Dana Chivvis ’96: Country School Alumna, Producer Behind Top Podcast
Dana Chivvis ‘96 had no idea what a household name the podcast Serial would later become when she signed on as one of its producers in 2014. The timing had worked perfectly – colleagues, Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, were just getting their new project off the ground as Dana was finishing up her fellowship with the podcast This American Life and starting to think about next steps.
You’ll recall that podcasts were not exactly a “thing” back then, and definitely not a favorite medium for storytelling, but the Hae Min Lee murder story was compelling, so Dana decided to jump in. David Carr of The New York Times would later call Serial “podcasting’s first breakout hit” – and Serial was the first podcast to reach 5 million downloads on Apple’s iTunes store.
Dana started her career with National Geographic in the photo department before attending Columbia Journalism School as a foray into the news world. She would go on to work at NBC, AOL, and CBS reporting, shooting, and producing editorial content, often with a focus on education, before landing a sought-after Fellowship with This American Life.
With years of reporting and a degree from Columbia under her belt, Dana was not new to investigative journalism – and to producing compelling stories that kept audiences on the edge of their seats. Given the dramatic ups and downs of Sarah Koenig’s quest for the truth around Hae Min Lee’s murder, she certainly had plenty of exciting content to captivate listeners through 12 episodes and nearly three months. Sarah was on location investigating in Baltimore throughout the season, and Julie and Dana stayed in NYC, where they turned Sarah’s written chapters into produced episodes while the rest of America held its breath.
Since the first season was released in 2014, the series has won several awards, including the prestigious Peabody, Edward R. Murrow, duPont-Columbia, Scripps Howard, and a Silver Gavel Award for Media the Arts. But beyond this impressive resume of prominent awards, the series has popularized a new platform for storytelling and revitalized within our media-driven culture a thirst for long form, fact-based journalism.
With today’s fast-paced news cycle and the ever-changing role and tone of the media, Dana says, programs like This American Life and Serial takes journalism back to basics. She is working hard to tell stories that address important and impactful issues, captivate wide audiences, and, in true Country School fashion, make a positive contribution to the world.
The third season of Serial is on its way, but right now, Dana is focused on her role at This American Life. You can catch her segments weekly, including this week’s piece, which harkens back to the iconic Serial lead-in with advertising partner, Mail Chimp. Or was it “Mail…Kimp?”
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