Audiophile Conference
Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and School of Communication are thrilled to announce the inaugural Audiophile conference.
Audiophile is a conference to inspire sound creators and storytellers. By focusing on craft and creativity, Audiophile brings together designers, journalists, engineers and producers across the audio spectrum to celebrate possibilities that open the world of sound. The conference will be held over two days in downtown Chicago on April 16 and 17, 2026.
At a time when the ability of audio communication to connect creators, journalists and producers has never been greater, this conference offers the opportunity to share, collaborate and learn together, to move the audio industry forward in a way that is innovative, responsive to the changing world around us, and driven by creators.
We want Audiophile to offer community and inspiration. Medill and SOC are committed to providing workshops, listening sessions and ideas for audiomakers. Audiophile will galvanize the talent of the Chicago region and beyond.
Confirmed speakers include: Nichole Hill of Our Ancestors Were Messy; Ben Calhoun, executive producer of The Daily - The New York Times; Julie Shapiro and John DeLore of Audio Flux; Jason Saldanha of PRX; staff of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Invisible Institute; Davy Gardner of The Tribeca Festival; and Lesedi Mogoatlhe and Kabir Jugram of Radio Workshop.
sign up for updates, including ticketing and the full schedule of events
OUR SPONSORS & PARTNERS
Meet The Speakers
Sepehr Vakil
Sepehr Vakil is a scholar, writer, and educator who was born in Iran, grew up in California, and now lives in Evanston, where he is a professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. At Northwestern, he directs new initiatives at the intersection of ethics and technology, including the Center for Responsible Technology, Policy, and Public Dialogue, and the M.S. in Technology, People, and Policy (MTePP) program. Deeply passionate about public scholarship, Sepehr writes a Substack newsletter exploring ideas about family, technology, and culture, and co-hosts the podcast A Professor and a Comedian Walk Into a Bar (PCWB). A father of five, he has also begun performing stand-up comedy around Chicago as a creative outlet that extends his commitment to public dialogue and bringing people together through humor, storytelling, and community.
Zayd Ayers Dohrn
Zayd Ayers Dohrn was born underground and raised in New York City. His documentary podcast Mother Country Radicals reached Top 10 on Apple Podcasts and won the DuPont Columbia Journalism Prize, the Gold Medal at the New York Festival Radio Awards, and the prize for Best Audio Storytelling at the Tribeca Film Festival. His punk rock protest musical Revolution(s), a collaboration with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tom Morello, recently had a twice-extended run at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Other plays include The Profane (Playwrights Horizons), Outside People (The Vineyard/Naked Angels), Sick (National New Play Network), and Reborning (The Public/SPF). Notable awards include the Horton Foote New American Play Prize, the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Award, the Sky Cooper American Playwriting Prize, and Theatre Master’s Visionary Playwrights Award. Zayd’s first book Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young will be published in May by W.W. Norton (US) and Vintage (UK). He is the Daniel Hale Williams Professor and Director of the MFA in Writing for Screen + Stage at Northwestern University.
Bill Healy
Bill Healy is an award-winning journalist in Chicago. He co-created the podcast You Didn’t See Nothin, which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting and a Peabody Award. Bill's other podcasts include Somebody (Pulitzer Prize Finalist), The Parole Room (George Polk Award Winner) and Division Street: Revisited. Over the years, he has worked extensively with WBEZ, StoryCorps, NPR, the BBC and This American Life. In 2024, he won the Studs Terkel Community Media Award from Public Narrative for his body of work which “combines deep narratives with investigative insight, spotlighting Chicago’s vital issues and shaping public understanding.” He lives in Bucktown with his husband, Ben.
Davy Gardner
Davy Gardner is an award-winning writer, director, and curator best known for his work in podcasting. He began his career as a comedy writer for the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. Gardner has written and produced acclaimed audio dramas such as “Museum of You” and the three-part series, “Pariah”, for which he was nominated for best fiction writer at the Podcast Academy Awards. He is now the Head of Podcasts at The Tribeca Festival where he has created a prestigious global stage for the independent podcast community. He is the host of the Tribeca Audio Premieres podcast, and you can find his work on networks like Radiotopia, Wondery, and Audible, among others, or @davygardner.
Ele Matelan
Ele (She/Her) is a Chicago based artist who has designed, choreographed, and performed Foley for over 100 live theatrical productions ranging from London, UK to New York City, and for companies such as Court Theatre, A Red Orchid Theatre, Oak Park Festival Theatre, and Kokandy Productions (Jeff Award - Foley Design, The SpongeBob Musical). She served as resident Foley designer for WildClaw Theatre’s Deathscribe, an annual international short horror radio festival, from 2014 to 2021. Ele has guest lectured and led workshops on stage Foley at schools including Northwestern University, Harvard University, Purdue University, and the Savannah College of Art & Design. She is a featured Foley artist in the 3rd edition of the definitive textbook on Foley, The Foley Grail, by Vanessa Theme Ament. Ele’s voice acting can be heard on Hartlife NFP’s audio dramas ‘Our Fair City’ and all 5 seasons of the BBC Best Online Audio Drama winning ‘Unwell.’
