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(510) 251-8100

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Bay City News Foundation
900 Hilldale Ave.
Berkeley CA 94708

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kat@baycitynews.com

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Bay City News

• Catchlight
• Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and INN (intern support)
• CUNY Newmark Journalism School (intern support)
• Dow Jones News Fund (intern support)
• Emma Bowen Foundation (intern support)
• Google News Initiative
• Hogan-Newton Fund (intern support)
• Institute for Nonprofit News

• JSK Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University
• John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (intern support)
• Lenfest Institute for Journalism 
• Miami Foundation (NewsMatch)
• Microsoft News
• PolicyLink
• Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship

• ProPublica Local
• Renaissance Journalism
• Report for America
• San Francisco Foundation
• Silicon Valley Community Foundation
• Solutions Journalism Network
• Starling Lab for Data Integrity
• USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism
• Wikimedia Foundation

Kat Rowlands

President

Katherine Ann Rowlands is president of Bay City News Service, executive director of Bay City News Foundation and editorial director of LocalNewsMatters.org. She has worked as a journalist for 35 years, covering news in the Bay Area, Central California and overseas. As a 2017 JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, she focused her research on how to overcome gender disparities in newsrooms, especially in leadership positions, and how to bolster local news coverage in the Bay Area. In 2018, she bought Bay City News, a local wire service that has been covering the 9-county San Francisco Bay Area since 1979, and founded a nonprofit to support public service journalism in the region. Kat is also a past president of Journalism and Women Symposium, a national group that provides training, networking and mentoring for women in journalism. She is on the board of the First Amendment Coalition. A Berkeley native, she got her start in journalism as a summer intern for Bay City News Service. Reach her at kat@baycitynews.com.

Rob Merker

Treasurer

Rob Merker had a successful career starting and operating two real estate-related businesses in New York City and has a strong background in finance. After retiring in 2012, he obtained a doctorate in philosophy with a specialization in ethics from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. His dissertation was on ethical issues in philanthropy, and he currently teaches and speaks on ethical issues and philanthropy.  An accomplished public speaker, he has taught at The University of California Berkeley in the OLLI program; Cal State University East Bay in Hayward; and Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY. Rob has served on numerous not-for-profit boards and also served as treasurer for non-profit organizations. He currently sits on the ethics committee of Kaiser Oakland hospital, and the committees for ethical treatment of human subjects at Cal Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley labs.

Sarah Pollock

Secretary

Sarah Pollock has had a long career editing, managing publications, and teaching. She has been senior editor at Mother Jones, editor-in-chief at Pacific Discovery (the natural history magazine of the California Academy of Sciences), features editor at the Oakland Tribune, and a staff writer at Newsday and the Hartford Courant. She headed the journalism program at Mills College for many years and she is active nationally around issues of diversity and integrity in journalism. She has served on the boards of the Journalism and Women Symposium, the First Amendment Project, Pelican Media and the Julia Morgan School for Girls. She is a public speaker on topics such as truth and trust in journalism; ethics in creative nonfiction; newsroom values and diversity; and teaching strategies in higher education writing classrooms. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she was managing editor of The Daily Californian.

Bob Butler

Member, BCNF Board

Bob Butler has decades of experience in radio and television news reporting, writing and production. He is also a freelance reporter at KCBS Radio in San Francisco and has reported around the globe for CBS Network Radio. He has taught broadcast journalism at University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. He served eight years on the board of the National Association of Black Journalists, the last two as president.

James Chadwick

Member, BCNF Board

James Chadwick is a media and intellectual property attorney residing in the Bay Area. He has represented news media (print, broadcast, and online), authors, documentary film makers, and other content creators and distributors throughout his career. His work has included defending media clients in litigation and advising them on prepublication and prebroadcast risk mitigation, content licensing, and intellectual property matters. He has also specialized in pursuing litigation seeking access to government records and meetings. He is the recipient of multiple awards for his work in these areas, including the Norman S. Yaffe Career Achievement Award from the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He received a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of California Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and a J.D. from Santa Clara University.

Bill Drummond

Member, BCNF Board

Drummond’s career includes stints at The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, where he covered the civil rights movement, and the Los Angeles Times, where he was a local reporter, then bureau chief in New Delhi and Jerusalem and later a Washington correspondent. Drummond was appointed a White House Fellow in 1976 by President Gerald R. Ford, worked briefly for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and eventually became associate press secretary to President Jimmy Carter. In 1979 he joined NPR and became the founding editor of Morning Edition. He joined the Berkeley faculty in July, 1983. He has served two terms as Chair of the UC Berkeley Academic Senate.

