Elisabeth (Lissa) Soep is Senior Producer and Research Director at Youth Radio, the Oakland-based, youth-driven production company that serves as NPR’s official youth desk. The Youth Radio stories Lissa has produced with teen reporters for public media outlets have been recognized with honors including two Peabody Awards, three Murrow Awards, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

With a PhD from Stanford University’s School of Education, Lissa has written about digital media and learning for academic journals (Harvard Educational Review, National Civic Review, Comunicar); popular outlets (Boing Boing, NPR, Edutopia); and books including Drop that Knowledge (Soep & Chávez, UC Press) and Youthscapes (Maira & Soep, UPenn Press). With Asha Richardson, she co-founded Youth Radio’s Mobile Action Lab, among the first projects world-wide to partner youth with professional designers and developers to create mobile apps that engage their communities. She lectures around the country and has taught graduate courses on ethnography, arts, and urban education, most recently at UC Berkeley.

In 2011, Lissa became one of six members of the MacArthur Foundation’s Youth and Participatory Politics Research Network, which explores how young people are using digital and social media to express voice and exert influence in public spheres. For more than ten years, Lissa served on the Board of Directors of the United States’ premier youth poetry organization, Youth Speaks (HBO series, 2009 & 2010), where she now serves as an advisor.