About

Our Team

Adriana Cargill, Founder

Adriana Cargill is an award-winning journalist and the host, writer, reporter, and producer of The Palisades Fire and Sandcastles podcasts. Sandcastles Podcast won Cargill a Gracie Award for Best Podcast Producer- National (2024). She also won 7 other awards out of 12 nominations in both local and national contests in subject matter and craft categories. She’s the founder of Wave Maker Media, an independent podcast production house. Previously, she reported and produced stories for KCRW, NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Latino USA, Southern California Public Radio (LAist), Marketplace, KUSC Radio, VICE News, The Chicago Redeye and more.

In 2021, she was chosen by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. Previously she was a senior podcast producer for Crooked Media. She was also a producer for KCRW’s Press Play with Madeleine Brand and produced podcast episodes for Wondery shows like American History Tellers, Business Wars and American Innovations. Before that, she was an assistant producer on LAist’s Take Two and interned at Marketplace.  

She graduated with her master’s in journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in December 2015 as a Bloomberg Scholar. She’s also studied non-fiction narrative podcast storytelling at Sundance Collab and the SALT Institute.