About
Outside Voices Podcast shares personal stories about our relationships with nature and the outdoors. Every month, we’re using our Outside Voices to celebrate and amplify Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ folks, and others who redefine outdoorsy.
We all have a connection to the earth, perhaps severed by colonization, enslavement, assimilation and racism. Outside Voices is about unlearning everything we were told about “the Great Outdoors” and instead, reconnecting to ancestral knowledge and finding healing in relationship with nature.
At Outside Voices, we believe stories hold power and it is an immense responsibility to share a person’s story. We are deeply committed to ethical storytelling, which shows up in every step of our intentional and collaborative process. We work with all our story sharers to ensure they feel held, respected, and accurately represented.
Have a question, suggestion, or just want to share your thoughts with the Outside Voices Podcast team? Leave us a voicemail at (510) 473-7471 and it could be included in an upcoming Walkie Talkie episode featuring all three hosts! We can't wait to hear from you!
Outside Voices Podcast is presented by Resource Media. Resource Media is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit communications firm working exclusively in support of social change.
Our Team
Production and Fundraising Team
Sarah Shimazaki (she/her)
Host and Producer
Sarah’s love for the outdoors really began in her grandparent’s backyard, picking persimmons and connecting with her Japanese grandmother despite a language barrier. Since then, she’s had the pleasure and privilege to call gardening, hiking, backpacking and walking her dog around Ohlone Territory (Oakland) some of her favorite ways to connect with nature. That connection fuels her passion for public lands advocacy, environmental justice and ethical storytelling, all of which she gets to merge through her role as a media creative and communications strategist at Resource Media.
Aly Ferguson (she/her)
Production Coordinator
Aly is originally from Gabrielino/Tongva and Kizh territory in Los Angeles County but currently calls the Bay Area home, specifically Chochenyo Ohlone territory (or Oakland, CA). Between spending all of elementary school as a Girl Scout to all of high school on the cross country team, Aly’s bloomed under the California sunshine. As an adult, she currently has numerous weekends camping and four half-marathons under her belt (but she’s working toward running a full marathon someday!). As a queer, biracial Latina, Aly’s work as a Program Coordinator at Resource Media is focused on environmental justice, combatting climate change, promoting equitable outdoor access, and shifting narratives.
Neecole Bostick (she/her)
Host and Production
Neecole grew up with a poet’s heart that called for the sun. Living in the South, this was no issue. She grew up around sappy pine trees, blooming fishy Bradford Pears in the spring, and hot summer days grounded in the Eno River. This is where Neecole grew a love for gardening & nature. Neecole now sees the Puget Sound when she looks out her window – taking walks to see the orangey pink sunsets behind the Olympic Mountains. Her awareness as a queer WOC vitalizers her creativity, storytelling skills, and intentionality. Grounded in making meaningful change, she moves through the world recognizing the unseen, listening to the unheard, and supporting those with identities who have been historically underrepresented. This is what she infuses her work at Resource Media with as a creative media strategist.
Cristina Friday (she/her)
Partnerships and Sponsorships Manager
Cristina is from the Southern Paiute desert (Las Vegas, NV) and now calls the lush green lands of the Duwamish (Seattle, WA) home. As a mixed-race daughter of a Thai immigrant, that ancestral tropical homeland lives deep in her bones and she feels most at peace near the water, but loves traveling around our planet’s natural wonders and vast ecological landscapes. Cristina has a deep passion to continually learn about and better understand the history and people across our global communities. As the Development Director at Resource Media, she takes that passion and curiosity to build partnership, grant, and sponsorship support for Outside Voices to bring stories of other BIPOC folks in the outdoors to life in the podcast realm.
Jeff Alvarez (he/him)
Sound Editor
Jeff grew up hiking the hot, dense woods of Houston, TX before moving northward to the cooler, rockier trails of Colorado. Obsessed with rock n’ roll and the drums from a young age, he found a way to funnel this enthusiasm into pursuing a degree in recording arts. Jeff then planted himself in the Pacific Northwest, where he was lucky enough to find a creative, open-minded community and penchant for jumping into frigid sea water. As an avid listener and early adopter of podcasts, he learned to use both audio and music to create and produce in the podcast medium. He is excited and humbled to lend an ear and a hand in sound design in the telling of outdoor experiences from the BIPOC community with the Outside Voices crew.
Artwork and Music
Branding, logo and album artwork by Brooklyn Bell.
Intro and outro music by LIVS (Olivia VanDamme @livs.wav) and produced by Jamison Blue Stegmaier.
