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About the team

Meet the team behind CBC's Doc Unit and Helluva Story.
CBC Radio ·
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Julia Pagel is a senior producer of CBC Radio's Doc Unit. She started her career at CBC Nova Scotia as a news reporter and chase producer, before moving to Toronto to produce for As It Happens, The Current, Q, Metro Morning and The Doc Project. Her reporting is often focused on human rights and education. You can reach her at julia.pagel@cbc.ca.

Julia Pagel started her career at CBC Nova Scotia as a news reporter and chase producer. She then returned to Toronto to produce for As It Happens, The Current, q, and Metro Morning. She eventually found a home at The Doc Project as part of the original team creating the program seven years ago. As the years progressed, Julia focused her reporting on human rights and education. Now, as the senior producer of the new documentary unit, Julia is thrilled to be part of this innovative space for doc creation at CBC. You can reach her at julia.pagel@cbc.ca.

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Acey Rowe is among Canada's most experienced story editors, known for her years as the host, producer and lead editor of The Doc Project, CBC Radio's award-winning Canadian documentary show. Her podcasting credits include CBC's Caravan and The Salmon People from Canada's National Observer. As an editor she has has guided more than a dozen reporters, from novice to veteran, to wins at New York Festivals, The Gabriel Awards, CAJ/JHR Award for Human Rights Reporting, CJF Award for Climate Solutions Reporting, RTDNAs, imagineNATIVE, and more. A narrative journalist, her work explores explores big ideas through real lives. You can reach her at acey.rowe@cbc.ca.

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John Chipman is an award-winning journalist and author. He is a long-time producer and radio documentary maker with The Current and previously with The Sunday Edition. He was a part of the team that launched The Current in 2002, as well as the National Post in 1998. His latest book, Death in the Family, was a national bestseller and won The Speaker's Book Award in 2019. John also spent three years producing the CBC Podcast Life Jolt, which chronicled inmates' experiences at Grand Valley Institution for Women, a federal prison in Kitchener, Ont. You can reach him at john.chipman@cbc.ca.

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Joan Webber has been producing award-winning CBC radio documentaries as a passion and profession for more than two decades. Her work has taken her around the world, from Moscow to Mexico City to Moose Jaw — pursuing stories of con artists, dissidents, snipers and even a self-professed tiger tamer. She also co-produced and wrote the CBC podcast A Death in Cryptoland. Joan hails from Saskatchewan but makes her home on the West Coast. You can reach her at joan.webber@cbc.ca. 

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Alisa Siegel is a longtime CBC radio documentary maker. She began her radio life at Ideas and Tapestry and spent nearly 20 years at The Sunday Edition. Alisa passionately shares stories about unsung women artists, history, and the human condition — how we live and die, and who it is that gets to be remembered. 

Her first foray into radio was a story about her family's escape to the West Indies on the eve of the Second World War. Since then, Alisa has produced stories on subjects as varied as Iranian revolutionary poets, the underground railroad for refugees in Fort Erie, Canadian nurses in the First World War, the first legal gay co-adoption in Canada, Medical Assistance in Dying, and the daring women artists of 1920s Montreal. Her work has been recognized with international awards by Amnesty International, The Gabriels, The New York Festivals and the United Nations.