Speaker Profile

Stephanie Wittels Wachs is co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Lemonada Media, a podcast network that shares the unfiltered version of the human experience. She co-created and hosts Last Day, Lemonada’s award-nominated flagship show that confronts massive epidemics with humor, compassion, and a quest for progress. Starting with the opioids crisis, the show zooms in on a person’s last day, exploring how they got there and how we, as a society, have gotten here. Additionally, she is Executive Producer of the chart-topping Kids & Family podcast, Good Kids: How Not to Raise An A**hole, and proud to announce Lemonada’s latest release, sports podcast Mouthpeace with Michael & Pele Bennett. Wittels Wachs is the author of best-selling book Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love, and Loss, described by Booklist as a “harrowing, heartbreaking, cathartic memoir” and called “a powerful debut” by Kirkus. A reputable theater director and well-known voice actor appearing in countless anime series and movies, she now sits on the Board of Directors of Rec Room Arts, a performance space and national artist-residency program she co-founded in memory of her late brother, Parks & Recreation writer-producer-comedian Harris Wittels. Notably, in 2017, Wittels Wachs spearheaded legislation in the state of Texas that mandates insurance companies cover the cost of hearing aids and cochlear implants for children under the age of 18. Her own two children, born with varying degrees of hearing loss, motivated her passion and activism in this arena. She was recently awarded “Woman of the Year” from the Houston National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). She co-founded Lemonada Media with Jessica Cordova Kramer, who also lost her brother to an overdose, because, Wittels Wachs says, “Community is a life jacket.”