Grace continues to unpack the devastating fallout from the Republican-led rescission package to defund CPB — the conduit for federal funding to NPR, PBS, and their member stations — alongside Leslie Fields-Cruz, executive director of Black Public Media, and Don Young, executive director of CAAM. Leslie and Don share their respective organizations’ origin stories and reflect on what prior decades of independent maker-led organizing, particularly the work of veteran indie filmmaker and producer Loni Ding, made possible for public media.
Show Notes
Donald Young enters the role of CAAM’s Executive Director, after serving the organization for 30 years, most recently as the Director of Programs. As a longtime documentary production executive and advocate for independent storytelling, Young has played a key role in building CAAM’s stature as a national producer of documentaries and independent feature films. His credits include executive producing the 2022 Peabody Awards Nominee Rising Against Asian Hate, and the 2020 landmark PBS series Asian Americans. Other credits include the critically-acclaimed independent feature Coming Home Again by Wayne Wang. Young is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Leslie Fields-Cruz is the executive director of Black Public Media, the nation’s only nonprofit solely dedicated to the development of nonfiction Black content for distribution on public media. Leslie joined BPM in 2001 to manage its program development fund. She served as director of programs from 2005-2008 and as VP of programs and operations from 2008-2014 before being named BPM’s third executive director in 2014. Leslie is the creator of BPM’s award-winning anthology series, AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, now in its 14th season, which features contemporary stories from the African diaspora. Under her leadership, BPM has cultivated new partnerships, diversified revenues, and initiated vital new programs (360 Incubator+, PitchBLACK Forum & Awards, BPMplus, and the Black Media Story Summit) that support Black talent and content development. In 2021, Leslie was named to Crain’s New York’s list of Notable Black Business Leaders. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley (BA) and NYU (MA), she is a board member of New Era Creative Space, and in September 2022, was named board president of New York Women in Film and Television.
National Multicultural Alliance, “An alliance of five distinct national organizations, who, with modest support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), bring the authentic stories and diverse perspectives of America’s multicultural communities to public media and its digital platforms.”
Press release: “Corporation for Public Broadcasting Addresses Operations Following Loss of Federal Funding”
August 1, 2025
The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian American experiences to the broadest audience possible.
Black Public Media: “For nearly 50 years, we’ve worked with independent filmmakers and public television providers to develop and distribute documentaries, narrative films and digital shorts about the global Black experience. More recently, we’ve begun working with immersive media makers to ensure Black content is part of the immersive media landscape.”
“Interview with Loni Ding, Making History/Making Home” interviewed by Bill Zimmerman at Stony Brook University April 10, 2000
Loni Ding: An Appreciation by Stephen Gong, CAAM’s executive director
“Supreme Court guts affirmative action, effectively ending race-conscious admissions” by Nina Totenberg
June 29, 2023, NPR