Back on Air: Journalism Alum Returns to Carleton as CKCU’s New Station Director
Alumni Spotlight on Lia Kiessling (BJ/01)
By: Mikaela Stevenson
On a quiet stretch of hallway on the fifth floor of Carleton University’s Nideyinàn building, formerly known as the University Centre, not much has changed since Lia Kiessling (BJ/01) was a student here. The bathrooms look the same. The Charlatan newsroom still hums down the hall. And the red light glowing above a studio door signals that CKCU is live on the air.
After 20 years in Europe and 25 years away from Ottawa, Lia returned to Carleton University this past summer as CKCU’s station director. CKCU holds a place in Canadian radio history as the country’s first campus-based community radio station.
Finding the CKCU job posting last spring coincided with a familiar now-or-never feeling.
“I thought if I’m going to uproot my family — especially my kids who were born and raised in Switzerland — I want to show them that you can have options in life and do different things,” Lia says. “If I don’t do this, I will never be offered this kind of job again, at CKCU, a station that I grew up with and people love.”
Spotting a picture of Mark Valcour in CKCU’s main office felt like another sign.
Mark, the journalism program’s longtime audio technician and dedicated sound guy, taught generations of students the art of radio and sound editing before passing away in 2015.
Lia remembers Mark’s mentorship, recalling how she spent a Christmas break helping him rebuild the radio room for digital broadcasting, learning how to solder wires, set up sound boards and hook up computers.
“There’s always these people along my career path that have believed in me, that made all the difference. And he believed in me,” she says. “I remember I came in here, right when you walk in, there’s a framed picture of Mark Valcour. That’s how I sort of knew I was in the right place.”
Finding The Right Fit
While listeners may only occasionally hear the new station director on the airwaves, the role marks Lia’s return to her roots in radio.
At 17, after graduating high school early, Lia enrolled at the University of British Columbia to study theatre and anthropology. A few weeks into her first semester, she knew it wasn’t the right fit. Looking to make a change, Lia applied to Carleton’s journalism program without ever having set foot on the campus but says it was one of the best decisions she’s ever made.
Lia has fond memories of her time in j-school writing for The Charlatan, working as a teaching assistant and discovering her love for radio along the way. After completing an internship at CBC Radio, Lia started her career as a radio journalist immediately following graduation.
A few years later, Lia pivoted to communications, working as a speech writer and in crisis communications before moving to Switzerland. There, she held internal and strategic communications roles with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Internet Society, a global organization promoting secure and accessible internet.
Recognizing when a role wasn’t a perfect fit prompted the search for other opportunities.
“Everybody should have those moments. Just having to try something different and then realizing, ‘oh, that’s not me at all,’ it’s just good to go through. You kind of realize what you want to do in those moments,” Lia says. “So, I swore up and down that the next job I had to really, really love.”
Lia’s passion for independent media can be traced back to her teenage years and the punk rock fanzine she created with her sister. Their mother, a publications manager, taught Lia and her sister layout using large sheets of graph paper spread out in their basement, long before Adobe software existed. Their father drove them to shows.
“I couldn’t play an instrument to save my life,” she says. “But I could have a zine.”
The zine attracted the attention of a few small news outlets and provided a taste for the power of storytelling.
“That was such a moment for me,” Lia says. “It sort of gave me [an idea of] what I wanted to do, which was to help, and is probably why I went into journalism. To help people realize how interesting they were. I don’t think anybody realizes how cool they can be, or how much of a change they can bring to the world, just by doing something.”
She sees that spark of possibility in the volunteers she’s worked with over the course of her career, and now at CKCU.
“All these volunteers here are doing this in their free time,” she says. “That’s super cool. If I can help them get skills, make friends, or build a community, or find their people and their place — that’s something I feel really passionate about.”
Beyond the Airwaves
Looking ahead, Lia anticipates 2026 will be a transformative year — one that reinforces CKCU’s role as a community-driven multimedia organization.
“Radio is our heart and soul,” she says. “But we are media. We need to be on multiple platforms.”
CKCU is finding new ways to show their community voice on YouTube, Twitch and Discord, as well as experimenting with live remote broadcasts and expanding spoken-word content alongside its strong music programming. The station is also exploring ways to offer enhanced training opportunities and mobile youth radio camps to nurture the next generation of broadcasters.
As CKCU embraces this next chapter, Lia recognizes this is a pivotal moment for community radio. Just weeks after CKCU celebrated it’s 50th anniversary, Ottawa’s other campus-based radio station shut down — a reminder of the ever-evolving media landscape. Funding pressures, legislative uncertainty and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence also continue to present new challenges.
This year’s World Radio Day, celebrated annually on February 13 to recognize radio’s role as a critically important medium for storytelling, news and communication, carries a timely theme: AI is a tool, not a voice.
While opinions about AI use vary amongst the volunteers at the station, everyone is clear about the importance of putting people first.
“Everybody’s there to try and empower people to connect. Community radio is human. This is human news, human content,” Lia says. “We’re the authentic voice of Ottawa-Gatineau and you need that in this type of environment.”
For students and recent graduates interested in community radio and independent media, Lia’s advice is simple: Don’t be intimated.
“If you’ve got new ideas or a fresh perspective, don’t hold back,” she says. “The door at CKCU is always open.”