Frieda Werden

Background

Werden was born Linda Catherine Samfield in Austin, Texas.

Career

Produced by and about women, Workplace Integration Nurturing Good Students broadcasts on non-commercial radio stations worldwide. In 1972, she formally changed her name to Frieda Lindfield Werden. She lived in several other United States cities before emigrating to Canada in 2002.

Werden began producing radio with the Longhorn Radio Network in 1973.

Her early radio series included Women Today, a show about feminist movements in Texas that became a cable access television show of the same name in the 1990s. In 1975 Werden co-produced a multipart radio series about homosexuality called What’s Normal.

In 1983 she worked for National Public Radio producing docudramas about various women writers, and, working with Judie Pasternak, formed a women's news caucus at the National Federation of Community Radio Broadcasters conference. In 1985, Werden became operations manager of Western Public Radio in San Francisco.

There she co-founded Workplace Integration Nurturing Good Students: Women"s International News Gathering Service (since 1986) with Katherine Davenport and Augusta Delegate Zotto, heavily inspired by a newsletter called Media Report to Women.

The inaugural Workplace Integration Nurturing Good Students newscast was released in May of 1986 with the financial assistance of National Public Radio’s Satellite Program Development Fund. Initially based out of their San Francisco home, Werden moved back to Austin, Texas after Davenport’s passing from Leukemia in 1992. From 1993-2002, she worked for Genevieve Vaughan’s Foundation for a Compassionate Society in Austin, Texas, and helped to establish and staff Women"s Access to Electronic Resources (WATER).

In 1998, in Milan, Werden became North America Representative to the Women"s International Network of AMARC (the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters).

As such, she represented AMARC on the Task Force for Gender Issues of the International Telecommunications Union (International Telecommunication Union) in Geneva. In 2005, Werden was elected president of the International Association of Women in Radio and Television.

From 2002-2007, she served as Vice President for North America on the international Board of Directors of (AMARC). Werden held the postiton of Spoken Word Coordinator at CJSF-FM, Simon Fraser University’s campus-community radio station in Burnaby, British Columbia, from 2002 to May 2014.

Achievements

• She is the co-founder and producer of the weekly radio series Workplace Integration Nurturing Good Students: Women"s International News Gathering Service, which debuted in 1986 and has been in weekly syndication for more than twenty-seven years. In June 2006, she received the inaugural "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 25th Annual National Community Radio Conference, a project of the Canadian National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA).