Mina Llona is a radio and social media rockstar. In the 15 years since graduation, she's worked on the air in New York, in Philadelphia, and two stints at SiriusXM.
We start today's show with her unusual trajectory toward radio, and the very surprising reaction she got from her Mom when she told her she wanted to switch from pursuing a law career to one in radio.
One key constant throughout her career has been the guidance of fellow alum Dion Summers ('95), who first barged in on her shift as a freshman, and now works with her on his SiriusXM Channel "The Heat."
Mina recently became a Mom and gives us the perspective of being pregnant while working in the radio industry, including covering the BET Awards in LA while being 7 months along. Reactions ranged from incredulous to incredibly supportive, including some great interactions she had with artists like Lizzo and Ne-Yo.
Mina was Program Director of WJPZ at a pivotal time in the station's existence - the transition over to NexGen and the introduction of voice-tracking. While opinions differ on the topic, it's a skill that broadcasters today need to graduate with. Mina talks about how important it was to learn, and teach, new radio software to fulfill the station's mission as the World's Greatest Media Classroom. And it was learning that software that put her at an advantage when she landed her first job after graduation.
Finally, we talk about WJPZ at "home." Mina explains how on a big campus, the radio station was always home.
More:
Mina's Website: http://minasaywhat.com/
Mina's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/minasaywhat/
Mina's daughter Athena's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/athenathebabydoll
Join Us in Syracuse on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. It may not surprise you to know that alumni often talk about students, particularly when the student is a budding rock star. I can tell you that for today's guest, when she was PD of the station, people like Josh Wolff and Matt DelSignore were telling me about this woman and how she was gonna be destined for big things, and they could already tell.
Today's guest is Mina Llona, aka Mina Say What, class of 08. Welcome.
Mina: I'm a rockstar. You're the rockstar. Your whole studio is soundproofed. It looks amazing!
JAG: It looks better than it functions. No, it's all good. And new mom too, by the way, so congratulations.
Mina: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.
JAG: All right, so Mina, you've got a great story of how you started at the station. Tell us how you went from the station and your career path and how you ended up the big deal that you are now in Philadelphia. Walk us through it if you don't mind.
Mina: So I actually, I call it, I bumped into the radio station.
I don't know if you remember Sean Scott? , But his DJ name is DJ S 1. Sean and I met when we were doing Summer Start, which is a program where you come on campus prior to your freshman year. So I was the girl that memorized all the lyrics. I had all the CDs back in the day. We listened to CDs.
So that was always my personality. I was always a fan of music. I loved hip hop, so him and I connected off of that. Just songs, artists that we liked while we were at summer start. So one day Sean actually asked me to come into the radio station to fill in for his host who, at the time just didn't show up.
JAG: Wow.
Mina: And that's kind of how it happened. Like the first time he was like, Wow, you're a natural. You feel natural, you sound natural, you look very comfortable. And I'm like, Yeah, this feels fun. So I stumbled into the station. That's how it started. And as we all know, it just bites you.
It's just, you fall in love with it instantly. And then it's something I never wanted to leave. I remember I thought I was gonna be like an attorney.
JAG: I was gonna ask, you said you bumped into it, you were headed off to Syracuse and you had other plans, I'd imagine, right?
Mina: Yeah. So I had already declared thinking I knew my whole life. When you're that age, you think you know everything. I'm like, I have my whole life planned out. I'm gonna be an attorney. And I had already decided that I was gonna pursue political science, which is, you do PoliSci, then you go off to law school, and that's how it is.
And then I remember telling my mom, Mom, I want to make radio my major. And I thought she was gonna be like, No. And my mother's Spanish, get the, "What are you doing?" But she was really encouraging and she actually told me, which I didn't know at the time, she never told me the story that she used to do radio as well.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Mina: In Peru. Yeah. So when she told her family that she wanted to do radio, back in the day if you were a woman, you were only like a secretary, a nurse. There were very limited jobs that you can do, especially in these other countries. They told her that's not a real job, she's not gonna make money off of that.
