Podcast Intensive Listening Party 2026

Adama Delphine Fawundu is a Brooklyn-born visual artist, educator, and cultural organizer whose interdisciplinary practice is rooted in photography and expanded through textiles, video, sound, and handmade paper. Grounded in what she terms Kpoto Patchwok—a methodology informed by ancestral intelligence, embodied memory, and ecological knowledge—her work explores how stories are carried and preserved through bodies, landscapes, and material culture.

A first-generation artist with heritage from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, Fawundu is co-author and editor of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. She has received numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, CatchLight Fellowship, Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the São Paulo Biennial and the Bamako Encounters Photography Biennial, and is held in numerous public and private collections.

Akeem is an educator, writer, and podcaster born in Brooklyn, New York. His work explores how the assumptions we carry about learning, relationships, growth, and responsibility shape the way we move through the world.

Following all of the lessons he learned from the process of his first podcast, Naughty and The Teach, he wanted to shift his persona and dive deeper into spaces that we seldom explore. 

He is the creator and host of Lessons, Reconsidered, a reflective podcast that revisits the lessons we think we’ve learned and examines what begins to shift when lived experience complicates them. Rather than offering advice or conclusions, the show creates space for thoughtful reconsideration and unfinished understanding.

Through writing and conversation, Akeem is interested in slowing down ideas we often rush past and create room for deeper attention to the beliefs that guide our decisions. His work invites listeners to reconsider what they’ve learned and to remain open to the complexity that experience often reveals.

April Clyburne-Sherin is an epidemiologist by training with 10+ years of experience organizing and training scientists to advance open research, rigor, and reproducibility. Her work at Center for Open Science, Sense About Science, Code Ocean, Reproducibility for Everyone, Community 4 Rigor, and now at SPARC, aims to meet researchers where they are, assess their needs, and create opportunities to build skills and adopt new methods. April has an MSc in Population Medicine (Epidemiology) from the University of Guelph and is secretly Canadian. She has a dog named Ada the Puppy of Lovelace and lives in Brooklyn.

Beatrice Hector, affectionately known as “Dr. Bea,” is a Haitian American born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, with a lifelong passion for creativity, advocacy, and community service. She received her initial degree in Occupational Therapy from Howard University and later earned her clinical Doctorate in Occupational Therapy from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences.

Dr. Bea is a pediatric occupational therapist dedicated to supporting children with diverse developmental needs and empowering their families. She is the author of the children’s book Ooh That’s Icky!, which received a citation from Nassau County Mayor Andrew Hardwick recognizing her contribution to the literary community and her efforts to raise awareness about sensory processing challenges through storytelling.

She is the owner of Sensory Street Pediatric Occupational Therapy, a respected practice that provides mobile services to neurodivergent children, resources for parents, and advocacy support to help families access appropriate services for their children at school and at home. Sensory Street also offers consultation services to families and schools, staff development training, public speaking engagements, and guest lectures at universities. Dr. Bea also collaborates with several universities by providing fieldwork opportunities for occupational therapy students.

Beyond her clinical work, Dr. Bea is committed to service and global outreach. She serves on the board of the Haitian Rehabilitation Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the only occupational therapy school in Haiti. She is also the founder of HIP HOP COMMUNITY CENTER, INC., a nonprofit created to support children's academic growth and artistic expression through the four elements of hip hop culture.

Dr. Bea has also explored her interest in theatre as part of her creative journey and desire to learn how to write scripts. She participated in a staged read aloud performance where she played the lead role of Ebonisa in Ebonisa Scrooge, an African American adaptation of A Christmas Carol, performed at the Joysetta and Julius Pearse African American Museum of Nassau County in Hempstead around 2009.

A mother of three adult children and a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, Dr. Bea continues to give back through education, advocacy, and community engagement. Through her newest venture, Dr. Bea The OT Podcast, she aims to educate, inspire, and empower parents and women by sharing stories, resources, and meaningful conversations that support families navigating developmental and behavioral challenges. The podcast helps build a supportive community where parents feel safe, heard, and understood while connecting them with valuable resources and professionals who can support their journey.

