Rob Brading

Rob Brading served as executive director of MetroEast Community Media in Gresham, Oregon, leading one of the Portland metro area's two primary public access operations through a period of significant expansion in both its programming and its community engagement work. MetroEast serves the east Multnomah County communities of Gresham, Troutdale, Fairview, and Wood Village, providing PEG access services to a part of the metro area that is more economically and racially diverse than Portland's urban core and where community media's role in civic transparency and local voice carries particular weight. He received the ACM's Sue Miller Buske Leadership Award in 2016.

Under Rob's leadership MetroEast developed initiatives including the Rockwood DIY program, connecting community television's open-access model to the daily realities of one of the region's most underserved neighborhoods.

His work at MetroEast reflects the station leadership that makes community media meaningful in practice: an organization embedded in its community, responsive to its needs, and committed to keeping the platform genuinely accessible to the people it was built to serve.