Go put your energy into having a real job. So she ended up going into nursing. My mother was in the medical field as my father was, and she was a nurse, so she was actually really encouraging because that happened to her. And she said to me like when I wanted to do radio and I told my family, they were like, That's not a real job.
You're not gonna make any money off of that. And that's still true.
JAG: Don't we all know that? Yeah.
Mina: But she was really encouraging and I think that really helped me really just throw my all into it. And thankfully I've been able to make it into a career and this is all I've ever done since I was 18 years old.
But it was really me just stumbling on the radio station, feeling very comfortable at the station. I'll never forget the day that Dion Summers walked in. I was a freshman and it was our first like Banquet and Dion rushed into the studio. He was like, What's your name? What year are you in? And I'm like, I'm a freshman, my name is Mina.
And by that time I already had my own shift, cuz I started off on mixshow. And then eventually the next semester I got my own shift. So that literally was like the first semester that I had in my first shift. It was Friday, like morning 10:00 AM to 12 noon. And Dion rushed into the studio, and I never met Dion.
I'm a freshman, so I don't really know the alumni yet. And he's You're a freshman. You sound like you're a junior or a senior. He was like, You sound very comfortable. You sound good. So that encouragement really also helped me. So I got encouragement from Dion who at the time was in Miami and he was doing, I believe, afternoons in Miami.
So that was like validation. And then my mother just supporting my decision to take up radio as a major. I then transferred into New House. The rest is history. 15, almost. Yeah. 15 years later I'm still here.
JAG: So I was gonna ask you about Dion. I know you did some stuff with Dion at SiriusXM. Tell me about that.
Mina: Oh my God. It's funny how the world is, and that's why you learn this lesson when you're in school. Be careful how you treat people or, make sure you keep in contact or you network. Like genuinely network networking doesn't mean like I email you when I need a job. It means like you build a genuine connection with this person.
You follow up with them, you let them know what's going on in your life, they're like there with you on your journey and you're there with them. Like Dion's dog passed away and I remember like reaching out to him and that's how you build a genuine connection with someone.
So that's my idea of network. In the beginning, just building like that genuine connection. Sure. But it's funny how life works. I met him when I was a freshman. He was very encouraging. And then my first job I got at Sirius xm. At the time I got hired to be a music coordinator. Eventually I became a program director, but I got hired as a music coordinator.
JAG: Was that your first job outta school?
Mina: The music coordinator. That was my first job. I wasn't on air yet. I had aspirations to be on air, but that's not why they hired me. They hired me to do programming.
JAG: So what does music coordinator at SiriusXM do?
Mina: It's mainly scheduling music. I had to edit Casey Kasem countdowns.
Put in Mark Goodman and Nina Blackwood's, voice tracks, Martha Quinn. I had to help her. Alan, I had to cut down his tracks. So it's more like a lot of editing, inputting music, scheduling that wasn't music scheduling yet, but just inputting the log. It's a lot of, I guess like the groundwork that you have to do in order to build up to be a program director.
It's that first step, and then after that start scheduling logs and after that you start building clocks. So it's like a very, at least when I was I'm still there, but I'm not a programmer anymore. They walk you through it slowly. I already knew all that stuff. Matt DelSignore had taught me.
I knew more programming. I learned more from Matt than, probably a lot of people I worked with. So when I stepped into that role, I already knew what I was doing. So it was very easy for me to excel. But how life would happen at the time. Dion was at XM. And I got hired by Sirius. This was before the merger.
So six months later they merge everything and they literally lay off half the staff and they, merge everything together. And Dion was the program director at the time, of what is the heat now? The station that I'm on now. So it just so happened that life would bring us back together.
And then I started working with Dion. I was his music director at the time. And by that time when the merger happened, I was already starting to do on air stuff. I was on air doing music director stuff. And to this day I still work with Dion. I'm on air on his station. So Dion has been like, so important in my career and in my life and really,
JAG: When are you on, on serious for those listening?
Mina: I'm on The Heat at night, 6:00 PM to 12 midnight and Dion's actually right before me. So let me tell you something about Dion. He's so amazing. When I was pregnant, you know it, it's weird being a pregnant woman in the industry because some people are like, What are you doing here? You're pregnant. Stay home.
