Satok ’14 establishes Voices of Change site

Last semester, Voices of Change founder Ari Satok ’14 made the quintessential freshman mistake: He showed up to the wrong class. Instead of going to the international news reporting class he had signed up for, Satok ended up in a radio journalism class by accident.

“It was the best mistake ever,” Satok said.

This “mistake” became the driving force behind the Voices of Change website, which showcases audio profiles and written features about personalities ranging from an Olympic Gold Medalist speed skater to former drug addicts and bullies. In the coming weeks, the website promises profiles of President Shirley Tilghman, African American Studies professor Cornel West and Nobel Prize nominee Izzeldin Abuelaish, among others.

“We are a social action organization committed to bettering the world by finding the people around us that can inspire, empower and educate us, and then sharing their stories and the messages they represent through the medium of journalism,” the website reads.

Satok developed a passion for radio journalism while enrolled in JRN 450: Radio Documentary, and Voices of Change grew from profiles that he compiled as an assignment for the class, he explained.

“I developed this passion for finding a lot of neat people and sharing their stories,” he said.

Through the class, Satok accumulated interviews and realized he wanted to share them rather than leave them unnoticed on his hard drive. Over the summer, he made a website to share all of the interviews he had done and invited his brother Josh Satok — a junior at Yale University — to join.

When the summer ended, he decided he didn’t want the storytelling to end with it. Satok returned to campus in the fall and began a recruitment process through emails to fellow students. Initial interest was high, he said, and he was able to recruit 25 journalists — and the numbers are still growing.

Lauren Zumbach ’13, who joined the group through the University Press Club, is one of Satok’s journalists.

“There are so many people in Princeton who have done really incredible things, and I liked the fact that Voices of Change would help spotlight those people and share what they’re doing with a wider audience,” she said in an email. “Even though I write for a local paper, they’re not always interested in pure profiles of individuals.”

Zumbach is also a former staff writer and copy editor for The Daily Princetonian.

“It’s cool to feel like you are a part of a project that is not only meaningful to you, but also has a real potential to grow, to be successful and to be meaningful to others,” Voices of Change member Sascha Brown ’14 said in an email. “I’m really excited about Voices of Change because it has all of those elements.”

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The most exciting thing, Satok notes, is that the organization is at a point where it can grow — not just at Princeton, but at other schools as well, including Oberlin, McGill, Columbia and the University of Western Ontario.

Columbia University freshman Orli Matlow is spearheading a campaign to bring Voices of Change to her school. Her interest in the group stems from her love for sharing stories, she said.

“It is a basic human impulse, and by understanding contexts and experiences of others we grow not only to tolerate but [also] to appreciate our pluralistic society,” she said in an email. “Voices of Change is a vital project in illuminating what makes certain people special — portraits of resilience, of hope — and what makes us all the same.”

Satok added that he hopes the website’s audience will be empowered and educated by the radio pieces and will “take something away from all of them.”

“Now I’m surrounded by really passionate, enthusiastic people who are excited by the concept and excited to get involved,” he said.