Conference Keynote Speakers

Caryn G. Mathes
Caryn G. Mathes joined WAMU 88.5 FM as general manager in 2005. Under her leadership, individual and corporate sponsorship increased by 36 percent, expanding the general operating budget by more than $3 million. By mid-2007, the operating reserve the amount the station keeps on hand for unforeseen opportunities or emergencies had grown by more than 2,200 percent to almost $4 million. WAMU currently ranks third among the nation’s public radio stations in total listeners. In 2006, Mathes oversaw the launch of two additional HD radio stations and the expansion of Bluegrass Country, the station’s online bluegrass service.

To continue to encourage the next generation of radio journalists, Mathes strengthened and stabilized the station’s youth journalism training project, Youth Voices. She upheld WAMU's responsibility to youth mentorship and to the students at American University by putting 34 students to work in 2007 as either interns or paid part-time employees.

Mathes came to Washington from WDET-FM in Detroit, where she served as general manager for 21 years and as news director for two years. She holds a bachelor's degree in professional journalism from Indiana State University and began her broadcast career at the age of 19 as a weeknight co-anchor at WTHI-TV Channel 10 in Terre Haute, Indiana. In 2007, the National Conference for College Student Women honored Mathes as a Woman of Distinction. She was also elected as an at-large member of the Executive Committee of Eastern Region Public Media that year.

Pamela Stone
Pamela Stone is a professor in the sociology department of Hunter College in New York City. She received her bachelor's degree from Duke University and her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, both in sociology. Her research centers on issues related to women in the workforce, with a focus on work, careers, occupations, sex segregation, pay discrimination, and gender equity. Her work has been published in scholarly journals and monographs and supported by grants from a variety of sources, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Currently, Stone is researching working mothers in high-level professional jobs who leave the labor force to become full-time, at-home mothers. She is interested in understanding the factors influencing these decisions and their implications for women, their families and communities, and the workplace generally. A recipient of a CUNY Scholar Incentive Award, Stone was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. She is also an associate in the NSF-supported Hunter College Gender Equity Program, whose goal is to advance women in the academy.

Her recent book, Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home (University of California Press, May 2007), which Business Week called "provocative, superbly researched, and required reading," was a recent Working Mother Editor's Pick (February-March issue) and has been featured on NBC's Today and Weekend Today, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and ABC World News Tonight, and in such publications as Time, USA Today, US News & World Report, and Newsweek.