Our Team Shares a Passion for High Quality Audio Storytelling

Steve’s career is defined by reinvention and innovation.

From TV startups to satellite radio startups to online music startups, Steve has always been passionate about building the products and properties where media and audiences are going next.

After co-creating one of the world’s first – and most successful – music podcasts at CBC in 2005 (!), Steve is thrilled to be helping invent the future of podcasting, creating a new model of media production and distribution, and discovering innovative ways to translate brand strategy into hit podcasts that audiences love.

At Pacific Content, Steve focuses on brand and podcasting strategy, business development, and making sure our amazing clients are happy and finding success with their podcasts.

Who knew work could be this much fun?

Jennifer Ouano has always been fascinated with advances in technology, especially in the creative media realm. For over 20 years, she’s worked as a producer and director for TV, radio, film, web, interactive, and mobile. Before there was such a thing as Youtube channels, Jennifer produced live webcasts across North America for Microsoft, RealVideo, and celebrities like Spike Lee. She co-created and produced a user-generated content platform for the CBC, called ZeD. The best uploads—along with short films, mini-docs, and live musical performances—were featured on CBC TV every weeknight. She partnered with the original iTunes team to land a branded weekly music feature, greenlit by Steve Jobs himself. She directed an award-winning music documentary feature. She co-founded a mobile app company specializing in LBS (location-based services) and AR (augmented reality) games. Most recently, she co-founded Pacific Content, making best-in-class podcasts for the world’s top brands.

In between podcasting, Jennifer checks in on her restaurant, El Corazón Café, located in Baja California Sur, Mexico.

Radio programming expert, cross-platform innovator, and trend-setting producer—Chris has earned his reputation as a leader in quality content creation for more than 20 years. His skills have left an indelible mark on Canada’s radio world with his terms as Executive Director, Radio/Audio, and Director of Program Development for CBC Radio, overseeing the development and launch of the broadcaster’s new generation of programming including Q, Under the Influence, The Debaters, and Spark.

Some of his boldest accomplishments have played out beyond microphones and airwaves. Chris’ innovation led to the launch of CBC’s new digital music service and music strategy, as well as moving the broadcaster to the forefront of cross-platform content production and distribution. Under Chris’s leadership, CBC Radio significantly grew its digital audience, dominating the Canadian podcast market while continuing to grow broadcast audiences to record levels, reaching more Canadians than at any point in its history.

As Pacific Content’s combination CFO/COO, Rob works as an ambassador toward the strategic success of the business. A CMA-CPA by designation, Rob’s career was built on making decisions based on numbers, but his creative side drives him to challenge traditional business frameworks to help define strategic success. Prior to joining the team at Pacific Content, Rob founded Measure Co., a business consultancy focused on business strategy for creative organizations. He’s also worked in the private equity sector on start-up business modelling.

Dan’s passionate about telling great stories, and discovering how new technologies and formats can help do that. He arrived at Pacific Content after ten years at CBC Radio, where he produced content for Spark, DNTO, and GO!, and local afternoon shows across Canada. As an indie podcaster, he helped create the pioneering video podcast, Jim Dupree: Enthusiast, as well as Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids — a New York Festivals’ award-winner, Buzzfeed chart-topper, and iTunes “Best Of”.

Andy is obsessed with how sound and music help propel a story and connect with listeners’ emotions. He has been a national radio host and producer on CBC, an international touring musician, a film composer, arts columnist, and sound designer. His original music has appeared on television and in viral videos (with over 35 million views) and is featured in an upcoming motion picture starring Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad. He has a degree in music and arts from McGill University. Andy is super excited to be part of the Pacific Content team where story is king and sound is the castle.

Geoff has helped launch some of Canada’s most popular reality television programs including Storage Wars Canada, Canada’s Worst Driver, Redemption Inc. with Kevin O’Leary, Canada’s Worst Handyman, and Junk Raiders.

An alumni of the Canadian Film Centre’s Interactive Entertainment Program, Geoff directed the interactive documentary Tightrope, which has been presented by many festivals, including SXSW, IDFA, and Hot Docs. He’s produced many hours’ worth of radio programming and documentaries for CBC Radio, including Search Engine (for which he won the New York Festivals’ International Broadcasting Award), Outfront, and The Phone Book Stories.

He’s also directed several documentary films including The Mantelpiece – a film about the bizarre migratory route of a taxidermied caribou, which debuted on TVO’s The View From Here and The Big Sky Documentary Festival.

