About Me

Adriana Cargill is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles. She’s reported and produced stories for KCRW, NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Latino USA, Southern California Public Radio (LAist), Marketplace, Crooked Media, Wondery, KUSC Radio, VICE News, The Chicago Redeye and more. She’s also the founder and CEO of Wave Maker Media, a new independent podcast company. The company’s first podcast, Sandcastles has over 35,000+ listens and has won multiple awards. She was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2021. 

Currently, she's working on SheChange, a documentary following the world's best female big wave surfers as they fight for equal access and equal pay in one of the most dangerous sports on earth. She was previously a senior producer at Crooked Media. She has also produced for KCRW’s Press Play with Madeleine Brand and a worked as a freelance reporter for many years. She also produced podcast episodes for Wondery shows like American History Tellers, Business Wars and American Innovations. She was previously an assistant producer on KPCC’s Take Two. Before that completed an internship with Marketplace by APM.  

She graduated with her master’s in journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in December 2015 as a Bloomberg Scholar. She’s also studied non-fiction narrative podcast storytelling at Sundance Collab and the SALT Institute.

While in graduate school, she associate produced the documentary film The Seventh Fire, which is executive produced by Terrence Malick, Natalie Portman and Chris Eyre. The film centers on the lives of two Native American gang members in northern Minnesota and premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015.

Following graduate school she was awarded the McCormick National Security Journalism Fellowship.  As a fellow she pitched, researched and reported an in‐depth story in Bangkok following Thailand’s premier bio‐surveillance team as they searched for new viruses. The resulting project was published by both VICE News and the McCormick National Security Journalism Initiative.