Vanessa Maria Graber

Vanessa Maria is a community organizer, educator and multimedia producer. She directs the News Voices project, which connects local communities and the newsrooms that serve them. In this role Vanessa Maria co-facilitates the New Jersey Community Media Collective and is also a member of Free Press’ Puerto Rico telecommunications-policy team. Her journey in media justice started as part of the movement to expand community radio. As the community radio director at the Prometheus Radio Project, she worked to pass the Local Community Radio Act and helped build dozens of Low Power FM radio stations across the United States. In 2016, she co-founded PhillyCAM’s community-radio station, WPPM-LP FM, where she served as the station manager prior to joining Free Press. She has over 20 years’ experience working as a radio journalist and TV producer at various stations across the United States. Vanessa Maria is the president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and is an adjunct communications professor at Stockton University. She produces and hosts public-affairs programs and news content for PhillyCAM’s TV and radio stations.