interviewees. And I maybe was six, seven years old.

In college, I struggled a lot and was very sad, with the exception of singing with the a cappella group. I was also writing my own late-teens early-20s moody, emotional, aggressive songs. When I would play those songs, I would feel the things I was singing, so if I was sad or frustrated or angry, I stayed sad, frustrated, and angry. Mercifully, I dropped out once I got too sad.

I started working for a cellphone company — 2001. Ten years later, I was making sixty grand a year. I had no idea you could make so much money.

I listened to NPR growing up, constantly. I was driving around one day, and I heard they needed people to answer phones for the fund drive. I thought, “That’d be cool. Maybe I’ll meet some of the voices I hear” — I’m such a fan. So my best friend, who looks a lot like me — tons of tattoos — we go to the station and they put us in this room full of white-haired ladies. We stood out. The news director and host of the morning show sticks his head in. “Hey, everybody, I just want to say thank you so much," and as soon as he spoke, I knew who he was and I peppered him with questions. I mean, I couldn’t stop asking him questions, and he was so sweet. He gave us a tour and I met some more voices and I was just completely star-struck, more questions, more questions, and finally he says, “We just started an internship program. Maybe you’d be interested.”

So I’d have my mornings at Connecticut Public and then my afternoons at the mall selling phones.

Then I got an email from Colin McEnroe: “Hey, I’m going to be starting a show with your station. I want you to be the first and last voice that people hear on my show.” I’m pretty sure that I still would take the job and cut my salary almost entirely in half, because it was the beginning of a dream come true — and at the same time I knew that I was saying someone else’s words all the time. And I’ve got lots of words, too.

Not even a block away from the radio station is a weaving center that employs people who are visually impaired. I thought, “Wait a minute — blind weavers?” They set me up with three people who work there and I interviewed them. On public radio we have plenty of lawyers and professors, heads of state — it’s important to have these voices, but we don’t hear enough of everyday people really expanding on their own unique experiences.

That’s really what sparked the idea for “Audacious,” because these people were experts in their own experiences who have been through things maybe we think we understand but we really don’t. And to give them that space to really tell their story is thrilling to me. For me, that’s the ”p” in public radio.

Immense joy. And meaning. Fulfillment. Excitement. Optimism. Drive. Love. Connection. Complete joy. I just want it to be everywhere. We have a lot of ideas about putting me in situations and just seeing what it feels like. I know there are stories we’re not thinking about.

I don’t fear losing this job, but part of me trembles to think what I would be doing without it. The meaning that I get out of it is so thorough and deep. I don’t want to indulge in that thought of, “What if I couldn’t?” But at the same time, if I ever lost this job, I would just find another way to do it and to make those connections and to amplify those voices.

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