Erisa Apantaku
Erisa Apantaku is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning audio journalist, multimedia educator, and filmmaker from the land of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ottawa, Ojibe, and Potawatomi Nations) as well as the ancestral homelands of numerous other peoples such as the Hochunk, Kickapoo, Myaamia, and more. This place is commonly known as Chicagoland.
Jason Saldanha
Jason Saldanha is COO of PRX, the Pulitzer Prize-winning public media organization bringing podcasts and radio to millions. He's also served as Executive Producer of the seminal music podcast Sound Opinions from WBEZ, as well as an Supervising Producer for the Amazon show The Man in the High Castle. He also oversaw the Chicago Humanities Festival, connecting the people and ideas that define us.
Jeffrey Gardner
Jeffrey Nils Gardner (they/them) is a director, audio artist, and sound designer. Through their studio Audacious Machine Creative, they've made fiction podcasts like The Harbingers (a 2025 Tribeca Festival selection) and Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery (winner of the 2021 BBC Best Audio drama award), and have worked on shows for Audible, Atypical Artists, Vox, Gideon Media, Rusty Quill Ltd, and more. They’re also a team leader for the Illinois Choice Action Team (ICAT), a direct action group defending abortion access at independent clinics in Illinois, and play fiddle and mandolin in the Queer Country band Olivia & The Lovers.
Johanna Zorn
Johanna Zorn is an independent radio and podcast editor. She is part of PMJA’s Editor Corps, filling in as editor at public radio newsrooms across the country. She also is an editor with Sea Change, a podcast about climate change from the New Orleans and Baton Rouge public radio stations. Zorn has worked on award-winning podcasts for Slate and KUNC. She is a co-organizer of the Chicago Audiomaker Collective, supporting the local audio community. She is co-founder and executive director emeritus of the Third Coast International Audio Festival.
Julie Shapiro
Julie Shapiro is a career listener, audio champion, and creative consultant. She co-founded Audio Flux in 2023 with John DeLore, and is currently helping develop a long-form narrative podcast about pancreatic cancer. Julie has worked as Executive Producer at Canadaland, PRX, Radiotopia, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and helped launch the critically acclaimed podcast Ear Hustle. In 2000, she co-founded the Third Coast International Audio Festival, where as Artistic Director she nurtured a robust international listening culture. Shapiro has taught radio to university students, presented at conferences and festivals the world over, and produced stories for the airwaves and podcasts in the US and beyond.
Justine Tobiasz
Justine Tobiasz is a visual artist and archivist whose work centers on media preservation, archival access, and creative reuse. Since 2018, she is the Archivist at Chicago Public Media, where she currently oversees the Chicago Sun-Times news morgues and WBEZ’s broadcast audio collections. Her archival practice focuses on broadcast audio, news formats, and media obsolescence, with an emphasis on sustaining access to historically significant journalism in photographic materials and sound recordings. In parallel with her archival work, Tobiasz maintains an active visual art practice. She is also the co-director of APO Pocket, a multidisciplinary art production studio based in Chicago, Illinois.
Kabir Jugram
Kabir Jugram, is a 23-year-old journalist born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is currently employed as an assistant producer at Radio Workshop, producing audio documentary stories that center the narratives of African youth. Kabir’s work predominantly explores social issues such as youth unemployment, mental health, and marginalization in Johannesburg, with a heavy emphasis on how everyday people work to empower themselves and their communities when society fails to do so. Above all, Kabir considers himself and his work a proud product of the city that raised him.
Lesedi Mogoatlhe
Lesedi is a host and story editor for the Radio Workshop podcast. She worked with the Children’s Radio Foundation for several years training youth in radio production at sites across Africa. Her work includes training LGBTI+ activists and organizations to produce podcasts in Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa. She has previous experience working with creatives and producers in TV and Film, where she worked as a Documentary Director and Content Producer for over 15 years. She received her MA in documentary filmmaking from Sussex University. Lesedi also qualified as a development coach from UCT Graduate School Of Business and The Centre For Coaching.
Mike Russo
Mike Russo is Senior Director of Audience Growth for Podcasts at PRX, where he leads strategies to expand and deepen engagement across the organization’s podcast portfolio. Prior to this role, Mike was a project manager on the PRX Training team, overseeing the Ready To Learn Podcast Accelerator with PBS KIDS and the Journalism Podcast Accelerator with the Knight Foundation as well as generally supporting a range of education and professional development initiatives across the country. Before joining PRX, Mike spent six years in public media at KCUR in Kansas City, MO, serving as Director of Audience Development and Director of Podcast Production. Earlier in his career, he worked as a full-time teaching professor after earning his graduate degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, bringing an educator’s perspective to his work in media and audience strategy.
