Our Team
Founders
Jon Favreau
Founder
Jon Favreau served as Barack Obama’s head speechwriter from 2005-2013, a role that was far more senior and influential than Jon Lovett’s.
Since leaving the White House, Favreau has written and spoken about politics and speechwriting to audiences throughout the world. In 2017, he co-founded Crooked Media, where he’s a co-host of Pod Save America and host of The Wilderness. Jon grew up outside of Boston, graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Emily, their son Charlie, and their dog Leo.
Jon Lovett
Founder
Jon Lovett is a podcast host, former presidential speechwriter, and straight shooter widely respected on both sides. In 2017 he co-founded Crooked Media, where he co-hosts “Pod Save America” and hosts “Lovett or Leave It,” two popular podcasts that are very good. Before Crooked, he served as a speechwriter in the Obama White House, co-created a comedy on NBC called “1600 Penn” (cancelled after one perfect season), and wrote speeches for Hillary Clinton. He recently switched to oat milk.
Tommy Vietor
Founder
Tommy Vietor is a cofounder of Crooked Media, cohost of Pod Save America, and the host of the foreign-policy focused Pod Save the World.
In a past life, he worked for President Obama for nine years, including a stint as White House National Security Spokesman. Originally from outside Boston, Vietor now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Hanna and their dog Lucca. He tweets too much.
The Crooked Team
Lucinda Treat
Chief Executive Officer
Alessandra Adams
Politics Coordinator
Christian Avendano
IT Coordinator
Eric Babb
Community Manager
Eric is a lifelong Jayhawk from the beautiful home on the range, Kansas. He started off as a math teacher, the fun kind, before making the jump into campaigns where he worked in distributed organizing and training. In both his campaign roles and at Vote Save America, Eric has had the distinct honor of working with an astounding number of well-trained, caring, and persistent volunteers. When not making his volunteers parse through another spreadsheet, Eric enjoys watching college basketball and soccer (KC BABY!), going on walks in parks that have cute streams, playing Zelda, and — yes, really — bounding.
Leah Barteldes
Sr. Associate, Email & Web
Dariush Brizuela-Nothaft
SVP, Community & Partnerships
Julia Beach
Senior Marketing Manager
Julia joins the Crooked Team after 4 years at Paramount Pictures, marketing movies like Top Gun: Maverick, Scream, jackass forever and The Lovebirds. She is thrilled to be at a company that champions progressive causes, where she can learn everyone's name in a matter of weeks and spend less time on TikTok. Julia is a native New Yorker (not Manhattan, as she's had to specify to righteous city kids her entire life), a home chef and consummate dinner party host, and, unsurprisingly, a movie lover.
Natalie Bettendorf
AP, Daily News
Natalie is Berkeley born-and-raised and a USC graduate (yeah, she'll say it: Bears > Trojans). She attributes her love of audio storytelling to the incredible high school program at YR Media in Oakland and is eager to mentor student journalists one day. She’s produced stories for BuzzFeed News (RIP), The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times before joining Crooked Media. She is thrilled to be an AP on ‘What A Day’ and is actively converting listeners of ‘The Daily.’
Giancarlo Bizzarro
VP, Sales
Giancarlo tries to convince the team to sell out. When he can’t, he tries to find brands that align with Crooked’s vision and leading content.
When he’s not pulling a nice organic host-read out of a wood-fired oven, Giancarlo curates the finest selection of pre- and mid-roll cheese. Paired with a nice newsletter makes a mighty fine campaign! Giancarlo is very sensitive about his Italian heritage, don’t bring it up. Prior to joining Crooked Media, Giancarlo was Director of Sales at Endeavor and Cadence13. Before that he oversaw emerging media on the advertising side at Oxford Road, and a long time ago was a humble field-organizer on the ’08 Obama campaign. Domestically, Giancarlo roots for Cleveland, a town he’s only been to once, but his heart belongs to SSC Napoli and gli Azzurri.