Caroline Mardok is a French-born, French American visual artist based in Brooklyn. Her work centers on listening across cultures and geographies, using photography, film, and public art to explore belonging, resilience, and place.

She is the creator and host of ENLIGHT, a podcast that explores new places and people through intimate conversation and documentary storytelling. Moving between New York and beyond, the series brings together artists, activists, community leaders, and young voices to examine how connection, care, and imagination can create meaningful change in a hyperconnected world.

Mardok’s public art and documentary projects include Not Tired Yet, In Honor of Black Lives Matter, and American Dream. Her first documentary film, Water Guardians, has been acclaimed and screened at festivals in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, expanding her ongoing exploration of water access, equity, and community resilience.

Dyami is a Brooklyn storyteller and emerging producer whose work lives at the intersection of identity, memory, and the uncanny. A Brooklyn College screenwriter, he builds narratives that use horror and surrealism to reveal the emotional truths often left unspoken, with a particular focus on underrepresented voices and communities. His narrative podcast Spot‑Light embodies that approach, weaving intimate, atmospheric worldbuilding with character‑driven tension. As he expands his creative practice into producing, Dyami is actively shaping stories across mediums and deepening his commitment to collaborative, community‑rooted work. He is building a career in film, television, and media, driven by a dedication to stories that feel lived in, human, and haunting.

Gary “Uncle Gary” Corbin joins BRIC’s Podcast Intensive as part of his celebration of 50 years as a cancer survivor, with over four decades in the arts and entertainment arena as an actor, award-winning performance artist, arts administrator, and producer. Since the amputation of his right leg due to bone cancer in 1975, Corbin’s mission has evolved to merge his artistic endeavors with his activism for social justice and equality. Drawing on his master’s degree in counseling with a mental health focus, he is currently producing the upcoming magazine-style podcast Uncle Gary’s TWO CENTS JOURNEY?, where he self-describes as “a 50-year cancer survivor, and a crazy, one-legged, Black & gay male, who is chronologically 68, but spiritually a rebellious teen.”

Corbin’s artistic accomplishments are primarily in theater, having performed in over 50 productions across many genres, from Off-Broadway to regional, national, and international touring. He has also worked in television and film but is best known for his award-winning, critically acclaimed one-man play Four One-Legged Men. For this work, he received the Gregory Millard Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a theater commission from the New York State Council on the Arts, playwriting awards from the Maryland and New York State Councils on the Arts, and three community arts grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. As an artist and advocate for social justice, Corbin has also received citations from the Maryland State Governor’s Office and the Mayor’s Office of Baltimore City.

April 2026 will be a significant month for Corbin, with the Podcast Intensive Listening Event, and he will also be honored for his lifetime artistic work as part of the Franklin Furnace Foundation’s 50th anniversary at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Corbin humbly states, “Through my work, I am blessed to have the opportunity to help empower persons with disabilities, senior citizens, and others society marginalizes, with the end goal being to encourage all of us to achieve our fullest human potential.”

Jennifer Wiese is the host of Worth the Time, a podcast about how hobbies like running, knitting, and board games can shape our lives in all kinds of ways.

As the founder of Workroom Social, a sewing studio based in Brooklyn, New York, Jennifer has spent years watching what happens when people make time for something they love. Through sewing, she builds communities, stimulates creativity, and helps people improve their confidence by making the clothes they actually want to wear. She creates opportunities for sewists to connect with those they might not meet otherwise, and to develop relationships that go beyond sewing itself. She's seen firsthand how a hobby can transform a person's life.

Worth the Time is her chance to share what she's witnessed, to entertain listeners and, hopefully, to inspire them to find a hobby of their own.

Whether it's sewing, rock climbing, or zine-making, if you don't already have a hobby you love, Jennifer will be the first person in line inviting you to find one.

Julissa Bedford is a Bronx native and currently pursuing her MFA in screenwriting at Emerson College. Her podcast, Artist Block is dedicated to help highlight emerging artists native to New York as a means of promoting the new wave of changemakers. As a woman of color who she understands the importance of representation at all levels. It is her goal as an aspiring screenwriter/ director to make work that reflects other perspectives than the ones Hollywood is currently telling. On the side, she pours herself into building community and helps run a Harlem-based art collective called Quintoola, that helps uplift Black and Brown artists.

