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Our Story

The Laura Flanders Show began in 2001 as a daily radio program on Air America Radio to engage listeners in a deep dive of the most pressing issues of the times. In 2008, supported by Free Speech TV, Laura moved to television, beginning GRITtv, a daily national news show that covered the Financial Crisis from the grassroots up. After several years, the show moved to KCET/Link TV and teleSUR, where it ran as a weekly program called The Laura Flanders Show. The Laura Flanders Show launched on PBS stations in the United States in 2020, airing in 23 of the country’s top 25 television markets. The show rebranded as Laura Flanders & Friends in 2024. To find your local listing, check out our TV schedules.

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Cultural Freedom
Fellowship,
Lannan Foundation

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Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award, Women’s Media Center

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Urban Journalist
of the Year,
City Limits

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Izzy Award
Park Center
at Ithaca College

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Most Valuable
Multimedia Maker
The Nation

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Communicator of
the Year Award
NY Metro Labor Press Council

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Stonewall Award
Stonewall
Community Foundation

Our Host

Laura Flanders

Host & Executive Producer

Laura is a best-selling author, broadcaster and host of Laura Flanders & Friends (formerly The Laura Flanders Show) on public television. The weekly public affairs program airs on over 300 public television stations via PBS and WORLD Channel, and reaches 225 million Americans on public television. It is also available on public radio, major podcast platforms and YouTube. After many years in public and commercial radio, she founded The Laura Flanders Show / GRITtv in 2008 to serve as an online channel for in depth conversations with forward-thinking people from the worlds of politics, economics, business and the arts. A primetime, daily broadcast, GRITtv with Laura Flanders aired for three years on Free Speech TV before moving to KCET/Linktv and teleSUR, as a weekly program. Flanders is a contributing writer to The Nation and Yes! magazine. She is also the author of six books including the New York Times best-seller, BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004) and Blue GRIT: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians (Penguin Press, 2007). The Laura Flanders Show aired nationally on Air America Radio (2004-2008) before which she was the founding host of Your Call, on public radio, KALW, and CounterSpin, the nationally-syndicated radio program from the mediawatch group FAIR.

Our Board

Dara Baldwin

Dara Baldwin

Director Policy Center for Disability Rights, Inc.
Isaiah Poole

Isaiah Poole

VP, Communications The Democracy Collaborative

Adrienne Torf

CFO Consultant

Gus Spheeris

Consul

Kim Conner

Social Media Consultant

Janus Adams (Advisory Board)

The Janus Adams Show

Cathy Albisa (Advisory Board)

Partners for Dignity & Rights

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (Advisory Board)

Co-Founder & Executive Director, African American Policy Forum

Lisa Duggan (Advisory Board)

Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

Zillah Eisenstein (Advisory Board)

Emerita Professor of the Department of Politics, Ithaca College

Ellen Gavin

Screenwriter & Producer, Gavin Creative, LLC

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson (Advisory Board)

Co-Executive Director, Highlander Research & Education Center

Janine Jackson (Advisory Board)

Program Director, FAIR

Gina Kim (Advisory Board)

Emmy-nominated Producer

Judith LeBlanc (Advisory Board)

Executive Director, Native Organizers Alliance

Jacqui Lewis (Advisory Board)

Senior Minister, Middle Collegiate Church

Scot Nakagawa (Advisory Board)

Director, 22nd Century Initiative

Stacey Sutton (Advisory Board)

Director, Solidarity Economy Research, Policy & Law Project

V (formerly Eve Ensler) (Advisory Board)

Playwright, Activist, Author, Founder V-Day & One Billion Rising 

Our Staff

Sabrina Artel

Supervising Producer

Sabrina Artel is an artist and a journalist. Her works explore community-based practices through the lens of social justice and direct storytelling. She has taught at Brooklyn and Hunter Colleges in their journalism and media studies departments and has been a guest speaker at the OTIS School of Art and Design, The School of Visual Arts and the School of Public Health at Columbia University in NYC. Her interdisciplinary 19-year project, Trailer Talk includes a radio show and live performative events using new models for participatory communication, narrative building, and dialogue to support community engagement. Her work has been recognized by the Puffin Foundation, NYSCA and Art Matters among others.

Janet Hernandez is an early-career journalist and music enthusiast based in New York City. With her writing expertise and passion for storytelling, she’s on a mission to support and uplift change makers and creatives who are doing things differently.

Janet Hernandez

Communications Director

Jeannie Hopper

Audio Director

Jeannie Hopper pioneers media strategies for community focused platform building. She produced several podcast series, radio shows and streaming stations. As former program director at WBAI she developed new shows and training programs. Hopper developed and managed Clocktower Radio, a premiere podcast, live stream and on demand platform for PS1-MoMA. She currently produces the radio/podcast edition of the Laura Flanders Show, and hosts and produces Liquid Sound Lounge-on WBAI-Pacifica in New York City, targeting youth via underground music and culture along with annual ‘social dance’ focused events including annual boat parties.

Sarah Miller joined The Laura Flanders Show as Development Director in 2023. She has twenty years of non-profit experience, including producing a Latin American film festival in New York and managing a foundation dedicated to US-Cuban cultural exchange. In these roles she concentrated on serving New York’s diverse Latino communities as well as promoting Latino films to a wider audience. Having taught English in Bulgaria and Moscow in the early 1990s, she firmly believes in the importance of open communications and information sharing in all its forms.

Additional professional experience includes several years in training and management at J.P. Morgan Chase, including establishing a new Creative Services department in Buenos Aires. She holds art history degrees from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Most recently, she served as development director and then executive director for an association of humanist youth camps

Sarah Miller

Development Director

Nat Needham

Creative Designer & Video Editor

Nat shoots, edits and animates manifestations of people and their ideas, be they in the High Himalayas, the craziness of Caracas, peculiar to Portland or nuevo in New York. He’s worked with Democracy Now, Al Jazeera, San Francisco Chronicle and enjoys eating Ethiopian food with his wife.

Before joining The Laura Flanders Show, David was a freelance editor. He has edited for Globalvision since 2009. His projects include two six-part documentary series for international distribution, America’s Surveillance State and Who Rules America; PBS NewsHour reports on the digital divide; a series of programs on the 2018 midterm elections for satcaster Free Speech TV; and, most recently, programs for The Laura Flanders Show.

In addition to his work with Globalvision, previous production and post-production experience includes narrative and documentary films (short and feature length), news segments, commercials, corporate videos and internal communications spanning a variety of settings, ranging from commercial production companies, advertising agencies and corporate production companies.

David Neumann

Senior Video Editor

Our Partnerships