DJ and radio personality Harmony Soleil visits campus

IAS alum Harmony Soleil is a resident DJ at Seattle’s C89.5 and co-founder of UWave Radio. Recently, she visited UW Bothell to chat with students in IAS faculty member Amoshaun Toft’s “Community Radio Journalism” course about her experiences with interviewing musicians and a career in radio.

Experience with journalism is one of the many key skills Soleil took away from her Media & Communication Studies core classes. During her enrollment at UW Bothell, Soleil took the same “Community Radio Journalism” course from Toft, which prompted her to conduct and edit interviews with the Directors of the Washington State Department of Transportation, recording their course of action for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. The ability to produce professional quality media content and critically analyze media was something Soleil got to continue experiencing and sharing with the campus community as she worked with other student leaders to create UWave Radio, where she hosted her own weekly show. Soleil felt rewarded to talk with some of the current UWave Radio student leaders taking Toft’s class, saying, “I’m so excited that the things I was a part of [at UW Bothell] are still going on. It’s important to keep the arts alive on campus.”

Since graduating in 2012, Soleil has returned to her high school Nathan Hale in Seattle, where C89.5 has been running for over 45 years, to work as the Advanced Radio Instructor, Social Media Manager, and Radio Personality for her own daily show. Her role gives her the opportunity to individually mentor and train current high school students who share the same passion for broadcasting as her. Her relationship with the students of Nathan Hale and UW Bothell inspire her to work hard and continue sharing music and stories with her community. One of Soleil’s proudest accomplishments through her work with the C89.5 station is her “Womxn in Dance Music” initiative which provides a spotlight to local female and non-binary identifying artists in the music industry. She’s confident that her ability to promote these artists through interviews was best developed through her firsthand experience with interviewing fellow Seattleites in Toft’s course.