Maria Garcia is the Executive Editor of Futuro Studios, where she oversees long-form narrative podcasts. She is also the host and creator of the critically acclaimed podcast, “Anything for Selena,” which was named one of the best podcasts of the year by The Atlantic, Vulture, Time, Vogue and many more. Maria was also named podcast newcomer of the year by Apple Podcasts in 2021. In 2024, Maria created and released “My Divo,” an Apple Original podcast about Mexican icon Juan Gabriel and Maria’s own queer and Mexican roots. She has edited and helmed other award-winning podcasts, like The Sum of Us and season two La Brega, which was named one of the best podcasts of the year by the New York Times and The New Yorker.

Marlon Bishop is a Peabody award-winning journalist and producer who currently serves as the VP of Podcasts for Futuro Studios, where he has been a key part of the creation of hit shows like LOUD, Anything for Selena, Suave and La Brega. Marlon has an audio and radio career spanning 12 years and includes stints at WNYC and MTV, cover stories for major music magazines, and audio stories for major outlets like NPR filed from around the world. In his previous job, he was Senior Editor of Latino USA, the prestigious weekly radio show and podcast on Latino affairs, where he won a Peabody Award in 2015 for his reporting on the gang menace in Honduras and an RFK Human Rights award in 2017 for reporting on suicide in immigrant detention.

Julieta Martinelli is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and a Senior Producer at Futuro Media where she reports on injustice, immigration, and the criminal legal system for Latino USA, Futuro Studios and FUHI, Futuro’s investigative unit. She reported and co-produced Suave, a narrative podcast series about juvenile life without parole in the only nation in the world that still allows children to be sentenced to die in prison. Suave was recognized by the International Documentary Association as 2021’s best audio documentary series and was the recipient of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting.

As Soros Justice Media Fellow, she spent over a year traveling alone and collecting stories of asylum seekers stuck in Mexican shelters, documenting the human repercussions of changing legal policies along the U.S.- Mexico border. She previously covered the criminal legal system, policing, and immigration for Nashville Public Radio. Among other awards, her work was recognized by the Tennessee Associated Press three years in a row with first place awards in investigative reporting (audio). Her reporting helped lead to the release from prison of two incarcerated men, one of which had spent nearly two decades wrongfully convicted.

Her stories about immigrant youth, life in prison —and what happens after— have aired nationally on NPR programs including Here and Now, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered, and her original reporting has been discussed in WAMU’s 1A, the BBC, NBC and other national news outlets. She spent the first part of her career covering immigration, culture, and music for Spanish-language print publications in Georgia.

In between, due to her legal status, she worked a number of non-journalism jobs, including making tacos in a drive-thru, working at a music recording studio, eventually helping run one of the biggest nightlife companies in the state, to later helping lawyers representing undocumented and incarcerated clients, all of which she credits equally as the foundation, and sources of important lessons, on how to approach her work, and the people she writes about today.

Nicole Rothwell is a senior producer at Futuro Studios, where she develops new podcasts, oversees production and lead-produces podcast series. She’s a Webby-nominated podcast producer and a multimedia journalist who has covered politics and human rights in Mexico City, Bogotá, Jerusalem and New York City. Most recently she senior produced The Sum of Us for Futuro Studios with Higher Ground Audio. Previously she was supervising producer for Futuro Media’s award-winning politics podcast, In The Thick, and helped launch the TransLash Podcast. Her work has also been featured with WNYC’s The Takeaway, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, La Silla Vacía, The Indypendent and Americas Program. Nicole is an alumna of CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Originally from Washington state, she has a BA in International Relations and Spanish from Seattle University.

Fernanda Echavarri is an award-winning bilingual journalist joining Futuro Studios as Senior Producer. Her first stint at Futuro started in 2015 as a producer and editor for Latino USA in New York City. Fernanda now lives in her beloved Southern Arizona desert. She most recently worked as a reporter for Mother Jones Magazine and previously worked at Tucson’s local NPR/PBS station. She began her journalism career reporting for local newspapers in Southern Arizona almost 15 years ago. Throughout her career, she has written and produced audio documentaries, magazine features, investigative pieces, a few personal stories, and her fair share of daily news. Whatever the topic, one thread ties Fernanda’s work together: she puts people at the center of her stories and treats them with dignity. Fernanda is the recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, National Edward R. Murrow Award, Dori J. Maynard Award for Diversity in Journalism, and a Regional Emmy. She’s also a Peabody Award finalist. And while she’s clearly a fan of the desert, her true home is in Central Mexico where she was born.

Jeanne Montalvo is a Grammy-nominated audio engineer and radio producer. She spent almost a decade working in music recording before breaking into radio after receiving her Masters in Music Technology from New York University. She has worked as an audio engineer and producer for NPR, Bloomberg Radio, the Duolingo podcast and projects for the New York Times and Sony. As a radio producer, she focuses on music and culture stories ranging from the inner workings of growing up bilingual to now parenting bilingual children, as well as telling the stories of music icons past and present like Yma Sumac. She is the creator of “Live from Latino USA” a live and (mostly) unplugged video series that features Latinx talent from Jessie Reyez to Jose Feliciano.

Liliana (Lili) Ruiz is a freelance writer and everlasting positive thinker based out of Chicago. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from DePaul University, and has worked in a variety of professional backgrounds such as finance and education. Lili co-produced her first radio story “From Chicago to Oaxaca” with Latino USA in 2020. She is also a nationally ranked powerlifter. She is inspired to continue to flex her producer muscles with Futuro Studios and beyond!

Stephanie Lebow is the Director of Engineering/Sound Designer across Futuro Media’s properties and the voice of Futuro’s funders.

She is a Peabody award-winning audio engineer for her work on Afropop Worldwide. She found her passion for radio at Indie 103.1 FM in LA, as an engineer, producer, and on-air personality.

She has mixed and produced music in a multitude of genres from jazz to pop, and received an independent music award for her work. She has also mixed and done sound sweetening for indie films and documentary series such as America By The Numbers and Miss Sharon Jones!

She graduated from Emerson College with a major in Audio Production and a minor in Broadcast Journalism. When she’s not using ProTools to build radio shows, she uses it as an instrument in her own electronic/indie project Stef Lebaux.

Julia Caruso got her start in radio as a broadcast engineer for CBS Radio. Prior to working at Futuro Media, she was the Studio Manager for the Music Technology program at New York University overseeing the recording studios and mentoring students. She is an active member of the Audio Engineering Society and has been on the convention committee for their annual international convention in NYC for several years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Music Technology and a master’s degree in Food Studies, both from NYU. Learning about culture through food and music is a passion of hers.

Tasha Sandoval is an Associate Producer at Futuro Studios. She began to work with Futuro while at WNYC Studios, where she worked on season 2 of the award-winning podcast, La Brega. Tasha’s work has appeared on NPR and WNYC programs and in Univision Noticias, City Limits, Refinery 29, and Catapult Story, among others.

She is a graduate of the bilingual program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she concentrated in audio reporting. Her co-reporting on wage theft among Latine restaurant workers in New York City earned a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for Spanish language print/online reporting.

Tasha is originally from Bogotá, Colombia and was raised in South Florida. She enjoys writing about identity, culture, migration, and queerness. She loves to explore the world on her bike.