Michelle Bocanegra
Senior Ad Ops Manager
Michelle was born, raised and currently resides in the Inland Empire, California. Before joining Crooked Media, Michelle enjoyed a 20 year career in the radio broadcasting industry. She spent most of those years sitting on the 10 FWY on her commute from the IE to LA, but she also enjoyed time at local stations KCBS-FM and KDAY-FM, before landing at Westwood One radio network. In her free time, Michelle enjoys many “bro-approved” favorites such as baseball (GO DODGERS!), Crossfit and craft beer. Choose your conversation topic carefully… do you even lift or drink IPAs, bro?! Her latest obsession is curating her small, but growing collection of vinyl records.
Phoebe Bradford
Senior Video Producer
Phoebe Bradford is a Brooklyn native, which means you should avoid engaging her in any “LA has superior bagels” or “the pizza here can be just as good as New York” debates. But she just learned how to drive… so she will accept a free ride if you’re offering. Prior to Crooked, Phoebe found herself in The Pivot to Video™, creating #content for Thrillist, Jezebel, WWD, and Quartz, where she is fondly remembered as the field producer who fell off a chair, broke her ankle, and reported from all over the country on crutches anyway. These days she produces videos for Crooked on two sturdy, albeit titanium-reinforced, legs. She spends her free time cooking elaborate meals and longing for her glory days, AKA that one time in the 4th grade when she was on Barefoot Contessa.
Ashley Campion
Community and Platform Manager
Jordan Cantor
Audio Engineer
Reid Cherlin
Executive Producer, Politics
Beckie Claassen
Production Accountant
Julia Claire
Associate Editor
Julia was born obnoxious and raised in Massachusetts—objectively the best state in America. She comes to Crooked after seven years in New York City working in higher ed administration at elite universities (being condescended to by rich teenagers, professionally) by day and slinging jokes by night. She also wrote for several prominent digital media publications that have since gone under, but it was NOT her fault. She now writes the What A Day newsletter and other stuff, using her History degree the way it was intended: to call Mitch McConnell a little bitch five days a week.
Elijah Cone
Director, Digital Content
Elijah Cone has spent his career in Los Angeles hand-crafting authentic, GMO-free, farm-to-table content experiences for a variety of faceless corporations and brands.
After a breathtaking series of content home-runs at Fox Sports, Cone joined the world of political podcasting. “Touchdown.” Growing up in North Carolina, Elijah pivoted to video before he could walk. He graduated from Wesleyan University and continues to credit himself for other alums’ achievements to this day. Enjoy the #content everyone! Like and subscribe.
Kobe Copeland
Executive Assistant
Deisi Cruz
Senior Coordinator, Marketing Operations
Deisi was born and raised in Koreatown, Los Angeles and is a recent graduate from UC Berkeley. She joined Crooked Media as an intern in summer 2021, and has finally made the transition to full-time employee. When she is not helping the marketing team, she is overthinking about whether she included one too many exclamation marks in her emails and messages. I think that is all she has for now.
Matt DeGroot
VP of Production
Matt combines his love of cinema and politics to bring you video content—allowing the Crooked hosts to prove they’re more than just a pretty voice.
After surviving childhood in the Steve King district of Iowa and five years in D.C.—where he became as comfortable producing an animated short about civil service reform as he was being shoved into a broom closet with Oliva Newton-John by secret service escorting Laura Bush through the Kennedy Center—he escaped to Los Angeles, where he spent the next five years at Buzzfeed trying on rompers, convincing Rob Lowe to be a TV court judge, and traveling the world meeting Olympians and eating ridiculously expensive food. To counteract the hours spent watching movies with his husband, Patrick, he gets his heart racing by hiking with his dog, Jolene; playing on a Hogwarts-themed dodgeball team; and watching far too much MSNBC.
Caroline Dunphy
Social Media Manager
Leo Duran (He/Him)
Senior Producer, News & Development
Leo got his audio start in public radio before public radio was cool, first in his native Wisconsin (go ice cream!) and then at the biggest stations in NYC and LA. He still doesn't own a car after coming to Los Angeles, but he does own a bike and a lot of unearned confidence about not getting hit by cars. You can ask Leo about being a commissioner of a Drag Race fantasy league for 5 years running. Not to be confused with Crooked's OG Leo, the doodle.
