role: co-producer + editor + social content lead
team: 2-person production team (host + me)
formats: long-form audio episodes, explainer episodes, social cutdowns, graphics, captions
timeline: 2023–2024
recognition: 2024 webby honoree (documentary podcast)
impact: grew social audience to 10k followers in 9 months
Off Duty Diplomat is an oral memoir of a former U.S. diplomat’s 10-year career with the U.S. Department of State, built around the tension between the public narrative of diplomacy and the private reality of what it feels like to do the work.
The challenge: geopolitical stories can be high-context and jargon-heavy. The goal was to make them feel accessible, emotionally resonant, and worth sticking with—without flattening nuance.
what i owned
I worked across the full pipeline—from concept to publish—and built a repeatable system, so a two-person team could ship consistently while balancing full-time jobs.
show + episode development: shaped episode premises, structured outlines, and narrative arcs
production + post: edited, mixed, and mastered episodes end-to-end for clarity, pacing, and tone
on-mic explainers: appeared in explainer episodes to translate complex topics in plain language
social packaging + growth: created social content (cutdowns + graphics + captions) and built a cadence that helped grow the audience
ops: co-managed timelines, scope, and a lightweight production calendar so we could ship reliably