Hello, I need to work . Just cause I'm pregnant doesn't mean that I don't have two mortgages. People are like, What are you doing here? You're pregnant. Like I can't stay home like this. Not the world we live in. And I love my job, so why would I wanna stay home? So BET weekend, Dion and I do that all the time.
We go out there, we broadcast live. Obviously, we didn't do it for like the past two years because of the pandemic, but this is the first year that we were gonna be in LA, broadcasting live on the station, and Dion could have easily been like, You're pregnant, you can't be out here. you're a liability. You know all the things that people think when you know you work for them or with them.
And he didn't. He was supportive, and I was broadcasting live BET weekend while I was pregnant and it actually ended up being like a really fun thing cuz a lot of the artists could identify with that. And he was like, I'm so amazed at the fact that you're literally broadcasting live for hours, and pregnant.
And the baby was so good when I was pregnant. Like she knew Oh, Mommy's working, let me not bother her. So I didn't have any major complications. Obviously, I didn't do any of the after partying or anything. Like I would go work. Go right back to my hotel and literally rest, upload videos, send interviews, edit clips on my phone, on my laptop.
But yeah, he was so supportive. So it's like I had to tell him afterwards Dion, thank you for being supportive to women who are, building their families. And that's so important because you have no idea how many people were like you're pregnant, What are you doing here? And I have to laugh.
I'm not disabled. If I couldn't do this, I wouldn't put myself in this position. But Dion has been so important and pivotal to my career and literally, like I remember when I stopped doing mornings in Philly. I did mornings for six years. Once you do mornings. for that long, it's hard. Mornings is like an acquired taste. You're either there for it or you're not .
JAG: It's a brutal schedule.
Mina: Yeah, so the schedule killed me. My personal life was like literally dead cuz all I did was work. And I was ready to take a time out from radio and I started doing more TV.
So I caught that bug a little bit. And I remember telling Dion I think I'm just gonna take a time out. And he was like, No, what are you talking about? No, don't take a time out. Like at the very least, just at least do part time and start pursuing these other things that you are interested in, but don't walk away because once you walk away, it's very hard to get back in.
So that was like really life changing advice because he's the one that kept me in, when I was ready to just be like, I don't know if I wanna continue to do this. I later found out that, I was just burnt out from mornings and that was just a knee jerk reaction to just really, busting my butt for six years.
But yeah, long story, long Dion has been like, so incredible and supportive and just really like an angel in my career.
JAG: That's so great to hear. How far along were you when you were out in LA doing the BET stuff?
Mina: I was six and a half, almost seven.
JAG: Wow, Okay.
Mina: Seven months. You're allowed to travel up to eight.
And he even asked Can you travel? I'm like yeah, technically, yeah, you can't travel until you're eight months or 36 weeks is what they call it. So yeah, I was seven, almost seven months pregnant in LA broadcasting live. And yeah, it was such an amazing experience and it was really like a full circle moment for me.
Like I'm literally bringing life into this world. And caring a child and doing what I love, and she gets to feel that. I just really felt so incredibly blessed that weekend. I'm like, I'm so proud of myself, but I just feel so lucky to be able to be pregnant and still do what I love.
JAG: I was gonna say, your daughter, Athena, has met more celebrities before she was born than most people meet in a lifetime.
If you look at your social media, you've got all these artists, with a hand on your belly and talking to you and at the radio station at the BET awards. That's really cool that someday you'll be able to tell her those stories of before you were even here, you met this person and that person and so on and so forth.
Mina: You know what I, I learned from this experience who really none of these people are really your friends, right? Because you meet them through work. But you build a relationship while talking to, like interviewing someone like in the hip hop community. We lost this guy recently. His name is PnB Rock, and I had interviewed him so much and I had done so many concerts and I had interacted with him so much that I built like a connection to him.
And it's not like we were best friends or we text all the time, but there's a weird relationship that you build with, even though it's just work, right? But you build this weird connection from dealing with them for so long and interacting with them over the years. And I really learned in my pregnancy, who reciprocated that.
