Ben Coakley has been with WRFI as a volunteer since 2018, and on staff since 2022. He has served as the station's Executive Director since January 2025. He grew up listening to WXYC and WXDU in North Carolina, and was first on the air on KDIC in Iowa. Ben has spent most of the last 25 years living in Tompkins County, and now lives in Danby with his family.
Felix Teitelbaum (he/him)
Program Director
**PLEASE NOTE - Felix is on-leave November 2025 - February 2026. Please direct all questions to gm@ithacaradio.org.**
Since WRFI’s live debut in December 2012, Felix has been an avid volunteer, employee, and host of several music and talk programs. From 2014 until 2025, he served as WRFI's Executive Director and the station's sole full-time employee. He's currently co-producing "The Undiscovered Country: Voices Over the Wall" with Michael Rhynes, and hosts the FLX News Exchange, as well as his music program "The Scenic Route."
Felix is a media professional with 30 years of experience in radio, filmmaking, and marketing. As a union camera assistant in New York City, he worked on everything from “Sesame Street” to “The Sopranos,” music videos, commercials, and industrials. He was a member of the marketing department at GreenStar Cooperative where he served as Managing Editor of the Co-op’s tabloid newsletter. Felix is a longtime Ithaca resident, gardener, animal lover, and cross country skier.
Gayle has been an active WRFI volunteer, and host of “The Vicious Pink Show” since moving to Tompkins County in 2023. She joined the staff as Program Coordinator in 2025.
Gayle is a creative professional with a background in media production, digital marketing, and design. As an agency-represented makeup artist in New York City and Los Angeles, her work has appeared in television, film, and magazines. Since 2018, she has applied her distinct visual style to the branding and marketing efforts of women-owned fashion brands.
Passionate about underground music, pop art, and creative collaboration, she spends her free time digging for obscure vintage minimal wave albums, collecting sound clips from 80’s B-horror movies, and creating digital illustrations.
With a childhood spent reading fantasy novels in the forests of Ithaca, and listening to Haudenosaunee legends on the shores of Seneca Lake, Zoë’s roots in this region grow deep. After completing degrees at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Trinity College Dublin, both with a focus on human rights and social movements, she returned home eager to tame her wanderlust of the wide world with her deep love of the Finger Lakes. Past adventures have found her volunteering with rescued elephants in Thailand, baking bread in Peru, and harvesting honey in New Zealand.
Since returning home she managed the Marketing & Community Engagement for The History Center in Tompkins County for nearly five years, coordinated child sexual abuse prevention programs with the Advocacy Center of Tompkins County, built multiple websites for Ithaca-based businesses and local artists, and worked on local vineyards and farms. Zoë is an avid volunteer, and has served on the board of directors for Ithaca Murals, and IPEI.
Since 2023 Zoë has been the co-owner and property manager for the ARQ Barn, an intentional and collaborative rural arts and crafts community. She joined WRFI in 2025 excited to bring her wealth of community connections, expansive history in event planning, and love of local music to the vital work of local radio.
Her free time is happiest spent dancing to live music, enjoying a charcuterie board paired with a local cider, practicing fiber arts and threadcraft, or working on her dream of planting a forest at her home in Mecklenburg.