El Tímpano welcomes new staff
El Tímpano welcomed four new team members in early 2022, resulting in more than doubling the size of our organization, diversifying our leadership, and expanding our capacity for growth, sustainability, and impact as we create journalism with, for, and about the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrant communities.
Deana Balinton joined El Tímpano as our first Civic Partnerships Manager — a groundbreaking new role focused on managing and expanding El Tímpano’s partnerships with civic agencies, direct service providers, community-based organizations, and others who share El Tímpano’s mission of providing vital information to Latino and Mayan immigrants and hearing their voices and concerns. The daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, Deana was born and raised in the East Bay, where she has spent the majority of her career supporting underserved communities in nonprofit organizations, most recently as the Area Manager for Self-Help Federal Credit Union.
Doug Dennis is El Tímpano’s Development Manager, El Tímpano’s first dedicated fundraising position. Born in the upper midwest and reared in the East Bay, Doug is responsible for building and cultivating relationships with individual donors and foundations. Before joining El Tímpano, he focused his efforts on healthcare guarantees for uninsured and undocumented individuals, educational access, civic engagement, and essential service provision. Doug came to fundraising after over a decade in the classroom.
Monica Campbell joined El Tímpano as a Collaborations Editor after nearly a decade as a senior reporter and editor at the public radio program, The World, where she focused on covering immigration and immigrant life in the United States. In this role, she will develop the strategy, structure, and implementation of media partnerships to ensure that El Tímpano’s community-powered journalism reaches wide and diverse audiences. Monica is a former Harvard University Nieman Fellow and a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Oswaldo Martín is the host of El Tímpano’s forthcoming Mam-language programming. A Guatemala-born Maya Mam migrant who was raised in Oakland, Oswaldo is a Civil Engineering student at San Jose State University, a court approved Mam interpreter who services his Todos Santos Cuchumatan, Huehuetango community, and an active community leader. His work to create a Mam legal dictionary was featured in a 2019 New Yorker article. Oswaldo joins Wen Calm to form El Tímpano’s Mayan community engagement team and design new strategies to serve the East Bay’s growing Mam community with valuable news and information.
These new hires join a team that includes Assistant Producer Vanessa Nava, Community Organizer tania quintana, Mayan Community Outreach Assistant Wen Calm, and Founding Director Madeleine Bair.
Click here to learn more about El Tímpano’s growth and how you can be a part of it.
Madeleine Bair is the Founding Director of El Tímpano.