Like Ne-Yo was very encouraging. He gave me a lot of advice. He talked about his five kids and then literally Put his hand on my stomach and I didn't ask. I think the only person I asked to put their hand on my stomach was Lizzo. Cause I was like, Lizzo, I want you to touch my baby!
JAG: Shouldn't it be the other way around Mina? Shouldn't it be. They ask you if they can put their hand on your stomach?
Mina: No, I asked Lizzo! I'm like, Please on my baby. Rub off on my baby. And Lizzo's a Taurus. I'm a Taurus, so you know, I have this Taurus connection. But yeah, the artist kind of just did that on their own. This r and b singer, Jacquees, like just put his hand on my stomach.
Ne-Yo, there's a rapper, her name is Bia. She just started talking to the baby and I didn't tell them to do anything. I just, but I would document it, right? So I have this video of BIA talking to my baby inside of the stomach and it just, Amazing content, and I really learned who had a real genuine connection with me, like a Ne-Yo, like a Jacquees.
People who would e either give me advice or just very naturally react very lovingly towards the bump instead of like, Why are you here, , why are you working? You're pregnant. Go home.
JAG: I think that's something we all kinda learn at JPZ, is be relatable. Find a way to relate to your audience. And being pregnant is something that so many people can relate to.
Either having gone through it or having had a partner that's gone through it. I think it's great that you were able to just make that deeper connection with these artists and yeah, the content is great, but so are the connections. Let me ask you about your terrestrial career, the terrestrial side of your career in radio.
So we talked about the Sirius XM stuff and how much of an advocate and a friend and a mentor Dion Summers has been to you. Tell me about your career on the terrestrial radio side.
Mina: So I got hired by Sirius. Sirius XM to be a programmer. I was there for four years, the first time and I'm now there in my second stint.
So the first time I was there for four years and I left because the programming thing really started to take off and I was a program director. I was programming the Holiday channels like the Halloween, Christmas, had Sirius XM Love as a channel that I was programming. I was programming another station, random station called Super Shuffle, which is like a cluster F of a whole bunch of random songs put on one station.
JAG: So when you say programming, you're scheduling the music?
Mina: Yeah. And then I was Dion's music director, and then I was an assistant programmer on eighties on eight with Martha Quinn and all the eighties VJs. So I left because the programming stuff really started to take off and I was on air, but I wanted to focus on my on-air career.
And at Sirius, like once you get hired to do a pro, you're a programmer. Like obviously being a programmer is more important than being on air. I'm not saying on air is not important, but when you're responsible for the whole station, that kind of should take precedence over you doing your jock breaks.
I left to focus on air. I went to Power 99 in Philly to do mornings. I was there for six years. So at the time I had applied for a midday slot there. And it just so happened that the morning show girl got hired at the time that I was applying and then they said we think you have the perfect personality to do mornings.
And then I ended up taking the morning show slot along with a digital manager slot. And at the time, digital manager literally meant Facebook, right? Facebook. And what you, what year is this? 2012. So it meant Facebook. It didn't mean, and the website, it didn't mean TikTok, Instagram, Twitter. I think Twitter had just started, but like radio station platforms were not on there.
They were Oh, that's something cool for the kids. Not like something that we need to do in order to reach our listening audience. So at the time, It was like a small job to be the digital manager, but over the course of six years, it became a humongous job. And by the end of it, I was literally doing the website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok had just started.
I was like so burnt out between let me write my story for the website. Let me post it to all these websites, all these social media sites. Let me, monitor the sites. Put up social content. I was overwhelmed in addition to doing mornings. So I tried at the time to get the digital stuff off of my plate and I was literally told, "This is the job."
Take it or leave it. So there, it just seemed like there was no negotiation when it came to my role that. Doing mornings in having this digital job was like the package. So I very quickly realized that I wasn't going to get what I wanted. I just wanted to do on air at that point, cuz that was always the goal.
I just took that extra position for a little bit more money, but I didn't know what that position was gonna become. So at the end of it I'm like, okay, this is a whole nother job. So I had to literally make the choice of I have to leave in order to figure out, how I can pursue and do what I wanna do without, this extra position.
