Sonja got her start in public radio in 1993 as a volunteer music host at KFSK in Petersburg, Alaska and then became KFSK's Program Director. She was also Program Director at KPCW in Park City, Utah. Sonja returned to Alaska from the Lower 48 to be the Program Director at KBBI in Homer. She started as an on-air fundraising consultant with John Sutton & Associates in 2007 and is now President and Partner of Sutton & Lee, LLC. In addition to helping dozens of public radio stations improve their on-air fundraising, Sonja helped WQXR in New York, KING in Seattle, and KDFC in San Francisco make successful transitions from commercial to public radio stations. She also helped Rhode Island Public Radio successfully transition from ownership under WBUR to a self-sufficient NPR News station. You can reach Sonja at 240-565-3664 or sonjalee@radiosutton.com.
John Sutton
John founded what is now Sutton & Lee in 1997 after 10 years at NPR where he ran NPR’s Audience Research department, NPR’s on-air fundraising and on-air promotion service to stations, and founded the CPB-funded On-Air Fundraising Partnership. As a consultant, he served more than three dozen public radio stations, participated in several major industry research projects, including Audience 98 and The Listener-Focused Fundraising Project. He is currently the General Manager of 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh’s NPR News Station, where he follows the advice he gave to stations when he was a consultant.