When you’re at a restaurant, what makes for a great waiter or waitress?
Great servers seem to know what you need even before you do, and have it ready without being asked.
Great engineers share this trait. They can anticipate needs and fix them without being told by anyone.
That’s why Jeff Higley is receiving WVPB’s Storyteller Award.
Read this story by WVPB Director of Video Production Chuck Roberts:
“We were setting up for a special television “Inside Appalachia” on the Mine Wars. We had to wait till the lottery drawing broadcast was finished to make a set and control room happen from scratch.
“I began running around like a chicken with his head cut off to get things going, when I got to the ‘streaming gear’ that we were going to use to get an HD production going, there was a calming presence as Jeff Higley was there with hands full of cables and adapters.
I had not even informed him about my need for his help. He just saw the need.
“I asked him ‘What are you doing here Jeff?’ He said, ‘Setting things up.’
“I had not even informed him about my need for his help. He just saw the need and stayed after the third show of this Legislature Today season and the lottery drawing that night.
“That was a bit of a hectic week and Jeff was by my side for all of it,” Roberts said.
Here’s ANOTHER story from Jeff’s supervisor, Director of Engineering Dave McClanahan:
“As we ramped up to do the West Virginia Channel coverage of the Legislature, Jeff assembled from scratch a mini-control room specifically for Beth Vorhees and that particular mission.
“As bugs were discovered, tweaks were made. The result is a solid platform to do the coverage we could only dream of last year at this time.
“Quietly, calmly, without fanfare or noise, Jeff does these things and more. Intuitively he appears at the place where the need arises.
“His manner has a calming effect during a crisis, and overnight a fix occurs to replace the band-aid that was placed to keep the ship afloat.
“He also rides a Harley and plays the guitar. In his spare time,” McClanahan said.
Jeff worked for us once before, then went to work for West Virginia State, and then came back…knowing full well the challenges our engineers face here every day.
In the face of budget cutbacks, our engineers and IT staff are doing more than ever with cleverness and calmness – and that’s why Jeff Higley is WVPB’s Storyteller of the Month.
Are you interested in nominating a WVPB employee as Storyteller of the Month? E-mail your suggestions, along with a short story explaining why this person should be chosen, to Jan Johnson – jjohnson@wvpublic.org
It has been a while since I have named a “Storyteller Award” winner for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. To make up for it, I am naming five – that’s right, five – WVPB Storytellers. Each employee was nominated by their peers for excellence in telling West Virginia’s story.
1. Jessica Lilly, Inside Appalachia host/southern W.Va. bureau chief
2. Roxy Todd, Inside Appalachia producer/reporter
Working with Beth Vorhees and the rest of the news crew, Jessica and Roxy have transformed “Inside Appalachia” in many ways.
Roxy Todd
They have found a way to focus each weekly show around a topic – for example, mine safety, or clean water, or Appalachian food.
The podcast was recently recognized as one of the best in America by thetimbre.com, a site devoted to reviewing podcasts:
“I don’t know what it’s like to be from West Virginia. Short of moving there, I may never know. But for an hour every week I can suspend whatever judgments I have and look past the empty statistics about poverty and methamphetamines and try to get a sense of what it means to live there.”
Here’s what Roxy’s nominator said about her willingness to go above and beyond to get the story:
Brynn Kusic
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Roxy Todd told the story of Hillsboro, W.Va. coming together after racist graffiti was painted on the side of a local business.
“Roxy heard of an incident in Pocahontas County where racist graffiti was painted on the side wall of a building in Hillsboro. The business was a restaurant owned by a local woman who is married to a Jamaican man.
“Roxy insisted that she drop her producing duties for an afternoon, drive two and a half hours to Pocahontas County and attend a meeting the residents were having to talk about racism in their community.
“She was back in Charleston late that night. The next morning, she was at the state Board of Education meeting at 9:00 a.m. The board was discussing the climate change science curriculum that had made headlines.