So I left power, and this is when I was like maybe I need to take a time out. And this is when Dion came in and said no. And then I started doing weekends. On SiriusXM. And then I was also working in New York for a terrestrial station a Cumulus station that was later sold, Cumulus at that time sold all our stations in New York.
And that's the gamut that I've run. I went up to New York. I was doing part-time, I was working for a terrestrial station. I was ironically producing digital content with artists. I was doing TV in Philly at the time, and then I quickly learned that I missed being on the radio. I did my podcast of course, but I quickly learned that no, I need to get back to doing radio full time.
Then I came back to Philly and I started doing middays, and obviously I'm still at SiriusXM. So that was my terrestrial journey.
JAG: And you're still doing Middays in Philly now?
Mina: I am.
JAG: On what station?
Mina: 100.3. WRNB, It's a Radio One station.
JAG: Nice. Excellent. Yeah. And you're doing TV stuff now too still or?
Mina: So the TV thing, I have to put on time out. During the pandemic, I literally was applying for like full-time reporter jobs or hosting jobs, whatever, anything TV related. And then everything stopped so I felt like the pandemic said time out to the tv and I was just, during the pandemic, I was sitting at home.
I was literally doing middays for one station, then nights for SiriusXM and just doing that the whole time. And that's how it's been since the pandemic started. So 2020, I've been doing midday and nights on both stations.
JAG: From home or going into the station or?
Mina: From home. Yeah. I didn't start going into the station for, I think like last year, maybe around this time we started.
But yeah, from home I was doing both stations. It was very difficult. But yeah, so now I'm, I would still work for that terrestrial station in Philly, and then I also work at SiriusXM.
JAG: Let me bring it back to WJPZ. Talk to me a little bit about lessons you learned at the station. I know you talked a lot about, Matt teaching you about music and then Sean bringing you in.
What are some of the lessons you've learned at JPZ that formed the foundation of the career you've had so
Mina: far?
Everything I know I learned at JPZ and it's incredible. You hear that when you're a student, but you're like, whatever. But like literally, Sean and I were responsible for updating the station to Prophet.
So when we were there, we were actually operating under Audiovault when I was a program director and Sean was the GM at the time. Sean, along with Tex, did all, and then Alex Silverman helped as well. And then Alex went on to become the general manager of the next year, and I was a program director then.
So I worked with Alex Silverman and Sean Scott as a programmer. But before Alex came around or before Alex was promoted, Sean and I literally transitioned the whole station to Prophet. Him and Tex did obviously the technical stuff. And then it was my job to learn the operating system, which I learned from Tex, and then obviously Matt DelSignore.
And then I had to teach the staff. I was a program director at the time. I literally did not know how valuable that information was. I knew how to voice track. It's funny, now you go to the station and they all voice track, right? It's like normal. But back then no one at the station voice tracked because we were on audio vault and you had to be there live.
So I literally ushered in that new wave of Voice tracking. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing.
JAG: Let me stop you there, Mina, cuz that's a really good point that you just made. Because I think some, from the outside looking in who haven't seen the changes in the industry, they would be like, Oh, we used to be live back in the day.
And now you're voice tracking stuff. Would you say that's just where the industry has gone? What would you say to somebody who has issue with that?
Mina: That's exactly what our thinking was. This is where things are going and we need to prepare students what it's like out there. You, we all have this utopian idea of what we want radio to be, but that's just not what it is right now.
So I always thought of JPZ as the teaching ground for what you will experience when you go out into the world. It's very unrealistic to think that you're gonna graduate from school and go right into a live on-air shift. That's just not how it is in. People now use voice tracking as like an educational tool, right?
You're not ready to be live. You have to voice track first. Before it used to be like, Oh, you're live. This is how you learn. Now you learn live. And then voice track is a perk, right? Like you get to voice track. Now that you're so good.
JAG: It's so funny because I think back to my very first radio gig and that was back in 2004 and we had Prophet NexGen and my program director for the first week had me voice track the whole show until I got comfortable with NexGen.
