Mandy Stapleford
Producer/Host "Good News Good Planet"It takes a village, it really does… Back in 2015, I was hanging out with a few of the new owners of KNCE, 93.5 FM, True Taos Radio. I shared with them my distress with the endless barrage of seemingly only negative news in the media. I asked them if they could just read a good news story on the air in the mornings, because I knew the stories were out there. Co-owner Rita O’Connell replied, “Why don’t you do it?”
While a clay artist for most of her life, Mandy typically juggles multiple projects at a time. She’s written a book on entrepreneurship (pen name Mandy Lee) and dabbled in producing numerous theater and art shows. In 2015, after becoming dispirited with the depressing daily news, she took another leap iZnto writing when she created Good News Good Planet. She craved more joyful thoughts and realized happiness really does begin with good news and listening to it was easy, so recording it was the way to go.
In 2021 and 2022, Good News Good Planet won the New Mexico Broadcasters Association award for Excellence in Broadcasting in a Specialty Program. Read an article on the NMBA award and birth of GNGP here.
In 2022, through a generous grant from the LOR Foundation, Good News Good Planet Schools was created.
It’s a revolutionary program that seeks to encourage students to see themselves as part of the solution. The course uses 2-minute audio stories of actual good news from around the world to inspire kids to be solution-focused. The accompanying curriculum helps them to strategize responses to issues that matter to them and actively participate in making their own world a better place.
Mandy hails from the northeast coast but in 1998 found herself in Taos, New Mexico for a short visit that never ended. She resides there still, with her husband and numerous dogs, in a house she built from straw bales.
She loves to spend inordinate amounts of time in her clay studio.