Pacifica's then interim Executive Director Lydia Brazon hired Miquel Calçada as KPFK's General Manager in 2021 after a search conducted by the Local Station Board.
Miquel Calçada resigned from KPFK after less than 5 months with little warning and no exit interview. He was succeeded by a string of interim General Managers, including Pacifica chief engineer Moe Thomas, and KPFK chief engineer Stuart Landau. The Local Station Board conducted a new search and proposed a pool of candidates to the new Pacifica Executive Director Stephanie D. Wells. The ED and Pacifica National Board (PNB) then determined that there was no funding available for the hire, and the ED asked the Local Station Board chair Michael Novick if he would agree to serve as interim General Manager unpaid, and he agreed. He left his position as LSB chair to take the management position at the station, since the GM serves ex officio on the board as a non-voting member.
Michael has been serving as interim GM since basically the beginning of the current fiscal year on October 1, 2022. He has a long history as a volunteer at KPFK in outreach, governance and fundraising, and is a retired LAUSD teacher and UTLA rank and file labor leader, former board member of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (a position he left upon taking the demanding iGM appointment), and editor and publisher of Turning The Tide: Journal of Intercommunal Solidarity, as well as on the editorial and production crew of Change Links community calendar. He has sought pro-bono assistance at the station, since KPFK had no other management -- no business manager, no program director, no development director, no operations manager, no volunteer coordinator. Recently Marlena Bond, another long-time paid and unpaid staff member at KPFK accepted his offer of the position of unpaid interim Program Director. Efforts to find an unpaid business manager, development drector, or web manager on a pro-bono basis (unpaid) have not yet been fruitful.