Lakai Worrell is an award-winning choreographer, director, and filmmaker. A New York native, he began his career as a hip-hop artist before expanding into contemporary dance forms. His work is rooted in culture, storytelling, and the power of embodied expression.

He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Torch Bearer Award for the Advancement of Black Theater, the Teacher Recognition Award from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts (NFAA), and the Black Men of Distinction Award. As a performer, Lakai has worked with choreographers Kevin “IEGA” Jeff, Obediah Wright, Abdel Salaam, and Buster Grant, and alongside artists such as Ornette Coleman, Savion Glover, Avery Brooks, Phylicia Rashad, Michael K. Williams, Justin Emeka, Jesse Wooden Jr., and Tony Award–winning Broadway choreographer Marlies Yearby. His performance credits also include The Shakespeare Theatre and the music video 100% Pure Love by Crystal Waters.

Lakai’s choreographic work has been presented by the Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Peridance Center, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, as well as at institutions including Yale, Hofstra, and Oberlin. His work has also been showcased internationally at the Campion School in Athens, Greece, and with the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil de El Salvador. His production credits include The Maafa Suite: A Healing Journey and the award-winning The World According to Mickey Grant, choreographed in collaboration with director Nora Cole and The New Federal Theatre.

His documentary film A Place Called Home (2023) has received multiple honors, including Best Short Documentary at Film for Peace, the Best Culture Award at the LA Documentary Film Festival, and semifinalist recognition at the Dumbo Film Festival.

As the Vision Leader of Arts in Blue, Inc., Lakai leads a mission to awaken the joy of artistic discovery in every individual. Alongside Operations Director Shani Worrell, he brings this vision to life through Arts in Blue’s dance school, arts-in-education partnerships, original productions, and community programs, as well as through Brown Map Productions—a multi-tiered creative content company that develops original theatrical and film-based works and serves as the creative production partner and intellectual property holder for select collaborations with Arts in Blue. Guided by the core values of Creativity, Professionalism, Community, and Joy, Lakai’s work honors shared cultural heritage while inspiring individuals to become catalysts for change and stewards of generational impact.

Natalie Pegano is a creative producer, media researcher, and storyteller whose work sits at the crossroads of video games, film, and cultural history. Born and raised in California, she grew up immersed in the visual language of games and cinema, developing an early fascination with how stories move, transform, and take on new meaning across different mediums. That early curiosity evolved into a lifelong commitment to understanding narrative craft and the cultural forces that shape the entertainment we consume.

Natalie earned her bachelor’s degree in Digital Arts and Design and her Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida. During her time there, she honed a multidisciplinary skill set spanning directing, editing, visual design, and production management. She discovered a particular passion for video editing—an art form that allows her to blend rhythm, emotion, and structure into cohesive storytelling. Her academic and creative work explored how visual media communicates identity, memory, and cultural context, laying the foundation for her current research-driven approach.

Her professional experience includes directing the music video Little Bird and collaborating with the company The Royal Crowd in Norway to design visual assets for their artists’ music releases. She edited the short film Break-Out Case, which screened at the Florida Film Festival, and has contributed to key production roles across a variety of short film projects. Beyond film, she has designed cover art, branding, and visual materials for independent artists, and has collaborated with international clients on entertainment and media projects. Whether she is shaping a narrative in the edit, developing visual materials, or analyzing the cultural significance of a story, Natalie approaches every project with a blend of technical precision, creative curiosity, and thoughtful research.

Natalie is also the creator and host of Console to Camera, a podcast dedicated to examining how video games are adapted into live-action films and television. Through this project, she combines her background in film production with her deep interest in interactive storytelling, exploring why certain adaptations succeed, why others fall short, and what these transformations reveal about audience expectations and cultural trends. Her work blends media analysis, cinematic insight, and a genuine love for the evolving relationship between games and screen-based storytelling.

Across all her creative pursuits, Natalie is driven by a desire to understand how stories travel between mediums—and how those shifts shape the way we experience characters, worlds, and cultural narratives. She continues to expand her craft through ongoing study, hands-on production, and a commitment to exploring new forms of storytelling within the entertainment industry.