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Getting to Know the Newly Hired Team-Leader for the GKFF's Birth through Eight Strategy

Aired on Tuesday, October 10th.

Our guest on this edition of ST is Sophia Pappas, who formerly led the pioneering initiative to bring "universal pre-K" to the New York City Public Schools. Pappas now resides in Tulsa, as she was recently hired by the Tulsa-based George Kaiser Family Foundation, the nonprofit social-justice and civic-enhancement organization funded by local billionaire and philanthropist George Kaiser. Pappas will now be in charge of introducing and implementing the GKFF's Birth through Eight Strategy, which was ten years in the making (and planning). As we learn on today's show, this strategy has four main goals for the people of this community: healthier low-income births, more nurturing homes and families, ensuring that low-income kids are ready for kindergarten, and finally making sure those very kids are academically successful by third grade.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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