NY Times expands Opinion audio team with new hires

The following excerpt announcement was sent out by The New York Times managing editor, Opinion audio, Paula Szuchman:

Nayeema Raza joins as senior editor for “Sway.” Nayeema has been a consulting senior producer on the show since its launch, and will now take the lead on driving editorial for news-making audio journalism and conversations that hold power to account.

Many of you may already know Nayeema, since she first joined The Times in 2019 as a senior producer with Opinion Video. Nayeema was the showrunner and executive producer, alongside Bill Guttentag and Richard Linklater, of the CBS All Access documentary series, “That Animal Rescue Show,” She previously wrote and produced the documentary “Sublime,” which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. Nayeema began her career in international development, spending five years working on economic and governance reform in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Daphne Chen joins as a producer for “Sway.” Daphne was previously an associate producer for Freakonomics Radio, the weekly radio show and podcast hosted by journalist Stephen Dubner. She has also written about food for Edible Queens and Chowhound. Daphne grew up in Hudson, Ohio, and got her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. She worked in education research at MDRC before receiving her Master’s in journalism from Columbia University.

Kaari Pitkin joins as senior editor for the development team. Kaari was the executive producer of WNYC’s Radio Rookies, a Peabody award-winning youth journalism show known for sound-rich portraits of life for teenagers in New York. Under Kaari’s leadership, Rookies has been recognized by the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Journalism, the National Edward R. Murrow Awards, the Society for Professional Journalists and the Third Coast Festival Awards.

Cristal Duhaime joins as a senior development producer. Cristal is the co-creator of CBC’s Love Me, a podcast about the messiness of human connection. She is also the co-creator of the scripted comedy series Pen Pals and has made work for The New Yorker Radio Hour. Cristal got her start in radio as a producer on Jonathan Goldstein’s WireTap, for which the team won a Prix Italia award. She has taught podcasting workshops through the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University as well as in Italy.

Derek Arthur joins as associate producer on the development team, starting March 15. He comes most recently from NPR, where he was a production assistant on the international longform narrative podcast, Rough Translation. Derek was also named a 2020 AIR New Voices Fellow.

Before joining NPR, Derek spent six years living in mainland China and Taiwan. His final stop was Beijing, where he completed a degree in multimedia journalism in 2019.