Austin Fisher
Producer, News and Politics
Maggie Fitzgerald
Social Media Content Producer, VSA
Vasilis Fotopoulos
Audio Engineer & Composer
Vasilis was born of first generation immigrants, who traded the wine colored seas of Greece for the glitz of rural Washington State. He became an audio person after years of booking, recording and performing electronic music, before subsequently moving to Brooklyn and getting a music technology master’s at NYU. Upon graduating, Vasilis cut his teeth as an audio engineer for the Criterion Collection - creating documentary content, restoring over a hundred feature classics and working with the likes of David Byrne, David Lynch, and a few other Davids. Between scouring craigslist for vintage audio gear and building furniture to put it on, Vasilis loves spending time on his bike and with his cat Rune, not often at the same time.
Rachel Gaewski
Senior Video Producer
Ryan Gallagher
Sr. Director, Finance
Madeleine Haeringer
EVP & General Manager, News and Programming
Nina Harris
Political Partnerships Manager
Nina Harris has lived in 12 states and is THRILLED to settle down in DC on the Political team. Her hands are never idle and can be found knitting or embroidering at all hours of the day. She has knitted over 40 pairs of socks in the past year and is excited to share that here, with you all. She would also like everyone reading this to text 3 friends and remind them to vote.
Alexandra Hernandez (She/Her)
Operations Manager
Born in California. Raised in California. Managed a lot of offices in California. She's so excited to be a part of Crooked's team and make sure the office is always in tiptop shape for the doodles. She can neither confirm nor deny that she's just in this for the free snacks. She's almost as bad at picking what to eat as she is at talking about herself so that's all folks!
Ben Hethcoat
Senior Video Producer
Ben Hethcoat grew up in the Deep South (of Georgia) before moving to the Southland. As Video Producer of Originals, he works with Crooked Media’s biggest YouTube star Dan Pfeiffer on "Political Experts React” (a perfectly titled series). Previously he served as Video Producer for public radio's Marketplace focusing on the economy and why it matters. [Insert joke about video killing the radio star here]. His background as an independent filmmaker and film festival organizer (Slamdance) provides a creative storyteller's lens through which he approaches News and Politics.
Adia Hill
Marketing Coordinator
Adriene Hill
EP, Daily News
Kennedy Hill
AP, Entertainment and Culture
Justine Howe (She/Her)
Senior Director, Operations & Strategic Initiatives
Justine Howe has been to 27 countries, 47 states, but unfortunately only 1 planet.
She is the Senior Director of Operations and Strategic Initiatives. In even more words: project management, books, partnerships, culture, tour, events, and a little bit of interior decorating, HR, and IT. But mostly everyone thinks of her as the person who bought the office plants and plans the parties. Justine was born in Minnesota, went to the University of Pittsburgh and worked for Tory Burch in New York before realizing she’s a Californian yogi at heart and moving to LA.
Emma Illick-Frank
Associate Producer, News & Politics
Emma was raised by dirt farmers in Pennsylvania, and started out working in environmental advocacy and research. With climate change solved, she set her sights on something more permanent: broadcast journalism. Emma comes to Crooked by way of WNYC, where she produced for Morning Edition. She dreams of one day taking a cheeky picture in front of a bright pastel background.
Kendra James (She/Her)
Executive Producer, Entertainment & Culture
Kendra James is a producer, writer, and reality TV enthusiast. Her parents wouldn’t let her drop out of college to be Tiana in Disney on Ice, so she made do with managing roles writing and producing online content at Shondaland and Star Trek. When not making pods or launching websites, you can find her being disappointed by the Cubs, lurking on American Girl fan boards for hot doll goss, or absolutely terrifying friends with her abundance of Capricorn energy. (Sun and Rising! Apologies in advance!) She lives with her dog, her husband, and a large collection of Jesse James memorabilia that Antiques Roadshow told her isn’t actually worth as much as she thought it would be.
Hayley Jones
Social Media Manager
Hayley comes from 60 Minutes, VICE News and the New Republic, so she’s used to being called “crooked media.” After college, she moved to New York because that’s the only place in the world people think news happens. But after almost a decade she learned real winter is not great and headed back to California only to find climate change ruined winter there too. You can find her cuddling her puppy for warmth.
