Paula Manley

Paula Manley is a nonprofit consultant, civic storyteller, and community media field-builder whose career has moved between direct station leadership and organizational development support for the wider field. Her background includes launching and managing a community media center and later consulting with organizations including the Foundation of the ACM, Open Signal, Capital Community Media, and Reel Grrls, helping them develop leadership capacity, fundraising infrastructure, and the shared narrative that connects organizational purpose to public support.

Her consulting work reflects a truth about community media: the stations that survive are not only technically capable but organizationally healthy, and the field-building work that makes them so rarely generates the same visibility as the programming they produce.

Paula's career represents the civic infrastructure support layer of community media, the people who help stations tell their own stories, develop their leadership, and build the organizational foundations that keep them open.