Neenah Ellis to receive 2025 Leo C. Lee Award

In her fifty year career in broadcasting, Neenah Ellis has been both a working journalist and a station manager.   

She grew up in radio stations in northwest Indiana. Her grandparents were immigrants from Croatia who settled on the south side of Chicago. Her father became a radio DJ starting in 1948 and in the 60s and 70s, her parents put several commercial radio stations on the air.  In high school Neenah started working in a news room and then, at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa she majored in broadcast journalism and worked summers at 50,000 watt clear-channel WHO Radio. And during those years, she discovered WOI in Ames,  where she first heard All Things Considered with Susan Stamberg hosting.  Ellis says it changed everything for her.  

Soon she went to Washington DC in search of work, met WAMU station manager Susan Harmon and within the year, landed at NPR.  She became a producer for ATC, travelling in the US and oversees with engineers, reporters and hosts.     

In the late 80s, she married ATC co-host Noah Adams and together they created the live entertainment program “Good Evening” at Minnesota Public Radio, which filled the timeslot previously held by A Prairie Home Companion.  When Adams was lured back to hosting ATC, the couple returned to Washington.    

In the next 15 years, Ellis worked in and out of public radio.  In 2000 she produced a series for Morning Edition that became the New York Times best-seller: “ If I Live to Be 100:  Lessons from the Centenarians.”  

In 2009, Neenah became the station manager at WYSO Public Radio in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  The station was in dire financial straits and needed to regain community trust. Under her leadership, WYSO has thrived, and in 2019, secured its independence after raising more than 3 million dollars in five months to buy the broadcast license from Antioch College. 

Ellis and her team doubled the WYSO staff and revenues, increased the stations power to 50kw, built an archives and created the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices, an engagement model that trains community members to make collaborative, community-based radio projects.  Hundreds of people of all ages have trained and make more than 100 stories a year, winning state and national awards.  The Center exists alongside WYSO’s news and music departments, and honors the station’s historic mission to amplify diverse local voices and collaborate with organizations of all kinds.    

Ellis’s most recent journalism project at the Center is a twelve episode podcast called The Ohio Country, which describes the past, present and future of Ohio’s indigenous tribes.   

Her work has been honored over the years with the Alfred I. duPont/Columbia University Award, and three George Foster Peabody Awards.  In 2019, she was recognized as a “Woman of Influence” in the Dayton region and in 2023 she was inducted into the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors Hall of Fame. 

She has served on the boards of the Association of Independents in Radio and PRIMA, Public Radio in Mid-America. 

“I’m grateful to all my brilliant colleagues in public radio,” she says, “grateful to NPR for the chance to travel and learn, and to the WYSO community for giving me the chance to serve. ”