Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and producer Marlon Bishop and Emmy Award-winning journalist Peniley Ramírez now co-lead Futuro Media. Eminent public media industry leader Yolette García and renowned immigration scholar and advocate Bill Hing join the Futuro Media Board of Directors. They join recently elected board officers and distinguished nonprofit executives Brenda Camacho and Maria Teresa Rojas.

New York (March 4, 2024) – Independent, nonprofit news media organization and podcast studio Futuro Media announced the promotion of Marlon Bishop and Peniley Ramírez to the roles of Co-CEO and Executive Directors and the election of Yolette García and Bill Hing to the Board of Directors. García and Hing join recently elected board officers Brenda Camacho, Treasurer, and Maria Teresa Rojas, Vice Chair. These changes come at a promising time of organizational strengthening for Futuro Media after previous layoffs and follow strong recovery fundraising and recent accolades, including an IRE Award, an Imagen Award, and a Nonprofit News Award for investigative reporting.

As part of their executive leadership duties, Peniley Ramírez will be Head of News and Investigations. Marlon Bishop will be the Head of Podcasts and New Business. 

“This announcement brings me so much joy because it represents the core of Futuro excellence and loyalty to our mission,” said Futuro Media founder Maria Hinojosa. “We are promoting one of our longest-tenured executives, Marlon, and one of our newest, Peniley. The internal move upwards will solidify our recent gains and lay the foundation for strategic growth.”

“I am grateful to our entire staff, and to our Board and to our supporters, for coming together to pull our organization out of crisis and into stability,” said Hinojosa.

“Futuro Media, like many other legacy media organizations, has faced profound challenges to survive. With the support of our funders, major donors, and fans of our work, Futuro has emerged in 2024 with a new mindset, which is optimistic but tempered with the desire to share lessons learned during our most difficult times,” said Board Chair Deepa Donde. 

“We have survived because the staff and Board are deeply committed to the mission of our organization, which is to create a diverse ecosystem of journalists and storytellers in this ever-changing media landscape,” said Donde.

Veteran non-profit executives now have key roles on the Board: Brenda Camacho is now Board Treasurer and Maria Teresa Rojas is now Vice Chair.

Additional changes within the organization include Stacy Parker Le Melle being promoted to Vice President of Development and Communications. In addition to her current role as Vice President of Administration and Operations, Yolanda Moore will be supervising the new Production Management Unit led by Jessica Ellis. 

To add checks and balances to the new executive leadership, the Board has also approved making the current Futuro Interim Executive Committee (FIEC) into a permanent Futuro Executive Committee (FEC) including Maria Hinojosa, Marlon Bishop, Peniley Ramírez, Yolanda Moore, and Stacy Parker Le Melle. The FEC will continue to meet regularly to make major financial and organizational decisions collaboratively. 

In August 2023, Futuro Media announced layoffs and paused two properties: the politics podcast In The Thick and the digital news and opinion site Latino Rebels. Since that time, Futuro Media has improved organizational stability in part from the Futuro Fénix fundraising drive supported by longtime funders including the W.K.Kellogg Foundation, Fiona Druckenmiller, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Tow Foundation, Agnes Gund, Deepa Donde, among others.

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Biographies of New Leadership

Marlon Bishop is a Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning journalist and producer who most recently served as the VP of Podcasts for Futuro Studios, where he has been a key part of the creation of hit shows like LOUD, Anything for Selena, Suave and La Brega. Marlon has an audio and radio career spanning 17 years, including stints at WNYC and MTV, covering stories for major music magazines, and audio stories for major outlets like NPR from around the world. Previous to starting and leading Futuro Studios, he was Senior Editor of Latino USA, the prestigious weekly radio show and podcast on Latino affairs, where he won a Peabody Award in 2015 for his reporting on gang violence in Honduras and an RFK Human Rights award in 2017 for reporting on suicide in immigrant detention.

Peniley Ramírez is an Emmy and IRE-award-winning investigative journalist and author. She serves as Executive Producer of Latino USA, Futuro Investigates, and Special Projects at Futuro Media and writes a weekly column for the Mexican media group Reforma. Before joining Futuro, she worked as an investigative correspondent for Univision, where she was part of global projects, such as the Pulitzer award-winning “Panama Papers.” She wrote an acclaimed book about dirty money in the war on drugs. Her reporting has led to several official investigations of politicians and business people in the U.S. and Latin America. She was awarded an Emmy and a Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting. Under her leadership, Futuro Investigates has won the Investigative Reporters and Editors, Imagen, and Nonprofit News awards. She has a Master of Arts in Business and Economics Journalism from Columbia University.

