Friends of WWNO.org

About Us

Like WWNO radio station, Friends of WWNO is a 100% community funded organization, completely independent from any government funding.  You can help us in our mission to support WWNO and public radio broadcasting in the Greater New Orleans area and Southeast Louisiana.

Directors & Officers

Mark P. Seyler, Board of Directors Chair 

Mr. Seyler grew up in New Orleans, attended New Orleans Public Schools, graduated from the University of New Orleans, and obtained a law degree from Tulane University.  He practiced law in New Orleans for 35 years before retiring in 2021.  He has been a committed listener to WWNO since law school, and has volunteered in support of WWNO in various capacities since 2006, including serving as a member and Chair of the WWNO Executive Council.

Jack Davis, Board of Directors Vice Chair 

Mr. Davis worked as a reporter, columnist and editor at three New Orleans papers (Figaro, The States-Item and the Times-Picayune) in the 1970s and 1980s.  At Chicago’s Tribune Company, starting in 1983, he was an editor (at the Tribune and at the Daily Press, in Virginia) and the publisher/CEO of the Daily Press and the Hartford Courant, America’s oldest newspaper.   He returned to New Orleans to work on preservation causes and the Katrina recovery, as a board member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Congress for the New Urbanism, and filled in as executive director of the Preservation Resource Center.   He is a Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, spent a year in India on a Knox Fellowship from Harvard, and was a journalism fellow at Stanford for a year.

Peter Ricchiuti, Treasurer 

Mr. Ricchiuti has been teaching courses in finance at Tulane University for more than 40 years. He is also the host of the popular weekly business show  “Out to Lunch” on WWNO.

Robert Steeg, Secretary

Mr. Steeg is co-managing partner of the Steeg Law Firm, a real estate and business law firm in New Orleans for over 50 years.  Mr. Steeg holds a J.D. degree from Boston College Law School and a Master’s degree in Communications from the Annenberg School of the University of Pennsylvania. Active is civic and charitable organizations in New Orleans, Mr. Steeg is currently a Commissioner on the City Planning Commission of New Orleans and is a former President of the New Orleans Museum of Art.  He is married and has two children and two granddaughters.  He lives in New Orleans.

Melanie Bronfin, Director 

Ms. Bronfin has spent the past 20 years as an advocate for young children in Louisiana. She founded the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children and served as its Executive Director for five years before implementing a successful succession plan. She established the organization as the leading independent source of data, research, and policy proposals on issues related to young children in Louisiana, earning more than 250 media stories about the organization and its work. Her efforts played a key role in the comprehensive reform of Louisiana’s early care and education system, and in approximately 10,000 more low-income Louisiana children gaining access to publicly funded, high quality early care and education. Before founding the Policy Institute, she spent eight years with the Tulane University Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health as a Policy Analyst and Assistant Director of BrightStart, where she helped design Louisiana’s early childhood Quality Rating and Improvement System and the nationally recognized package of School Readiness Tax Credits. She has served on numerous non-profit and state boards focused on policy and improving outcomes for children and engaging women as leaders. She is a recipient of the 2021 Southern Early Childhood Association’s President’s Award, the Bureau of Governmental Research’s 2020 Excellence in Government Award for Citizenship, AVODAH’s 2019 Partner in Justice Award, the Louisiana Early Childhood Association’s 2018 Friends of Children Award, Clover’s Champion for Children Award, and Agenda for Children’s Voice for Louisiana’s Children Award. A lifelong Louisiana resident, she graduated summa cum laude with a BA from Yale University and magna cum laude with a J.D. from Tulane University School of Law.

Marjorie Esman, Director

Ms. Esman. an attorney, retired from the position of Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana, where she served from 2007-2017. She spent twenty years in the private practice of law focusing on copyright and trademark issues and First Amendment litigation, and resumed that practice until she retired (again) in 2025. In addition to her law degree (Tulane 1987), she has a BA from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Tulane University (1981), and has taught at Tulane, LSU, and the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette).

Julian Mutter, Director

Mr. Mutter, a native and lifelong resident of New Orleans, graduated from Tulane University [BA 1972]. He managed his family’s home furnishing business while co-founding a retail bookstore. Retiring in 2016, Julian renovates historic properties in the Faubourg Marigny. His most recent project is the conversion of the Annunciation Church into the New Marigny Theatre, a non-profit arts and community-based venue.