Will Jones
Video Optimization Specialist
Mia Kellman
Video Editor
Mia grew up in Brooklyn, New York and has spent the last 8 years living in Los Angeles trying to convince people (including herself) that 50 degrees is indeed not cold. Mia studied film production at Occidental College and prior to Crooked she worked with media companies like ATTN:, Tastemade, and Lonely Planet producing and editing #content. In her free time you can find Mia obsessing over her two pups, Nola and Nash, hiking in the mountains off grid or tracking down the best Pho in Southern California.
Halle Kiefer
Senior Writer, Comedy & Entertainment
Born in Northeast Ohio and brewed to perfection in New York, Halle joins Crooked Media after several years in the pop culture mines of Vulture, following a stint writing sketch for truTV and MTV. After learning to fight at the University of Notre Dame and earning a Masters of Library and Information Science she has never used, Halle immediately ruined her life by pursuing comedy, and is grateful for the opportunity to pay off her student loan debt work for a fine institution like Crooked. Like so many of us, Halle, too, is a former improviser. Unlike most of us, however, she has a “yes, and” tattoo, a fact she must learn to live with every day.
Roshni Kolachalam
Director, Ecommerce
Roshni comes to the best coast by way of New York and Atlanta with an aggressive knack for all things merch.
Not an Obama White House alum, but by golly she voted for the man–twice. She came to the west coast after a 4-year stint in New York working in fashion at companies like Kate Spade & Fab.com. She’s officially a Los Angeles convert after experiencing that HIIT training is more a lifestyle obligation rather than…well…an option. She was also born and raised in Atlanta (Respectfully, the hip hop capital of the world and not interchangeable with ‘Hotlanta’). Her past roles include spearheading and strategizing online sales for Rachel Zoe and First Media so she will sell the hell out of Crooked Media merch. Also… click this.
Cara Koontz
Director, Digital Political Campaigns
Charlotte Landes (They/Them)
Senior Audio Engineer
Charlotte is a good buddy who craves the rush of a flawlessly smooth edit. Before coming to Crooked they worked as a ladder climber, a cocktail server, a paralegal, and a vox editor on The Sims. Now they edit and mix What A Day and various other Crooked projects. Charlotte’s hobbies include changing their hair, pushing people’s politics further left, and still winning after getting blue shelled. They have the power to make it sound like you said you hate ice cream but they try to use it responsibly.
Sarah Lazarus
Staff Writer
Sarah writes for Lovett or Leave It, mostly! Before that, she wrote Crooked’s What A Day newsletter. Before that, she wrote for The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and some other places. Before that, she graduated from Vassar College. Before that, she was a child, and just kind of hung out.
Gabriela Leverette
Senior Marketing Manager
Gabriela Leverette has devoted over six years to the entertainment industry, amassing credits in everything from television production to branded content to influencer marketing. In past positions, she's ghostwritten for MTV’s The Challenge Chatbot, watched T-Pain perform live on the stage of America’s Best Dance Crew and crafted marketing strategies for brands like Lebron James’s non-profit More Than A Vote, Netflix and Unilever. When she’s not rearranging her WFH setup in her living room, she can be found listening to New Music Fridays on Spotify while playing with her Border Schnollie Orbit. Gabriela’s been promoting Crooked Media to friends and family for years and is now excited to do it full-time.
Molly Lobell
Social Video Editor
Katie Long
Executive Producer, Limited Series
Katie listens to all the podcasts, on double speed.
Katie got her start in news as a producer and editor at Marketplace. Her work was focused on helping people understand a broken economy in the aftermath of the financial crisis. At Crooked, she helps people understand what’s going on in politics at a time when it’s broken — and ways to fix it.
Sofia Lopez Singleton (She/Her)
VP, People & Culture
Sofia is an LA native, a people person, and kind of an introvert all rolled into one. She joined Crooked in June 2021 after spending over a decade building people and culture teams in entertainment, non-profits and tech. She's still not sure whether this is a startup or not, but nevertheless dedicates her time to making Crooked a better and equitable workplace... and dare she say a cool one. Sofia is an alum of CSULA and studied cultural anthropology. She uses her anthropological skills as an excuse go to as many concerts possible, watch way too much reality tv, and explore the many food and fancy cocktail options there are in the city.
