NPR's All-Name Team: An Exercise in Diversity

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton

National Public Radio--the organization conservatives like to view as a haven of liberal thought--will certainly plead guilty to that if it's only based upon the diversity of its staff (often thought to be a liberal trait).

One of my favorite exercises is adding names to the NPR All-Name Team, one whose membership includes the exotic ring to American ears. Many of the names, I expect, would be fairly common in their country of origin, but to me and to us, they sound like they landed from another planet.

Here is my current all-name team (with honorable mentions at the bottom) and it is subject to change when the next person is hired. Almost all of these people are in the news division (click on the name for the bio).

Top 10:

1. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
2. Doualy Xaykaothao
3. Mandalit del Barco  
4. Didrik Schanche
5. Madhulika Sikka
6. Lakshmi Singh
7. Neda Ulaby
8. Shankar Vedantam
9. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro
10. Nell Greenfieldboyce 

The rest:

Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson

Jason Beaubien

Robert Benincasa

David Bianculli

Audie Cornish

Ophira Eisenberg

Leila Fadel

Stefan Fatsis

Marilyn Geewax

Tom Gjelten

Sonari Glinton

Ina Jaffe

Mara Liasson

Kee Malesky

Yuki Noguchi

Marisa Peñaloza

Sylvia Poggioli

(Photo: Ben Lepley)