“Through her effort and work ethic, Roxy went to great lengths to cover stories that mattered to our listeners. I admire that initiative and drive.”
And here is what Jessica Lilly’s nominator said about her initiative and drive:
Jessica Lilly interviewing Betty Younger about water in McDowell County
“Jessica Lilly has been championing the causes of the people of Southern West Virginia her entire carrier. In the past year, we had a water crisis here in Charleston that effected about 300,000 people across the state. It reached the national news.
“Jessica took up the cause of letting everyone know that fresh running water is a daily struggle for folks in the southern part of the state, not just a couple weeks of their lives.
“In October, Jessica had a car accident that took her out of work for a few weeks. She injured her arm and had to do rehab for it. Her car was totaled. Her family came up with a loaner, but unfortunately it broke down on her.
“Through all of this, she worked from home, and at times walked to work at Concord University. Never taking a ‘woe is me’ attitude, Jessica just powers through.”
3. Teresa Wills, Morning Edition Host
Teresa Wills
Do you realize how hard it is to talk on the radio at 5 a.m. every morning? Even harder to sound calm and pleasant, consistently, every day.
But that’s what Teresa Wills does. She’s the voice of Morning Edition on West Virginia Public Broadcasting, teaming up with Beth Vorhees to deliver news, traffic, weather, and yes, school closings. Teresa has been at WVPB for almost 13 years.
Teresa also is in charge of traffic at our radio operation – which has nothing to do with cars and trucks, but is the scheduling of underwriting and other messages throughout the day. In the past few months, Teresa also has dealt with major changes to our schedule and the “clocks” NPR uses.
More than one person submitted a nomination for Teresa. Here’s what one person said:
“She is reliable, pleasant, & frankly, is gifted with an ambassador’s ‘voice’ for our state. She is a steady anchor for us no matter what else is going on around us. She also has an excellent way of finding better & more efficient ways to do things, which is a huge boon to our workloads!”
4. Eddie Isom, Media Sales Associate
Credit Eddie Isom / WVPB
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WVPB
Separated at birth? Eddie Isom and Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey.
I have yet to meet a person who does not like Eddie Isom. His energy and enthusiasm for West Virginia Public Broadcasting is infectious.
Eddie was asked to switch from the TV programming department to underwriting last year. He brought his enthusiasm into his new job, and it has paid off for WVPB. Here’s what his nominator said about him:
“Eddie came on board as a member of the underwriting team last winter, and jumped into the work like a pro. Right away he brought on a brand new $10,000 underwriter from southern West Virginia, and he hasn’t stopped racking up the contracts since.
“He brings a deep knowledge and love of public media to his work, and it shows when he meets with our constituents. Eddie is always upbeat and ready to take on any challenge.
“He never says ‘no’ to anything. He is a joy to work with AND he plays a mean ukelele!”
5. Dale Malcomb, IT Director
Dale is in charge of IT at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. For us, this is more than keeping our computer network running. It also means figuring out ways to transport and store huge amounts of data required for audio and video files.
Dale has worked at WVPB for 15 years, and he quietly has done his job with excellence. He also has a knack for hard-bargaining and getting the most out of our limited resources.
Dale also was nominated by more than one person. Here’s what one said:
“He works largely unseen and behind closed doors, and is not always the most popular guy because of his goals of protecting the information that belongs to the EBA. He works more hours than anyone but me probably knows about, and he does not seek credit, but deserves thanks.”
Right now, Dale is working on “The Interconnect,” a system to share and backup files between our three main facilities. Here’s what his nominator said about that:
“The Interconnect is about to come past a giant milestone, once the circuits are connected. We are a little ways out from calling it “completed”, but his maneuvering and system design will give us a great infrastructure, while saving the state large dollars on our circuits.
“He also saved large sums of cash by obtaining 13 routers from the Office of Technology that were basically going to be dumped because they had been tainted as pork spending by the newspaper.