Chris Lord
Producer, Entertainment & Culture
Olivia Martinez (She/Her)
Producer, News & Politics
Olivia Martinez is excited to be at Crooked after working in the equally fun and hilarious and chill field of advocating for abortion access. She spent eight years in Washington D.C., where she once made Alicia Keys laugh during an especially boring hill event and was in a comedy sketch with Joe Biden. In her free time, Olivia is an abortion doula, performs improv comedy, and is one of the only people in LA working on a screenplay.
Ramzy Masri
Art Director
Shaniqua McClendon
VP of Political Strategy
Shaniqua McClendon used to work at Domino’s Pizza but unfortunately she’s now Crooked’s Political Director. Domino’s had way more free pizza.
While she was born in Queens, she was raised in North Carolina and because of that, is obsessed with Tar Heel basketball. She went to UNC and Harvard, was a staffer for both former Senator Kay Hagan and Rep. Alma Adams on the hill, and has a twin. She doesn’t know which one is the evil twin. It’s probably not her. Probably.
Alyona Minkovski
Producer, News & Politics
Peter Molinaro
Campaign Coordinator
If you have a sweet-tooth, Peter is your go to cookie connoisseur. He’s an avid baker who hails from Evanston, IL. Before joining the Crooked team, he was a colorist and did quality control for a political media firm in Chicago. When he isn't nose deep in Ad Operations duties, you can find him taking landscape and astro-photography all over the world.
Alexandra Monroe
Merch Operations Manager
Kayla Moriarty
VP of Social
Erica Morrison
Sr. Producer, Daily News
Luke Oberholtzer
Analyst, Audience Development
Ewa Okulate
Social Media Associate
Between growing up right in front of a farm, never experiencing an Uber ride until 2019, and somehow landing a career in social media, Ewa is the personification of a small-town girl with big dreams. She was born and raised in Maryland but knew since she was a kid that she would one day call the West Coast her home. Although her resting face may say otherwise, Ewa insists that she’s the kindest Aries you’ll ever meet. While she’s not on social media for Crooked, she’s… still on social media. Whether it’s creating beauty content for Instagram and TikTok or internally debating incompetent people on Twitter, you can almost always find her online.
Kiril Palaveev
Associate Video Producer
Reyna Paredes
Ecommerce Marketing Coordinator
Megan Patsel
Video Producer
Megan Patsel is an artist, director and comedian from the Bay Area, known for her short films The Weird Cousin (2020) and Mary Beth’s Tape (2017). Outside of work, she enjoys rearranging her furniture, playing with makeup, watching live music, and performing with her cover band, Flirtini. In 2019 she wrote and toured a jukebox musical set to songs from the 2007 album “Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus.” The show, now titled “The Hannah Montana Experience,” is set to return to Los Angeles in 2023.
Emily Pender
Senior Financial Analyst
Fiona Pestana (They/He)
Associate Producer, Culture & Entertainment
Fiona creates #content and laughs very loud. A Bay Area native, they studied journalism and music industry at USC, finding it very hard to leave the Pacific Ocean. Outside of audio storytelling, Fiona writes: a newsletter, comics, poems, etc. They can often be found dancing at concerts, dressing in drag, camping in the woods, or meowing with their cat, Lucky.
Dan Pfeiffer
Founding Contributor
Despite several members of the Morning Joe panel calling for his firing, Dan Pfeiffer served President Obama for eight years as his Communications Director on both the 2008 Campaign and in the White House and finally as Senior Advisor to the President.
He is a CNN Political Contributor and the author of Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump. Dan was born in Delaware and has been banned from traveling to Russia by Donald Trump’s friend Vladimir Putin.
Crystal Ponzio-Busto (She/Her)
EVP, Marketing
Crystal has spent the last ten years in the belly of the streaming beast, at Hulu and and then Netflix, and she needs a break from algorithms. She's delighted to have joined Crooked and to be a part of media's next great revolution. She lives in Topanga Canyon with her husband Enrico, her daughter Stella and her dog Gnocchi, no wait...she doesn't have a dog.