Lindsay N. Green-Barber

Member, BCNF Board

Lindsay N. Green-Barber, PhD, founder of Impact Architects LLC, is a leading media and communications impact professional with experience in quantitative and qualitative research, new ICTs and media innovation, strategic planning and communication, program measurement and evaluation, management, fundraising, and business administration. She is passionate about using rigorous research methods to inform organizations’ strategy and decision-making to catalyze social change. Lindsay earned her doctorate in Political Science from the City University of New York Graduate Center (’12) and a B.S. in Political Science from Clemson University (’05). Lindsay is a listener, a teacher, a learner, and a speaker based in San Francisco. She has spent time living in New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina, Ecuador, Italy, and England.

Jareen Imam

Member, BCNF Board

Board member Jareen Imam is a content creator, social media strategist, and digital marketer working in the tech industry in the New York City area. Currently, she’s a senior content and editorial manager for Amazon Ads, working cross-functionally with teams in social, marketing, events, product, data, and design. Prior to joining Amazon, she worked in the media industry for 10 years as a people manager and journalist. She’s held global leadership positions at NBC, CBS News, and CNN. In her free time, she paints and films content about love, money, and careers. She’s also a published creative writer and poet.

Jenn Kho

Member, BCNF Board

Jennifer Kho is executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and president of the Journalism and Women Symposium. Previously, she served as VP of journalism and information equity at DoGoodery, a consulting agency that ideates, creates and executes initiatives to improve lives and reduce inequity. She was also a senior adviser for Canary Media, an adviser for The Pivot Fund and an independent researcher. She co-authored a Membership Puzzle Project report on building news communities. She held leadership roles as the senior director of strategic innovation at HuffPost, where she led the development of new audience engagement, storytelling and revenue models, including membership; managing editor for HuffPost; and managing editor for the Guardian US. You can reach her on LinkedIn or on Twitter @jennkho.

Ryan Nakashima

Member, BCNF Board

Ryan Nakashima is director of product management and subscriptions at Hearst Newspapers. Previously, he was senior product manager of digital subscriptions at Media News Group. A JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 2016-17, his product work and interest in pricing models for ad-free subscriptions was built on a career as a technology and media reporter at The Associated Press, where he worked for 13 years, most recently in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering Google. He also worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Japan Times and Agence-France Presse in Tokyo. After covering the movie and music industry’s transition from DVDs and CDs to streaming, he became more concerned that the newspaper industry was not turning the corner fast enough. He graduated with a bachelor in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada where he was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Charlatan.

Alejandra Saragoza

Member, BCNF Board

Alejandra Saragoza is a content creator and editorial manager in the Bay Area with experience in the publishing industry. She is currently the managing editor for Zendesk, spearheading the daily editorial operations for the award-winning SaaS company. Prior to that, she served as managing editor for California.com, spearheading the content strategy and daily editorial operations for the start-up media site that serves as a guide to living and traveling in California. She also worked as an editor for Diablo magazine, Healthline Media, and other tech companies. Her work has been published in The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Via, and Touring & Tasting. She graduated from UC Santa Barbara, where she majored in communication and minored in professional writing and editing. She also studied at Universidad Complutense de Madrid for one year and worked at an expat magazine.

Laura Cucullu

Strategic Operations Director

Laura is strategic operations director for Bay City News and Local News Matters, focused on optimizing systems to help our reporters get the news out quickly and cleanly. In her decade-plus managing editorial packages for CNET, she also specialized in content operations for its global editorial staff. She’s consulted for everything from non-profits to Fortune 500 companies, helping to streamline workflows and creating knowledge bases for employees. She holds a degree in English Literature and Journalism from Mills College in Oakland, Calif., where she was editor in chief of the Mills College Weekly. A Louisiana native, she shares her family gumbo recipe with anyone who asks because food is love and meant to be shared. She mostly bows to the AP Stylebook but has an undying love for serial commas and wields them wherever she can. 

Ugur Dursun

Newsletter Editor, Impact Manager

Ugur Dursun is a reporter for Bay City News Foundation, working on breaking news and arts coverage, as well as special projects like the Bloom mapping project. Before they graduated from Stanford University in 2021, they worked at BCN for two summers, covering breaking news, managing social media accounts, and building the site’s award-winning Covid-19 Information Hub to keep Bay Area residents informed about the pandemic. Previously, they worked as a desk editor at The Stanford Daily and an editorial assistant at Bella Magazine. They are passionate about equity, social justice, and all things music-related.

Aurora Kasten

Development Manager

Aurora Kasten works as Development Manager for Bay City News Foundation. Prior to joining BCN, she worked in development for five years at Common Sense, a national media and technology nonprofit headquartered in San Francisco. At Common Sense, Aurora managed donor prospect research, cultivation, stewardship, event planning, and Salesforce database administration for the organization’s Bay Area fundraising efforts.  Aurora holds a bachelor’s degree in Latin American & Latino Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. A proud native of San Mateo, Aurora enjoys trying new restaurants and soaking up all the arts and culture of the Bay Area.

Leslie Katz

Arts & Culture Editor

Leslie Katz has been covering the diverse Bay Area arts scene since 1988, when she compiled Bay City News’ Leisure Log entertainment calendar.

