East Anchorage Book Club with Andrew Gray

Send us Fan Mail Michelle Macuar Sparck is the director of strategic initiatives of the organization Get out the Native Vote. Get out the Native Vote is a non-partisan effort in Alaska to mobilize Alaska Native and American Indian Voters. Michelle Sparck is a member of the Qissunamiut Tribe of Chevak but grew up in Bethel. After graduating from Bethel High School, she moved to DC to attend America...

Send us Fan Mail Michelle Turner is an environmental scientist who serves as the president of the Anchorage Democrats. Her day job is as a Principal Scientist with over 25 years of professional experience providing analysis and strategic advice under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for a local environmental consultancy firm. Her work includes data gap analyses, Environmental Impact As...

Send us Fan Mail Tom Pittman is the new Executive Director of Identity Inc. which was established in 1977 as the Alaskan Gay Community Center. Over the years, Identity has had different roles and purposes within the Alaska LGBTQIA2S+ community but has always sought to provide a safe haven for the queer community. In 2021, Identity merged with Full Spectrum Health and became Identity Health Clinic....

Send us Fan Mail Maija Katak Lukin served as Mayor of Kotzebue in 2015 when President Barack Obama visited. She later became superintendent of the National Park Service’s Western Arctic National Parklands. She is now the Native Relations Program Manager for the National Park’s Service’s Region 11 which encompasses Alaska.  We discuss her early life, her commitment to the Inupiaq language, climate...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal is the author of the 2017 book, An American Sickness: how healthcare became big business and how you can take it back. The Washington Post describes the book as: “An authoritative account of the distorted financial incentives that drive medical care in the United States . . . Every lawmaker and administration official should pick up a copy of [it].” Dr. Ros...

Send us Fan Mail Ron Hoffman is the lead pastor of Mountain City Church, formerly known as the Anchorage Baptist Temple. Anchorage Baptist was founded in 1956 by Pastor Don White under the name Baptist Bible Church. The church by whatever name has been a launching pad for conservative Republican politicians in Alaska for decades, and with its 2500 members, it maintains its political influence toda...

Send us Fan Mail Writer Tom Kizzia 's eight-part series on the first white settler girl born in American Alaska concludes today in the Anchorage Daily News . “Josie’s Story" tells the story of the life of Josie Rudolph who was born in Sitka in 1869 to German Jewish parents but moved back to Germany when she was still a child. 69 years later in Nuremberg, it was Josie’s Alaskan birth that...

Send us Fan Mail Today our guest is former Lieutenant Governor Fran Ulmer . She moved from Wisconsin to Alaska over 50 years ago and has spent much of that time in public service at the local, state, and national levels. She is the former chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, appointed by President Obama in March 2011 and serves on the National Parks Conservation Association Board and chai...

Send us Fan Mail Jenny Fayette is the immediate past president of the Alaska Academy of Physician Assistants. She is a graduate of the only physician assistant training program in Alaska, the MEDEX program which is a partnership with the University of Washington and the University of Alaska Anchorage. Prior to going to PA school, Jenny was an exercise physiologist, a high school science teacher, a...

Send us Fan Mail Lisa Aquino is the CEO of the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center (ANHC). Before taking over that organization in 2021, she was the Executive Director of Catholic Social Services for seven years. She has a Masters in Health Sciences degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center is a federally qualified health center that pr...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Bill Sage is the Assistant Vice President of the Texas A&M Health Science Center, a professor of Medicine at the Texas A& M University School of Medicine, and a professor of Law at Texas A& M University School of Law. He has published hundreds of papers over the decades on health law and policy, and he has edited four books including the Oxford Handbook of US Healt...

Send us Fan Mail Retired Alaska Superior Court Judge Elaine Andrews moved to Alaska in 1976 immediately upon graduating from law school. Her first job as a lawyer was with the Alaska Judicial Council, which is tasked with vetting new judges and with deciding whether or not to recommend sitting judges for retention. In Alaska, a judge must be at least 30 years old, and Elaine Andrews applied and wa...