Sydney Rapp
Associate Producer
Sydney is originally from Colorado, but quickly found a place for herself in the climbing gyms and at beaches all over Los Angeles. Before her days at Crooked, she spent her time in grassroots organizing on the frontline for the environmental crisis. Oh, and our summer interns voted that she has the coolest shoes. She loves a good color coded list, transcribing interviews, and writers room brainstorms as long as she's got an iced matcha by her side.
Caroline Reston
Senior Producer, Entertainment & Culture
Before making the move to Crooked Media, Caroline worked at The Jim Jefferies Show, Throwing Shade and Grey’s Anatomy. Caroline has produced at one point or another Keep It, Pod Save America, Crooked Minis, Hall of Shame, Takeline, All Caps, Hysteria, live streams, live shows and one time produced the hell out of a zoom call. Caroline has read Helter Skelter over 10 times, is deeply obsessed with former Alabama Senator Doug Jones and thinks she'd vibe best with Potomac housewives. Scorpio sun, Leo rising, Gemini moon.
Simone Rossi
Community Manager
Simone Rossi is one of the resident Swifties in the office, and also a Community Manager on the Subscription Team. Simone joins Crooked Media after spending 5 years in political organizing working to elect progressive candidates in several states across the country at NextGen America, the Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, and more. Before moving to Los Angeles, she spent most of her life in Arizona, which is famous for being where Taylor Swift kicked off The Era’s Tour (and the Grand Canyon if you’re into that type of thing). If you ask her, her first most significant achievement in life was working to turn out young voters in 2022; the second is owning an original 2006 signed Taylor Swift CD. In her spare time, Simone loves to spend time with her cats Holly and Betty (yes, after the Taylor song, are you seeing a theme here?).
Saul Rubin
Associate Producer
Saul is a former Crooked intern and well known hat-wearer. A born and bred San Franciscan (yes, the city itself), Saul studied film/tv and screenwriting at the USC School of Cinematic Arts while playing drums in a dad band (note: he has no children). Currently, he works on X-Ray Vision and Pod Save the World, seamlessly switching between power-hungry fascists one moment and their real-life equivalents the next. When he’s not taking Hollywood by storm and saving the world with podcasts he can be found listening to music, watching movies, and shopping for vintage clothes, furniture, and paperbacks (which he sometimes reads). He likes his jeans frayed, his blueberries frozen, and his democracy intact.
Erin Ryan
Host & Contributor
Farrah Safari
Associate Producer, Pod Save America
Ari Schwartz (They/Them)
Chief of Staff
Ari was a five sport athlete in elementary school. Now they spend their days supporting the programming and production teams for your favorite Crooked podcasts by scheduling, researching, coordinating, drafting, reviewing, templating – anything else you need? Sure, they can do that! Ari joined Crooked Media by way of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign where they served as an Organizer for the 2018 election and the Events Manager for the 2020 cycle. They’ve also worked on productions for Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, and broadcast TV. They’re a spreadsheet pro, a USWNT fan, a Minnesota State Fair fanatic, and a retired competitive log roller (yes, the sport for lumberjacks).
Kyle Seglin
Director of Audio
Kyle, like all audio engineers, is a former psychotherapist. And like all former psychotherapists, Kyle loves to listen. You could say that’s what inspired him to study sound.
You’d be wrong though. It was early 2000s Long Island punk music that did it. (Obviously.) Kyle got his undergrad at UVA and his masters at Hunter College in NYC. He soon began working as a full-time psychotherapist while simultaneously recording bands in his Brooklyn-based recording studio. From there, he mixed for various TV shows, recorded and produced bands, post-mixed films and Internet media, and sound designed as a freelancer and staff engineer in both NYC and LA. In 2016 Kyle moved to the west coast to become a full time Californian. Kyle is also an avid TV-watcher, news-reader, dog-haver, and, totally without bragging, has a lot of plants.
Bernardo Serna
Senior Graphic Designer
Claudia Sheng
Associate Video Producer
Jordan Silver (He/Him)
VP, Consumer Marketing
Jordan Silver is a Los Angeles native (if you count the Valley).
