This is What We Do

Leigh Anne Lindsey is a producer, writer, and host who takes ideas from first draft to finished product. She scripts, records, edits, and polishes podcasts, audio, and video, and lends her voice when a project calls for it.

She is the founder, producer, and host of Resilient Earth Radio & Podcast, which she created with co-founders and co-hosts Scott and Tree Mercer of the Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study. The show grew out of the Mercers’ annual Ocean Life Symposium, which she brought to public radio and hosted on air and on YouTube Live. It began in early 2024 as a segment on public radio, was also carried by KZYX, and is now on every major podcast platform. Its first season ran more than 45 in-depth episodes with scientists, conservationists, filmmakers, and changemakers working on ocean and climate solutions, and it has listeners in nearly 100 countries. Season 2, a virtual road trip along the Pacific coast from Baja to Canada, is now in planning.

For the symposium, she brought the event to public radio station KGUA and was the main host on air and on YouTube Live. When the pandemic ended in-person gatherings, she learned Zoom, figured out how to set it up for live radio interviews, and mastered the YouTube Live settings so remote speakers could be heard on the radio and streamed at the same time. She coached speakers through how the broadcast would work, handled all of the marketing, and brought in sponsorships, including $40,000 in cash from local businesses in a single year.

Her production experience goes well beyond audio. She has scripted a documentary now in the works, planned and managed location shoots, applied for and received a grant, created and run a crowdfunding campaign, hired and paid crew, and overseen every aspect of production. She has also produced online tourism shows, commercial videos, and festival promo reels, handling the scripting, filming, audio capture, editing, and voiceover herself.

A former public radio talk show host, she is a skilled interviewer who puts guests at ease and draws out the story. At KGUA (88.3 FM in Gualala, simulcast on 107.9 FM in Boonville) she created and hosted morning and afternoon talk shows and a rock music show. Behind the scenes, she organized the station’s operations around Google Drive, automated most of its programming, and worked with Radio Rethink and Spinitron, companies that build tools for community and public radio, to create a web app the station still uses, including to send out emergency notices. She wrote the procedures manual, trained and worked with remote programmers to automate their shows, wrote most of the station’s marketing materials, attracted numerous sponsors and donors, and trained volunteers and producers.

The work she found most meaningful at the station was emergency broadcasting during major winter storms, power outages, earthquakes, and the pandemic. She researched the latest information, worked with first responders, and delivered it on air in a calm, clear voice. She also helped build a shared online spreadsheet of open services, lodging, and restaurants, along with current guidance on what people could and couldn’t do.

Her business instincts come from two decades in Silicon Valley, from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s. She started in software sales at Reference Software of San Francisco, following the volume from individual callers to retail chains to national distributors, and at COMDEX in Las Vegas she brought the makers of Grammatik together with WordPerfect to explore a bundle. The company was later sold to WordPerfect for $21 million. As PR Manager at Paperback Software, founded by Osborne computer creator Adam Osborne, she landed a late-1980s Newsweek cover story on the “Spreadsheet Wars.” As PR Manager at MacroMind, which became Macromedia shortly before she left, she edited and maintained the company newsletter and corresponded with news outlets worldwide about its software products. In strategic alliances at Mathematica, CrystalGraphics, and Intelliseek, she arranged meetings and partnerships with companies including Google, Yahoo, and Borland, and Intelliseek’s investors, including Nokia Ventures, opened the door to venture capital. She went on to run Lindsey Ventures, connecting tech companies with VC firms, and served as a Managing Partner at a Palo Alto boutique investment firm, raising capital. She also wrote presentations, coached executives, and took them before venture capitalists, raising millions for multimedia and hardware companies in their Series B and C rounds.

Her broadcasting career began in the late 1970s as a rock radio DJ at KSPN 97.3 FM in Aspen, Colorado, where she also produced radio commercials and edited films for television.

A horsewoman, Leigh Anne lives and works among the redwoods on the rugged Northern Sonoma County coast where she has a black and white paint horse named Jax