Send us Fan Mail Kendra Sticka , PhD, RDN, is the Executive Director of healthEconnect Alaska, the state-designated health information exchange (HIE). In this role, she spearheads the HIE's strategic growth and operations, including its continued expansion into underserved rural and urban communities. Dr. Sticka has worked in Alaska healthcare for more than 20 years, beginning as a clinical d...

Send us Fan Mail Rev. Matt Schultz has been the Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Anchorage for eleven years.  We discuss what Christian Nationalism is and why it’s dangerous. We also talk about Matt’s childhood, what brought him to the ministry, and how he came to be a liberal in both politics and theology.       Rev. Schultz is leading classes starting Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 6:30 pm...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Lawrence Weiss founded the Masters in Public Health program and was instrumental in starting the Alaska Native Studies program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He has a PhD in Sociology from SUNY Binghamton, but it was his postdoctoral Masters degree from Harvard in Occupational Health that moved him to Anchorage in the early 80s and led to a 35 year career in public hea...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Anne Zink served as the Chief Medical Officer for the state of Alaska in Governor Dunleavy’s administration from 2019 until the Spring of 2024. She is a practicing emergency room physician who served as the emergency department medical director of the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center from 2010 to 2018. She received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine a...

Send us Fan Mail Rep. Jennie Armstrong of West Anchorage was first elected to the Alaska State House in 2022 but is not running for re-election. Instead, she will continue running the two companies that she founded and dedicate more time to her young family. In this Labor Day episode, she shares insights into managing staff that she has gleaned from years of first-hand experience and thoughtful ex...

Send us Fan Mail Tom Begich is a former Alaska State Senate Minority Leader. After a life-long career as a singer-songwriter and political advisor, he first ran for office in 2016 to for the state senate seat held by Johnny Ellis representing downtown Anchorage. Tom did not run for re-election in 2022, but instead set up his staffer Löki Tobin to take his seat. We also discuss his childhood as the...

Send us Fan Mail The Alaska Delegation to the 2024 Democratic National Convention consisted of 19 voting delegates, but also party officials, pages, and others, who all traveled to Chicago last week. This episode is an attempt to capture their impressions of the convention immediately upon their return to Alaska. The guests (in order of their appearance) Jessica Cook Rep. Andy Josephson Brenda Kna...

Send us Fan Mail Representative Zack Fields has represented downtown Anchorage in the Alaska state house for the past 6 years. He began his work in Alaska in 2012 doing political work first through the AFL/CIO and later as communications director for the Alaska Democratic Party. In Governor Bill Walker's administration, he served as Workforce Development Coordinator for the Alaska Department...

Send us Fan Mail Jenna Wright is the president and CEO of the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation.  AEDC exists for three reasons:  to encourage economic growth and diversity in Anchorage to promote a favorable business climate to raise Anchorage residents’ standard of living.  The corporation is funded through private contributions, municipal & state grants, and contracts. Jenna took o...

Send us Fan Mail Erin Baldwin Day is the founder of the Mutual Aid Network of Anchorage (MANA) and an organizer of the Anchorage Housing Club. Mutual aid is collective coordination to ensure that the basic needs of all of our neighbors are met, acknowledging that our existing social support systems are not enough to meet those needs. MANA works with local partners to tackle big issues that affect...

Send us Fan Mail Arianna Bellizzi is the new Executive Director of Anchorage’s Federation of Community Councils. We talk about her background, how she came to this job, and the history of Anchorage’s community council system. We also discuss the current state of community councils in our city and potential ways for improving them. Find your community council by clicking here.

Send us Fan Mail Soldotna City Council member Lisa Parker became at the age of 19 the youngest person in Alaska to achieve elected office when she won her election to the Anchorage Charter Commission. In 1975 that commission unified the City of Anchorage with the Borough of Anchorage into the municipality that it is today. Like our guest last week, Jane Angvik who also served on the Charter Commis...

Send us Fan Mail Anchorage Charter Commission member Jane Angvik ran for the Anchorage Charter Commission not too long after she had moved to Anchorage in 1973. What she had learned during her time working for the Greater Anchorage Borough Planning Department was that the City of Anchorage and the Borough of Anchorage hated each other – they couldn’t stop suing each other, and the State of Alaska...