After he graduated from Berkeley with a degree in Media Studies, he began working in marketing with lifestyle brands like Good American, Rachel Zoe, and Popsugar. When he’s not watching Bravo with his dog Ginsburg, he’s in Palm Springs, or spending his entire salary on concert merch that he has no room left for in his drawers. In case you were wondering, Jordan Silver is his real name and not a stage name.
Ashley Simon
PR Manager
Ashley Simon is Crooked Media’s first Public Relations Manager and, if everything goes well, not their last. She comes to Crooked after spending over six years cutting her teeth working at an entertainment publicity agency and is thrilled to now be the client. She lives in Los Angeles with her cat and closest confidante, Frances. Her greatest achievement is making it through the day.
Juna Skrami
People & Culture Generalist
Zevvy Smith-Danford
Graphic Designer, Merch
Evan Sutton
Audio Engineer
Andie Taft
Coordinator, Operations & People
David Toledo
Producer, Pod Save America
David Toles
Studio Technician
Kelly Tran (She/Her)
Marketing Coordinator
Kelly, a proud Vietnamese-American, is originally from Tacoma, Washington. On embarking her journey to Southern California, she started in sunny San Diego to study communications & marketing. Shortly after graduating, Kelly joined the corporate communications team at Qualcomm to learn all things tech. But when the opportunity surfaced to move to LA with her partner, she decided to just do it! Currently, she is on the Consumer Marketing team at Crooked, where she focuses on Network Promotions. When she’s not thinking about marketing, she’s probably getting boba and “researching” for her & her sister’s very own boba shop in Tacoma, and of course, hanging out with her rescue dog, Bo. #AdoptDontShop
Delon Villanueva
Video Producer
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Delon spent years studying in film school and working unpaid internships at major movie studios to ultimately make content on the same platform as the Mr. Beast guy and an 8-year-old that reviews toys. Before Crooked, Delon was a video producer and editor at BuzzFeed, the website where you can find out which Parks and Recreation character you're like the most. Outside of video producing, Delon writes and performs comedy around LA, spends half of his rent money on sneakers, and only listens to "cool" music so that his Spotify Wrapped is worth sharing at the end of the year.
Christina Vo
Recruiter
Kira Wakeam
Sr. Producer, PSA
Raven Yamamoto (He/Him)
Associate Producer, Daily News
Raven was born in Maui, HI at a very young age. He is one of Crooked’s resident Gen-Z’ers and journalists whose sole purpose is to turn looks at the office, push the gay agenda, and eat Cheez-its. Oh, and he associate produces for our daily show, What A Day.
Ben Zacuto (he/him)
Ad-Ops Coordinator
Ben grew up in the LA area and went to study Marketing Communications at Emerson College in Boston. He’s previously been at Allied Integrated Marketing, IMAX, and most recently at OMG23, helping manage media campaigns for Disney and Walt Disney Studios. When he’s not rewatching Disney or Pixar animated movies, he’s rewatching Studio Ghibli movies. Kinda joking, but honestly not really. Oh and Marvel and Star Wars. and Avatar The Last Airbender. and The Real Housewives franchises lol. He also loves doggies and kitties, enjoys going on walks and hikes in ~nature~, and building LEGO and collecting Funko Pops hahah.. He’s a nerd, ok? He also loves Disneyland/Disney Parks and travel, and can’t wait for the day when Japan opens so he can go to Super Nintendo World and the Tokyo Disney Sea expansion. Oh and the Studio Ghibli Museum. And enjoy some ramen along the way.
Leo
Chief Executive Doodle
Leo Favreau dropped out of puppy school to join the #Resistance.
He is a grassroots organizer and grasstops pooper who greets every visitor to Crooked Media with two paws and a full heart. Leo is fighting for better toys, more string cheese, longer walks, and a political revolution that will deliver social and economic justice for all. He believes in the power of one voice to change a room, like when his half-sister Pundit barks during Game of Thrones.
Lucca
Foreign Pawlicy Advisor
Lucca believes in belly rubs, trips to the dog park and preserving the liberal international order.
A fan of soft power and hard foods, her dream is to poop on all 1,092 of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites.
Pundit
Chairdoodle of the Board
Pundit is an angel.