Brenda Camacho is a seasoned executive with over two decades of experience and has been a stalwart leader in the non-profit sector. With a diverse background spanning various facets of organizational management, including operations, finance, accounting, HR, and IT, Brenda has left a mark on every institution she has been part of. Her inclusive leadership approach has helped steer organizations toward achieving their missions, amplifying their impact, and driving positive change. As a DEI leader, she has contributed significantly to shaping organizational diversity and inclusion policies and strategies, advocating for equity in all facets of operations, and championing equitable hiring practices. She has been awarded nonprofit CFO honors by the Washington Business Journal and DCA Live. Brenda holds a Master’s of Accounting from the HW Huizenga Business School of Nova Southeastern University and lives in Leesburg, VA.

Yolette García joined SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development in 2008 as Assistant Dean for External Affairs and Outreach, where she developed strategies for communications and promotion. In 2020, she became Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Communication. She recently retired from her position. Yolette is a veteran public broadcasting journalist and previously served as manager for KERA television and radio, the North Texas public broadcasting stations. She was the co-recipient of a 1994 Emmy for KERA’s national documentary, After Goodbye, an AIDS Story and she served the public broadcasting organization in various capacities for 25 years. She was honored by the Press Club of Dallas in 2017 with the North Texas Legend Award for a distinguished career. She received her B.A. in Art History at Wellesley College in 1977 and graduated Summa Cum Laude from SMU with an M.A. in Art History in 1983.

Bill Ong Hing is a Professor of Law and Migration Studies at the University of San Francisco, and Professor of Law and Asian American Studies Emeritus, at U.C. Davis. He founded the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco 1979 and helps to direct the USF Immigration & Deportation Defense Clinic. Professor Hing teaches Immigration Law & Policy, Introduction to Migration Studies, and Rebellious Lawyering. Throughout his career, Professor Hing has pursued social justice by combining community work, litigation, and scholarship.  His books include Humanizing Immigration: How to Transform Our Racist and Unjust System (2023), American Presidents, Deportations, and Human Rights Violations (2019), Immigration Law and Social Justice (2018); Ethical Borders—NAFTA, Globalization and Mexican Migration (2010); Deporting Our Souls—Values, Morality, and Immigration Policy (2006), Defining America Through Immigration Policy (2004), and Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy (1993). He was co-counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court asylum precedent-setting case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (1987) and also represented the State Bar of California before the California Supreme Court in In re Sergio Garcia (2014) involving bar membership for undocumented law graduates.  

Maria Teresa Rojas is a senior executive with extensive experience building institutions, developing programs, and implementing grantmaking strategies. She specializes in startup programs. Among them, founding and directing the Open Society Foundations’ International Migration Initiative, creating a funder collaborative in Central America and Mexico, and building a television network for the City of New York. She recently concluded her long career with the Open Society Foundations. She is working now as a management consultant and serving as associate director of the Herstory Writers Network, where she leads strategic planning and the carceral justice programs. She also serves on the Proteus Fund Board of Directors.

In her earlier career, Maria Teresa worked as a journalist, filmmaker, radio correspondent, and television producer. She currently serves on the board of Ayiti Demen|Haiti Tomorrow. Previously, she served on several boards, including Hispanics in Philanthropy, New York Women’s Foundation, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, and the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales. Maria Teresa was born in Bogota, Colombia. 

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About Futuro Media

Futuro Media is an independent, non-profit news media organization and podcast studio founded in 2010 by Pulitzer Prize winner Maria Hinojosa. Based in Harlem, NYC, Futuro Media produces the Peabody Award-winning Latino USA, the longest-running public radio Latino news and cultural program, which celebrated 30 years on the air in 2023, Futuro Studios, focused on original podcasts and programming including Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast Suave, and acclaimed podcasts La Brega, Anything for Selena, and The Sum of Us, and Futuro Investigates, our investigative journalism arm that produced the USA v. García Luna podcast, the After Uvalde: Guns, Grief & Texas Politics documentary, among others. In August of 2023, the production of In The Thick, a podcast on politics, race, and culture and Latino Rebels, a digital news outlet and its accompanying podcast Latino Rebel Radio, were paused in response to budget restrictions.