About a decade ago, Dominic accepted an internship position at CBC Radio’s The Current. He wanted to get a taste of what it was like to make radio before resuming his plans to extend his theatre, film, and television experience into TV journalism. Except he never left radio, having discovered the magic and power of audio storytelling. Dom then joined a team of producers to develop and launch the award-winning Day 6 on CBC. He next moved to Banff, Alberta, to simultaneously launch French and English language radio networks at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, a job so all-encompassing he even got to pick the paint colours for the studio (greys and an eye-popping yellow, if you’re wondering). An accomplished interviewer, news producer and documentary maker, he most enjoys telling intimate, personal stories of fascinating people. When his nose isn’t buried in his work, you’ll find him doing something outside, or perfecting his cocktail skills.

First and foremost a musician, Christian spent several years playing in notable West Coast punk bands Red Tide, D.O.A. and the Dayglos before transitioning into a slightly less eardrum-compromising career in film & television. He’s composed and designed sound for all manner of fine folks from broadcasters like the CBC, CTV, Discovery Network, WTN/Slice Network, Knowledge Network, to independent and feature filmmakers. When he’s not bending sound into podcasts for Pacific Content, you’ll find him in the woods with his family foraging for perfectly safe things to eat.

What’s your story? Tara’s an incessantly curious person who’s worked in local radio with the CBC in Montreal and Vancouver. She’s especially proud of creating specials that challenge notions of race, language and mental health with the hopes of flexing the fabric that makes and breaks our communities. Before delving into the world of radio, she roamed the globe teaching in Egypt and South Korea with the hope of gaining insights into the meaning of life. She’s still looking and is excited to explore all of what makes us tick by sharing stories with an excellent group of raconteurs at Pacific Content. When not creating podcasts, she’s listening to them while spelunking through the clutter at home… wish her luck.

Mio will do pretty much anything to get a good story.

Once that meant absorbing countless blows to the head from members of the Pillow Fight League (ouch!). Another time, Mio asked close friends to anonymously write what they really thought of him while testing a personal feedback app (double ouch!!).

Mio has exposed listeners and viewers to these new, sometimes-painful, experiences in a wide variety of public radio and television roles over the past 15 years, both as a producer and on-air contributor/host.

He comes to Pacific Content from Zoomer Media where he chronicled the groundbreaking issues and often-overlooked stories of the aging baby boomer demographic.

Mio can and will regularly eat multiple quarts of blueberries in one sitting.

Tori is the key (and only) member of Pacific Content Company’s Southeast Asia Bureau. She maximizes time zones to contribute fresh ideas and perspectives from the other side of the world a.k.a. The Future. Before becoming a digital nomad, Tori spent eight years on the air and behind the scenes at a variety of CBC Radio programs. Although she enjoyed producing interviews with celebrities like Billy Bob Thornton, Jay-Z, and Barbara Walters, she not-so-secretly prefers talking to “normal” people and finding out what makes them unique. Five years ago, Tori packed her bags and moved to Seoul, South Korea, where she was promptly featured on Semipermanent, a TV show about expats, and soon after, joined the show’s production team. Over the next four years, Tori developed her reporting skills and covered North Korean border stand-offs, the Sewol Ferry disaster, and the 2015 MERS outbreak. She also explored Korea’s kookier corners – office nap rooms, toilet cafes, a fake Tim Horton’s donut shop – and produced a multimedia story on a professional video game team house for Highrise, an Emmy-Award-winning documentary from the National Film Board of Canada. While Tori misses (real) Tim Horton’s, cheap maple syrup, bike lanes and sharing an office, she loves feeling slightly out of her element and discovering new food, especially tropical fruit. Rose apples FTW!

David believes a good story should reveal the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary and help people better understand the world and their place in it.

He’s worked with the CBC in Vancouver, was the program director at Simon Fraser University’s CJSF 90.1 FM, has freelanced on different audio projects covering everything from First Nations issues to the adult film industry, and is the podcast producer for the Interesting Vancouver speaker series. His work has been heard on the BBC, the CBC, Roundhouse Radio, Rabble.ca, Vancouver is Awesome, and on community stations across Canada.

Some of David’s favourite things include backcountry hiking, tennis, the smell of Halloween, running for the bus, and dad jokes.