That was, almost 20 years ago. So that's a really good point.
Mina: But it literally shifted. It used to be you're live and once you're live now it's a perk that you can go and voicetrack. Right now it's actually shifted. Now it's you have to voice track first before you can be live. Cuz we don't want you to mess it up,
We don't want you to take us off air. We don't want dead air. We don't want commercials not running, We don't want you not hitting the post. Even like the overnights, like we always knew that the overnights were like the training ground for you to be able to do any other shift. That's how voice tracking is now.
You don't go right to being live. You voice track first, but back in that day, 2000, what, six? We did this change maybe? Yeah. 2006. I think maybe going into 2007. It was a perk to voice track. Everyone could not voice track. Everybody didn't have the software. All stations weren't doing it yet, and we saw it as this is where the industry is going.
And ClearChannel always had Prophet, so it wasn't Clear Channel slash iHeartMedia. They already had Prophet, they were already voice tracking. And then people used to be like, Clear Channel killed radio. But it's like this is where things were going because at the time ClearChannel was and still is one of the biggest radio companies and they were already doing this.
Yeah, we're gonna prepare our students to be out in the world of radio. They have to know how to do this That's how we looked at it. So it was my job to learn the software and then teach it and then make sure that people were utilizing it properly. I trained the first staff of JPZers that were actually voice tracking and we were completely live prior to that.
So I remember the Stank face that I got and I'm like, Yeah, cuz I remember. So my rule was during the day you had to be live. But after 10 o'clock, everything was voice tracked all the way until 6:00 AM for the Z Morning Zoo. At that time, we were actually losing students because a lot of the students, it was that weird shift when Napster was around.
It was like that weird phase where, Napster’s here. We’re starting to download illegal music. Not a lot of people are listening to the radio when you have your, your CD of illegal music that you burned off your Napster or whatever. So we were starting to actually lose students. So I had to recruit from scratch.
And teach people that had never been a part of the radio station. Radio and Prophet NextGen. So this was actually the first time since I had been there during that time that we actually had someone on air every hour.
JAG: Wow.
Mina: Prior to that, we actually didn't even have, I think Lindsey was the program director.
We didn't have a lot of people working overnights. Nobody wanted to stay in the radio station overnight, and obviously things were, some people did and some people didn't. There were a lot of overnight shifts that were not filled. So when I became the program director, it was actually the first time since I had been there that we had every overnight shift filled.
And it's because I made sure that all our overnights were tracked and that we were live during the day. So I remember like alumni like, Wait, you have all your shifts filled? And I'm like, Yeah, some people are voice tracking. It depends on their schedule, right? If you can't be there live, I'll give you a voice track shift.
Some people are alive and some people were like, Oh, that's incredible. And some people were like, Ah, you're voice tracking .
JAG: But I think that speaks to the mission of the station being the world's greatest media classroom. And I think at that time you would've been doing the students a disservice if they came out and didn't know how to voice track, because again, ClearChannel tops on the list, but other companies were doing the same thing too. If you come out, Oh, I don't know how to voice track. That's the way the industry was at the time and still is. So I think that was good foresight on your part.
Mina: And then we went through some changes programming wise too. Not even on air.
You have to think of that time period, 2004 to 2008. This is literally when everything was changing, right? The beginning of the two thousands. So I remember when I started programming, we were on DOS..
JAG: Oh yeah. Selector.
Mina: Yeah. And. Like I learned how to program on DOS, which now you tell people that and they're like, What? That's like ancient, right?
But I was a kid. I was like, what? 19 years old? That was program, learning how to program the radio station from Matt. So I have my keyboard here. You can't see it cuz it's a podcast. But you used to do your log with the four up and down side to Side keys,
JAG: The arrow keys and the F keys and all that. Yeah. Yep.
Mina: And we actually moved over into Music Master. So that was another thing that was a Windows based programming software. And at the time when I started learning how to program, we were on DOS and then we moved into, Music Master and then doing the Windows based program, which I learned as well.
