Meet the Team
Patrice O’Neill, Not In Our Town Executive Producer, is an award-winning media producer dedicated to telling stories about everyday people transforming their communities. As co-founder of the Oakland-based non-profit strategic media production company The Working Group, she has produced successful national series on PBS for fifteen years, using a multi-platform approach that utilizes documentary film, social networking, outreach and organizing efforts to encourage dialogue and spur action.
Rhian Miller is a Senior Producer and Co-Founder of The Working Group. With Patrice O'Neill, she is co-producer of the Not In Our Town programs and has helped lead various Not In Our Town outreach campaigns, which have accompanied the PBS broadcasts of each program and continue today. Miller has also produced many of The Working Group's other award-winning programs, including titles from the series Livelyhood, and We Do the Work, and heads up the company’s contract production department.
Gamaliel Perez is Operations Manager at Not In Our Town. Among his various duties, he assists with coordinating overall office administration as well as creating the most efficient systems to carry out our work. He has several years of nonprofit administration experience and looks forward to many more years of service within the nonprofit sector.
Jill Strong is an editor for Not In Our Town. She worked on creating many of the pieces on this site as well as other videos for The Working Group. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with degrees in Community Studies and Journalism and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area as a freelance video editor since 2005.
Alicia Upano is Not in Our Town's Web Manager and Online Organizer. Prior to joining NIOT, she worked as an educator in San Diego and won several professional awards for her journalism work in Washington, D.C. and Silicon Valley.
Charene Zalis is a Producer at The Working Group for the PBS film Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness, the Not In Our School video series, and NIOT.org. Prior to joining TWG, Charene produced for the PBS human rights series Rights and Wrongs and Frontline, and as a freelancer based in Asia and the Middle East, she produced for Asia Business News, PBS and Nickelodeon. Charene began her career at NBC News and Sports where she was awarded an Emmy for a Muhammad Ali documentary, and produced segments for the Olympic Games.
Adrienne Calo is a Producer for Not in Our School and Light in the Darkness. Before coming to TWG, Adrienne was the series producer of the Emmy-winning weekly arts magazine Spark for KQED-TV. As a writer and producer for television, Adrienne has also worked for PBS, The Discovery Channel, Court TV, and ABC News.
Erika Gosser and Kelly Whalen were integral to the launch of NIOT.org. Gosser managed and coordinated the production of NIOT.org. Whalen produced many of the short films, interviewed NIOT community members, and wrote and edited the stories in the Local Lessons section.
Past and present team members who have also contributed to Not In Our Town's films and website include Emma Clune, Kate McLean, Heather Blackwell Gersh, Christina Corodimas, Kirthi Nath, and Sue Fishkoff; and editors Anthony Lucero, Bob Laird, Matt Dibble and Andy Gersh.
David Molina is responsible for some of the music featured in the videos on NIOT.org. You can find David's music here. Additional music was provided by Music Orange and Dave Nelson of Outpost Studios.
NIOT.org was built and designed by Echo Ditto and their collaborators at Biro Creative. We could not have asked for a more skilled, experienced and simpatico team. They listened… they heard. We’re proud to work with them. Special thanks to Michael Silberman, Scott Bulua, Nicco Mele, and the entire Biro Creative team.
Our other brilliant advisors include Ben Rigby, Allen Gunn of Aspiration Tech, Evelyn Messinger, the team at CoCo Studios, and Jeroen Lapré.
