Virginia Voice Staff
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Yvonne Mastromano joined the Virginia Voice team in January 2022 as the Chief Executive Officer. Although she now feels that her feet are firmly planted in Virginia soil, Yvonne is an upstate New York transplant. She attended Ithaca College, where she earned her Bachelor of Music degree with an emphasis in piano and a minor in voice. After graduation, Yvonne was recruited to be the Assistant Director in the museum where she spent her summers during college as a tour guide and three years later was promoted to Executive Director of a museum in Yonkers, NY.
After moving to Virginia, Mastromano decided to make a career change to broadcast television and was hired by the local NBC affiliate, WWBT-12. Yvonne had the opportunity to become the first person in Richmond to do live traffic reports and quickly earned the moniker of “Traffic Lady.”
In 2012, she returned to non-profit work as the Executive Director for the Innsbrook Foundation, where she remained for nine years before being drawn to the mission of Virginia Voice. She is currently focused on expanding Virginia Voice’s reach to serve more individuals with blindness, vision impairment and other disabilities, raise awareness, increase funding, and build brand identity.
Yvonne is a 2020 Leadership Metro Richmond graduate and serves on several local non-profit boards. When not working in the community, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their two sons at the family restaurant and at home walking their two fur babies.
After moving to Virginia, Mastromano decided to make a career change to broadcast television and was hired by the local NBC affiliate, WWBT-12. Yvonne had the opportunity to become the first person in Richmond to do live traffic reports and quickly earned the moniker of “Traffic Lady.”
In 2012, she returned to non-profit work as the Executive Director for the Innsbrook Foundation, where she remained for nine years before being drawn to the mission of Virginia Voice. She is currently focused on expanding Virginia Voice’s reach to serve more individuals with blindness, vision impairment and other disabilities, raise awareness, increase funding, and build brand identity.
Yvonne is a 2020 Leadership Metro Richmond graduate and serves on several local non-profit boards. When not working in the community, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their two sons at the family restaurant and at home walking their two fur babies.
Kenneth Wene joined Virginia Voice in August 2013 as Administrative Assistant, and was promoted to Office Manager in July 2017. Kenneth spent almost ten years as a Retail Systems Consultant for IBM and CapGemini. Prior to that, he worked for many decades in the retail industry designing and managing merchandise distribution systems. Ken was also a volunteer reader for many years starting in 2006, reading for the Science Today program and doing the live read of the Saturday Richmond Times-Dispatch, “retiring” as a reader at the end of 2018. In January 2022 he was promoted to Operations Manager, in recognition of the fact that he is in charge of managing all of the administrative operations of Virginia Voice.
Alex Childress joined Virginia Voice as the Studio Manager in January 2008. Alex has a BS in Technical Theatre from Radford University. Outside of the studios he can occasionally be spotted at one of the local breweries or playing disc golf. Otherwise he enjoys meeting friends for board games or curling up with a good book next to his wife and their two tiny dogs.
Felicia Smith joined Virginia Voice in November of 2022 as the Community Engagement Coordinator and the primary contact for the Live Audio Description Program. She grew up in rural Virginia and moved to Richmond in 2020. In 2018, she obtained her BA in psychology from the University of Mary Washington with a minor in business administration. Currently, she is on her way to obtaining her MA in library and information science at Old Dominion University. Felicia’s hobbies include reading, hiking, and petting her cats. She also enjoys playing disc golf, video games, and card and board games.