One of Rhonda’s cherished childhood memories is waking up on Saturday mornings to the sounds of Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole and other jazz greats as her father played his favorite records. By the time she was a teenager, she began amassing her own collection.

Rhonda left her native New York to attend Boston University’s College of Communication and also studied at the Actor’s Studio in Boston. When she began her career in radio as a jazz announcer/producer and later music director at WBUR-FM, Boston, she took every opportunity to immerse herself in the history of the music and hone her skills as an interviewer.

Returning to the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area in March 1979, Rhonda came to WBGO at the station’s inception and has played a key role in making Jazz 88.3FM one of the finest and most listened to jazz stations in the world. In 2001 Rhonda helped to inaugurate the jazz programming on Sirius Satellite Radio. Since 1980, she has had a regular presence on NPR as the voice of numerous nationally syndicated programs including JazzSet and NPR’s annual New Year’s Eve broadcast, Toast of the Nation-Coast to Coast. She’s been honored by the Jazz Journalists Association and has received two consecutive New York Jazz Awards for Best Jazz DJ “in appreciation of a major contribution to the cultural life of our region.” Among other honors, Ms. Hamilton is also a recipient of The Ladies in Jazz Award from the Mayor of NYC and the Harlem Chamber of Commerce. Jazz is Rhonda’s first love, but her other passion is golf.

Rhonda took part in the Jaris Reed Group workshop for Teens in 2015 where two students from the program spent the day with her learning the ropes first hand from this Jazz Master of the airwaves. The news room and Engineering were other stops then at the end of the day Station Manager Amy Niles contributed as well.