this month’s youth media professional (4)

Katina Paron, Co-founder and Editorial/Program Director of Children’s PressLine began her youth media career in 1995 with the Boston-based Teen Voices magazine. It all began while she was waiting for her interview in the magazine’s basement offices at the YMCA on Huntington Ave. Before she even finished flipping through the pages of the magazine she was hooked on the concept that media could validate the voices of young people while empowering those who produced it.
While working through varies titles—intern, section editor, bulk mail volunteer expert, mentor, submissions coordinator, board member, NY fundraising co-chair—she also managed a professional career as a journalist writing about home automation, literary arts and health for various publishing companies and newspapers. Katina might be the only youth media practitioner who has ever attended a trade show on radiant floor heating and interviewed Allen Ginsberg.
In March 2000, she dedicated herself to youth media full-time as the managing editor of Children’s Express. In October 2001 she co-founded Children’s PressLine after CE had closed its doors.
When she is not “doing” youth media, Katina is on the editorial board of “Our Truths/Nuestras Verdades,” a bilingual abortion zine and was a “REAL hot 100” 2006 Winner (“See how hot SMART can be”). You might not know that Katina used to train as a boxer and h-e-a-r-t-s coffee. She currently lives in Brooklyn and enjoys studying charts of the muscular skeletal system, making bread, and listening to folk rock music. The photo is a sculpture of Katina, one of four that her husband made of her for their wedding.