“We will be using these routers as part of the interconnect project, and for the first time since I’ve been here, because of the numbers of routers he got, we have backups, and automatic failovers, not just one box to nervously wait to fail.”
Each storyteller award winner will each receive a $50 gift certificate to the retailer of his or her choice.
Meanwhile, we’re always looking for new candidates for Storyteller of the Month. It can be any employee or volunteer who goes above and beyond to “Tell West Virginia’s Story.”
Please provide the following information:
1. How long has the nominated person worked here?
2. What is one example of something this person has accomplished lately – a story of success we can share?
3. We need a good picture of the person from the nominator.
Send nominations anytime to Belinda McCallister, bmccallister@wvpublic.org.
It’s easy to panic when a transmitter goes down. Engineer Art Austin keeps a cool head in the middle of that chaos, and that’s why he’s the August winner of WVPB’s Storyteller Award.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting maintains transmitters, translators, microwave links and other equipment at more than 30 sites. They stretch from Bluefield to Bethany, Logan to Lost River.
These transmitters and translators deliver our programs not just to old-fashioned aerial antennas. They also deliver our programs to cable and satellite systems throughout the state.
When bad weather hits, you can count on something going wrong. Even when skies are clear, equipment can fail at any moment.
Recently, that’s what happened in Wheeling. An important piece of equipment failed on our translator. Even worse, the replacement part wasn’t available for weeks!
But that didn’t stop Art, according to WVPB Chief Engineer Dave McClanahan.
“Art took the parts from two bad modules and created his own Franken-translator,” McClanahan said.
Art Austin
According to his friend and co-worker, Debbie Oleksa, Art is from Uniontown, Pa., and started working in Master Control, and later transitioned into his current engineering post in Morgantown.
“In his spare time he is a Pennsylvania constable, and a volunteer fire fighter,” she said.
Art has suffered injuries as he’s done the difficult and dangerous job of fixing transmitters and translators. He continues to do that work without complaint.
It doesn’t matter how well we tell West Virginia story if no one can see and hear it. Thanks Art and the rest of our engineering staff for making that happen.
Art will each receive a $50 gift certificate to the retailer of his choice.
Meanwhile, we’re always looking for new candidates for Storyteller of the Month. It can be any employee or volunteer who goes above and beyond to “Tell West Virginia’s Story.”
Send nominations anytime to Belinda McCallister, bmccallister@wvpublic.org.
Every month, we recognize an employee or volunteer who goes out of their way to help “tell West Virginia’s story.”
This month, our Storyteller Award goes to an employee whose positive attitude and endless energy makes him a joy to work with: Jeff Sandner.
You might know Sandner as our “All Things Considered” host on West Virginia Public Radio. It’s a tough job for one person – newscasts, spots, underwriters, etc. Jeff does it with excellence and with a smile on his face every day.
Recently, a last-minute programming issue came up, and no one was available to fill in for Morning Edition the next day.
Sandner insisted on doing the show himself, even though he had worked the night before, and it meant getting to the station in the wee, wee hours of the morning.
His boss, Radio Director Kristi George, wrote this about him:
Jeff Sandner, West Virginia Public Broadcasting Storyteller Award winner for January 2014.
“Jeff works tirelessly, sometimes longer than he should, attending to the details of his work. He not only does an excellent job on the air, he is also behind the scenes crafting promos, lining up programs, and assisting the Operations Director with whatever needs to be done.
“If that weren’t enough, he stands at the ready to pinch hit for others when they are out, planned or last-minute.
“Jeff is always ready to lend a helping hand, whether asked to do so, or of his own initiative. He does so with a positive attitude & endless energy. He is the consummate team player.
“Frankly, it is a ‘blessing’ to have Jeff on our team. I can’t imagine doing what we do without him. For Jeff, we are truly grateful!”
Sandner will receive a $50 gift certificate from the retailer of his choice. To nominate someone for the next Storyteller Award, e-mail Belinda McCallister – bmccallister@wvpublic.org. Please be specific in your nomination.
