MEET PIZZA SHARK’S FOUNDERS, ISIS AND CAROLINA.
Throughout their careers, they have led editorial teams in local, national and international newsrooms, built storytelling communities, worked as national and foreign correspondents and started a company from a kitchen table in Somerville, MA. Now they lead that company — and its dynamic stable of producers and artists — across state lines and time zones, from New Orleans, Los Angeles and New England.
Isis Madrid
Isis is a first generation Colombian-American journalist, writer, audio producer, media strategist and pug mom.
Born and raised in New England, she now lives in Los Angeles with her husband Matt and their two pugs.
What is she an expert on? Imagine a gender/culture/international news Venn diagram. Right there. In the center. That's her storytelling sweet spot.
Isis’ work has appeared in the BBC World Service, The World, Good Magazine, VICE (Broadly), Harvard Business Review’s Women at Work, The Growth Show, Weird Work, Buzzfeed, Refinery29, Marketplace, Fusion's "The Brave,” Fvck the Media, The World in Words, Otherhood, The Village Voice, The San Antonio Current, Audioboom and more.
Her background is in international reporting, audio production, writing, editing, project management, social media-first reporting, audience engagement strategy, video production and documentary film.
In addition to reporting and producing stories about public health, national elections and gender equality, Isis can talk your ear off about the latest episode of reality trash garbage and find a way to bring it all full circle.
She is the founder of SMASH Boston, a monthly gathering for media makers smashing the patriarchy based out of the PRX Podcast Garage and a propelling force and facilitator of Spotify’s Sound Up podcast accelerator program for underrespresented communites.
In another life, she dabbled in video production on blockbuster + indie film + TV sets, did public relations in a non-profit setting, bounced around Texas and New York City — and once spent a summer on Maui as a permaculture farmer.
Carolina Murriel
Caro is a Peruvian-born writer, story editor, ceramic artist, educator and death doula based in New Orleans. She works with clay and storytelling as healing mediums, and is partial to a good bold personal essay.
Caro arrived at ceramics and death care after years reporting on immigration, criminal justice and abolitionist practices within carceral systems — beats that forced her to confront her own traumas as a first-gen, formerly undocumented immigrant. She pursued a graduate certificate from the Trauma Research Foundation and started advocating for trauma-informed training for all journalists.
This advocacy shaped her work teaching with the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism’s Spanish-language master’s program, Lede New Orleans and Propeller New Orleans — as well as co-developing and leading Spotify’s inaugural Latinx Sound Up program and its global training initiatives. Carolina has taught trauma-informed journalism and storytelling workshops for AIR, Broccoli Productions, Wondery, and NYU Journalism. She imbues her training into all her work as a story editor and executive producer.
For the first 8 years of her career, Carolina worked as an editor, reporter and producer in newspapers, public media, alt weeklies and digital media — locally in South Florida, then nationally and internationally from New England. She was the first full-time female craft beer reporter in South Florida, and later covered street art during the boom of Miami’s developer-led Wynwood Arts District. Through it all, she covered immigration as a first-generation Peruvian immigrant herself.
Caro was born and raised in Lima, Peru, and has bylines in English and Spanish across the US and internationally. She grew up in Miami and settled in New Orleans for its marriage of Lima’s stormy colonial past and Miami’s tropical surrealness. She dreams of moving to a farm with a Scottish highland cow and everyone she loves.