Nichole Hill
Nichole Hill is a writer, performer, and audio showrunner. She created and hosts the award winning podcast Our Ancestors Were Messy. Most recently, she produced the series I Am America with Tracee Ellis Ross, She Has a Name with reporter Tonya Mosley, and Apathy Is Not An Option for The Southern Poverty Law Center and PRX. Her work has appeared on podcasts for Audible, NPR, PRX, Snap Judgement, and New York Magazine.
Raquel Flores-Clemons
Raquel Flores-Clemons is an archivist and librarian who serves as Head of the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Chicago Public Library and Vice-Chairperson of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC). She previously worked as University Archivist and Director of Archives and Special Collections at Chicago State University and as an independent archivist, supporting cultural heritage, educational, and corporate institutions in managing historical records and digital assets. A committed advocate for equity and access, Raquel centers community needs and works to preserve and illuminate the histories of communities of color. She is dedicated to connecting researchers, organizers, and residents to primary sources and to addressing historical gaps by documenting and amplifying underrepresented narratives. Raquel holds an MSLIS with a Special Collections certificate from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She has also studied at Howard University and earned her BALAS in Art History from UIUC.
Samir Abdul
Samir Abdul is an Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University, where he explores how comedy and storytelling shape public dialogue around culture, technology, and politics. Through his work with the Center for Responsible Technology, Policy, and Public Dialogue, he examines how humor can bridge difficult conversations and spark deeper understanding. A Sudanese-born, Chicago-based stand-up comedian and producer, Samir blends sharp political insight with deeply personal storytelling. After surviving the genocide in Darfur and immigrating to the United States, he developed a voice that transforms heavy truths into explosive laughter without losing their weight. He has performed at The Second City, Zanies Comedy Club, Laugh Factory, The Den Theatre, and Don’t Tell Comedy, and produces live showcases spotlighting emerging talent across Chicago.
Stephanie Kuo
Stephanie Kuo is Vice President of Content at PRX, where she oversees the organization’s content strategy across broadcast and podcast distribution, as well as creative development and operations for commissioned productions. Working closely across PRX’s portfolios and departments, she ensures an impactful, end-to-end audience experience that advances PRX’s mission to make thoughtful, mission-driven storytelling widely accessible. Previously, Stephanie served as Director of Training at PRX, leading education initiatives, accelerator programs, and creative consultancies for podcasters and organizations across the U.S. and around the world. Her work at PRX includes partnerships with YouTube/Google, Apple, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Knight Foundation, The Mellon Foundation, Mayo Clinic, HBO Max, NBCUniversal, PBS KIDS as well as several public radio stations and universities. Before joining PRX, Stephanie was an award-winning public radio reporter and producer at KERA in Dallas and WFUV in the Bronx. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and design from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Columbia University.
Yohance Lacour
Yohance Lacour is a Pulitzer Prize and Peabody Award-winning journalist, artist, and entrepreneur whose work amplifies marginalized voices, exposes systemic injustices, and inspires transformative change in the fight for Black Liberation. Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, Yohance began his career as a playwright, journalist, and budding activist. His storytelling shed light on issues impacting Black communities and advocated for justice. Yohance’s journey took a pivotal turn when he served a ten-year prison sentence, a period that profoundly shaped his perspective on race, identity, and systemic inequity. Upon release, he returned to journalism with the Invisible Institute’s Audio Team and Wrongful Conviction Unit, where he garnered national recognition for his acclaimed podcast, You Didn’t See Nothin’, which revisits a 1997 hate crime and its aftermath to reveal deeper societal failures. Beyond journalism, Yohance’s mixed-media artwork is featured in permanent collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
Toussaint Daniels
Toussaint Daniels is a Chicago-based playwright and a poet whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling, justice, and community transformation. At eighteen, he was sentenced to twenty-six years in prison. During his incarceration, he turned to reading and writing—first as a means of survival, then as a pathway into accountability, curiosity, and personal renewal. What began as a solitary practice evolved into a commitment to help others uncover their own voices, narratives, and possibilities. While inside, Daniels co-founded Dixon Performing Arts, a collective that used theater as a tool for healing and community-building. The group produced more than fifteen original works, including The Story of Violence, which won the 2023 PEN America Prison Writing Award and was later featured on WBEZ’s Prisoncast platform. Through this work, he came to understand creativity not only as expression but as a form of justice—a bridge between harm, repair, and collective imagination. Since his release, Daniels has continued to expand this mission. As a co-founder of the Mud Theatre Project, he served as lead writer for Searching for Justice, which debuted at Steppenwolf Theatre in January and brought forward the experiences of system-impacted communities with nuance, rigor, and ethical storytelling. Through the Mud Theatre Project, he mentors youth and incarcerated writers, develops socially engaged theater, and designs arts education programs rooted in empowerment, civic storytelling, and restorative justice. His commitment to creative advocacy is further reflected in the Toussaint Daniels Emerging Writers Award, established in his honor and awarded to incarcerated writers whose work embodies the spirit of social change he champions.