Lily is a documentary producer based in London, UK. She got her start in local radio at CBC Toronto and now tells stories from across Europe. With a focus on character-led storytelling, Lily offers a glimpse into worlds people might not otherwise get a chance to experience, from the quirky to the difficult to the absurd.

After completing a Masters of Journalism at Ryerson University, Ashley beamed herself aboard the mothership at the CBC. For the past 5 years, she’s produced radio documentaries for CBC’s national programs including The Sunday Edition, Ideas, Living Out Loud, and The Doc Project, covering topics ranging from women’s vigilante groups in India, to labour disputes, and the science of near-death experiences. She’s done sound design for the CBC programs Podcast Playlist and The Sunday Edition, was part of the team that launched the popular podcast Someone Knows Something, and was a technical producer on CBC’s Missing & Murdered: Who Killed Alberta Williams podcast. In 2014, she won a Gabriel Award for artistic achievement in a radio story. Ashley also produces a podcast about Canadian artists for the Art Canada Institute in Toronto.

Gaëtan has a passion for great sound. An avid radio listener from an early age, he found his love for storytelling when he received a voice recorder for his birthday at the age of 7. Born and raised in Winnipeg, he cut his teeth in radio as a host on college and commercial rock radio before moving West in search of education. After graduation from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Gaëtan was hired as as a Creative Producer for nascent Vancouver station Roundhouse Radio, where he established his career as an award-winning Sound Designer.

In his spare time, he is an animation and commercial voiceover artist and play-by-play announcer for the local Junior B hockey team.

Shawn has been working passionately with sound for over 20 years, seeing it as the perfect way to blend science and art. From mixing legendary anime series (Dragon Ball, Inuyasha, Gundam Seed, Hamtaro), to recording and producing albums (Yukon Blonde, Bend Sinister, Half Moon Run, Hannah Georgas), Shawn is singularly focused on ensuring that the auditory experience engages the listener and propels the story forward. His work has been recognized by the Western Canadian Music Awards, the Calgary Music Awards and through Canadian certified gold records. As a principle owner of Fader Master Studios in Vancouver, Shawn has spent the last 10 years finding unique ways to create compelling soundscapes for music and storytelling. In his spare time, Shawn enjoys spending time with his family, volunteers at an elementary school and tinkering with robots.

For Brittany, putting together a podcast episode is a bit like choreography — combine compelling ideas and stories with select pacing and sound and you’ve got memorable entertainment with impact. Brittany found her way into journalism following a career as a contemporary dance artist in Toronto. A Master of Journalism at the University of British Columbia introduced her to audio, video, and digital modes of storytelling, and she has since diversified her coverage of arts in Canada to include culture, society, and current events. Brittany has freelanced for the CBC, Maclean’s, Canadian Geographic, and The Georgia Straight, among others. She is the former co-host and co-producer of Arts on Air at UBC’s radio station CiTR and still enjoys being a critic for Canada’s dance magazine, The Dance Current.

Michael is the author of two national bestsellers—Solitude and The End of Absence (for which he received the Governor General’s Literary Award). He writes (often about online life) for Esquire, The Washington Post, Wired, Salon, The Globe & Mail and dozens of other publications. He’s also worked as an editor at Vancouver magazine and Western Living. Michael’s recent projects include a graphic novel called Labs, with the artist Kenny Park.

Frances spent several years in radio before transitioning into the world of factual and documentary television (Nat Geo, Discovery Channel, Life Network etc). After a brief stint in national news (Canada AM), she spent more than a decade as a Field Producer at Discovery Channel’s popular flagship science show, Daily Planet, producing short and full length documentaries.

She’s interviewed luminaries like Stephen Hawking, and jumped out of an airplane with the Red Bull sky diving team, traveling the globe to produce her stories from China, Japan and Korea, to the U.K., Mexico, and throughout North America.

Frightened and invigorated by the decline of traditional television, she jumped into the emerging world of digital video production working with brands to shape stories, as well as directing the occasional music video.

She’s also trying to learn to speak Spanish.

Marc’s work as a reporter and producer has taken him across the audio storytelling board: from hard news and current affairs, to long-form interviews and sound rich documentaries. His work in radio started with the CBC in Quebec City and has taken him across Canada and overseas.

Marc’s storytelling doesn’t stop at nonfiction. He’s working on a screenplay. He hopes and prays his labour on the script will soon bear fruit.