Emily Gadek is an audio producer based in Oakland, California. For the past seven years, I’ve been the senior producer for the Religion, Race and Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia, dividing my time between producing the lab’s flagship podcast, Sacred & Profane, and running the lab’s documentary program, which helped both students and career academics to transform their research into audio and video documentaries. Program participants’ work has been featured in the Virginia Film Festival, the Montreal International Black Film Festival, and the British Museum, and has been the genesis of an audio documentary series published by Axis Mundi.

As senior producer for Sacred & Profane, I’ve covered everything from from why Donald Trump is compared to an ancient Persian king to editing a story on how a Baptist church and an ashram teamed up to stop a fracked gas pipeline — and I’ve reported stories on the ground from Charlottesville to Sedona to Bhutan. The series’ fourth season was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to explore how religions have shaped the ongoing climate crisis, and how they offer the ability to imagine a better future.

Before my time at the Religion Lab, I worked for BackStory, a nationally broadcast public radio show and podcast, as well as for WBEZ’s daily news magazine Eight Forty-Eight. My work has been featured on WBEZ, San Francisco’s KALW, and Life of the Law. I have served as a consultant for successful new podcasts produced through UVA’s Karsh Institute for Democracy and for Virginia Public Media’s Social Distance Assistance, as well as serving as a peer review panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

I am also an experienced recordist who has worked for national outlets including CNN, Slate, and Prologue Productions - drop me a line if you’re looking for a COVID-conscious tape syncer in the Bay Area.