And then I had to teach to, the assistant program director at the time. So while I was there, I learned so. Technical wise when it came to radio, because we were responsible with ushering in the next wave and I had to teach people, so I already knew how to segue, in order to know how to properly use Prophet and all of the buttons and amazing things that it does.
You have to have proper training. In me teaching other people, I learned the software so well. So when I went out into the real world, I was ready. Sirius at the time was using Prophet. So it's like I didn't need to be trained on that. I already knew how to work it and it put me at an advantage that I knew Prophet already, that I knew Music Master, which Sirius was using at the time.
So that learning curve where you're learning the software, I skipped right over that. So that actually allowed me to be promoted a lot faster because I didn't had to learn how to use the clock. I didn't have to be taught about the philosophy of the clock. I just needed to be taught programming on a professional level, which I learned from Kid Kelly cuz he was my boss at Sirius when I was a programmer.
So I learned programming, philosophies and how to build a proper clock, from kid Kelly. But I learned the software. At Z89.
JAG: That's really huge. Tell me if you can think of any off the top of your head, mean a couple of funny stories or stuff you remember fondly from your time at JPZ. Just stuff that sticks with you. If you look back and say, I remember the time when, that kind of stuff.
Mina: That's hard cuz there's so many moments like that. It's almost like when you walk into the radio station, you feel all warm and fuzzy cuz you have all these stupid memories of stuff. But I remember us camping out in the studio, trying to raise money, , there's so many moments and JPZ.
It's a still a family and it is just hard to put it all in words. We spent so much time learning software and teaching software, so many moments where like Sean and I had heart to hearts, or Alex and I had heart to hearts or we're camping out trying to raise money for the radio station.
JAG: So was that like a fundraiser kind of?
Mina: yeah, I mean it's hazy. A lot of it is like you remember it, but it's hazy. I don't know why, but we were just camping out and we had blankets. And Lindsey was the program director at the time. I wasn't the program director yet, but we were in a station sleeping on the couch.
Don't go on the, I don't even know if that couch is still there, but that couch is...
JAG: a lot of people have slept on that couch.
Mina: And yeah, I just, a lot of it is everything was fun. It was like home. It's like the one thing of home that we had and eventually the rest of the campus, you get comfortable with your surroundings and you build a family at school.
But like Z89 was always home. All the funny stuff happened. All the pranks, the camp outs, the sleep outs. We're off air in the middle of the night. You gotta go in. I'm in my PJs. I used to live in Day. I was in day. So I've had to come down from the mountain in my PJs to go to the radio station. Yeah, so many memories. It's hard to remember one.
JAG: Yeah, I think so many of us can relate to what you just said. I know I can, where I got to Syracuse in the fall and I was homesick and I really didn't find my connection and my tribe really until I started working at Z89 and met friends there.
Of 75% of the people I still talk to from Syracuse are JPZ people, whether they're my classmates or alumni, younger or older. Half of them stood up in my wedding and it's really that family atmosphere and I think that's probably a great place to leave it. Mina, anything you wanna plug as far as social media, how people can keep up with you?
Mina: Just follow me. at MinaSayWhat. Athena has an Instagram as well. . So it's. @AthenaTheBabyDoll. I literally wanna post pictures and videos of her all day. And I know that people aren't following me. Like I have 79,000 followers. I know they're not following me to have a thousand pictures of my daughter, right?
So I have to be very conscious of my brand. But I had to create an Instagram for her cuz I'm like, I just cannot help myself every day. I wanna post videos and pictures. Last week she said what? She might have not even have said what, but in my head it sounds like what? Cuz she's starting to, speak baby gibberish.
So I'm like, I need to post my daughter saying what? So follow Athena and she's gonna be at every radio station thing with me. And maybe one day she'll be in radio as well. Who knows?
JAG: Two generations. Mina say what? And Athena Say What, right?
Mina: Three. My mother was on the radio. .
JAG: That's right. There you go.
Mina: Yeah. And then my website MinaSayWhat.com.
JAG: Mina, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us today. Really a blast having you and telling some great stories. Take care. Good luck with the baby. Good luck with your continued success and your career. We'll talk soon.
Mina: Thank you. Bye.