Ariana Proehl is an award-winning storyteller and producer who has worked across film, audio, digital and live events. Ariana most recently directed and produced her first film, the documentary short “Art & Everyday People: The Story of the Betti Ono Foundation” about an Oakland art gallery and organizing hub in the activist tradition of the Black Arts Movement. The film is an Official Selection of the 2026 Detroit Black Film Festival.

Ariana previously worked as a journalist, producer and host at Bay Area NPR and PBS affiliate KQED. As a culture reporter for KQED, she told unique stories about Bay Area life, art and culture, including one that garnered a regional Edward R. Murrow award for feature reporting in 2023. She’s interviewed figures including Maxwell, Tony! Toni! Toné!, Erika Alexander, Danyel Smith and Bruce Hornsby. Ariana was a frequent guest anchor and host for KQED’s local Morning Edition, and a guest host on live call-in morning show Forum. She also produced for Forum from 2018 to 2022. For two years, Ariana led KQED’s youth media efforts, conceiving of and orchestrating the first Youth Takeover, a week that showcased stories produced by local high school students across the station’s shows and properties.

In 2010, when she didn’t see the kind of content she wanted on television regarding positive representations of people of color, Ariana created her own media brand Know This! TV as a place to “Know Yourself and Know Your World.” Under her production banner Dream Variations, Ariana executive produced and hosted the YouTube talk show Know This! with Ariana, which she toured to 14 U.S. cities in 2011, interviewing change makers, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians and artists, including actor and producer Issa Rae and singer Res. Following the tour, in 2012 she produced and hosted a series of Know This! LIVE talk show events and conversations with partners such as Beats by Dre, Generation Progress and New York University.

Prior to her career in media, Ariana was a non-profit leader who, at age 22, became the executive director of youth leadership development organization, DiversityWorks. She then served as a fellow with the nationally recognized Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs (San Francisco), before going on to earn a Master of Public Administration at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. Ariana holds a BA with Honors in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley, where she also volunteer co-directed and co-curated the former Women of Color Film Festival. You can count on her to make the perfect playlist, beat you at the crossword and talk your ear off about whatever album/book/TV show she’s loving at the moment.