She also worked as a news reporter and editor at BCN before enjoying exciting stints overseeing arts and culture stories at ANG Newspapers (now Bay Area News Group) and the San Francisco Examiner from the 1990s into the 21^st century.

She has answered queries on the Fleischmann’s Yeast bakers’ helpline and had publishing jobs at the greeting card company Palm Press as well as Chronicle Books.

Look for her in a theater, club or concert hall audience, hopefully in a preferred aisle seat!

Chloe Lee Rowlands

Web Manager

As web manager of LocalNewsMatters.org, Chloe oversees the presentation of all content on this nonprofit, public service site and coordinates related social media for @baynewsmatters. She also leads a team of data journalists at Bay City News Foundation who use data to report on and create visualizations to show trends throughout the Bay Area related to health, equity and demographics. Since 2020, she has also created several Info Hubs to help readers filter relevant information on COVID-19, wildfires and library resources.

Dan McMenamin

BCN Managing Editor

Dan McMenamin runs the daily news operation at Bay City News Service, directing coverage of the 12-county greater Bay Area. He has worked for Bay City News Service since 2008 and has been managing editor since 2014 after previously serving as BCN’s San Francisco bureau reporter. A UC Davis graduate, he came to BCN after working for a newspaper and nonprofit in the Davis area. He handles staffing, including coaching of our interns, day-to-day coverage decisions and management of the newswire.

Anna Kristina Moseidjord

Administrative Assistant

Anna Kristina (she/her) is a writer and BCN admin assistant from Oakland, California. She is a graduate of UC Davis, where she double majored in English and History.

Kathy Pfrommer

Datebook Editor

Kathy Pfrommer works as an executive assistant and calendar editor for the Bay City News Datebook. She curates and edits submissions on newsworthy events around the region that are of interest to media for coverage. Before coming to BCN, she worked as an editorial assistant for Bay Area News Group and the Oakland Tribune.

Lenora Quinonez

Digital Marketing Fellow

Lenora is a fellow at Bay City News through COOP Careers and the Institute for Nonprofit News. A proud 1st Nicaraguan, she holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Contemporary Latino & Latin American Studies and a Master’s in Public Diplomacy from USC. Lenora’s previous experiences have allowed her to merge her passions for storytelling, social justice, data, and marketing. In her downtime, she enjoys listening to podcasts, delving into astrology, and exploring public libraries.

Dan Rosenheim

Editor, Director of BCN Business Development

A veteran journalist, Dan Rosenheim is the director of business development for Bay City News Service and edits LocalNewsMatters.org stories. He worked as a reporter for newspapers in Chicago and San Francisco before becoming city editor at The San Francisco Chronicle. He later became the paper’s managing editor and then moved to television, where he was news director at KRON-TV and vice president/news at KPIX-5. Newsrooms under his stewardship won Pulitzer, Peabody, Batten and Unity awards.

Ray Saint Germain

Photo Editor

Ray Saint Germain has been a Bay Area journalist since his 1991 start at the Antioch Daily Ledger/Pittsburg Post Dispatch. He served in varying roles at later iterations of the news organization, including the Contra Costa Times, East Bay Times and Bay Area News Group. Since joining Bay City News, he has built a new photo department for the organization, overseeing acquisition, quality control, verification, staff mentoring and multi-media projects.

Heather Allen

Heather Allen is a reporter in the South Bay. She is currently a student journalist at San Jose State University where she is studying broadcast journalism and feature writing. She is also a multimedia journalist and sometimes producer at Update News at SJSU. As a former personal trainer, she has a passion for all things health and fitness. She also enjoys reporting on environmental, housing and other major issues affecting the Bay Area.

Jeff Ballinger

Jeff Ballinger joined the Bay City News team in February as the night editor for Bay City News, writing and editing breaking news. A California native, he was an award-winning reporter at The Tribune in San Luis Obispo, where he was at various times an education reporter, assistant city editor and web editor. He also has a decade of experience in communications, serving as university webmaster and as a communications director at Columbia University in New York. He has been a freelancer since 2015 and is currently a contributing writer at Columbia Medicine magazine and a communications consultant for higher education. Since 2017, he and his wife have lived in Paris, where he founded the Paris Cycling B-Group, which includes nearly 2,000 expats and native French road cycling enthusiasts.

Keith Burbank

Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.

Marcy Burstiner

Marcy Burstiner works as a projects editor for Bay City News Foundation. She is a former assistant managing editor of financial site The Deal and was a senior reporter for thestreet.com, where she covered Silicon Valley. She is the author of “Investigative Reporting: From Premise to Publication” (Holcomb Hathaway) and teaches investigative reporting at Humboldt State University.

Casey Cantrell

Casey Cantrell has spent the past decade working as a journalist, writer, and editor for a variety of news publications and regional magazines, including Diablo and Carquinez. His work has covered a range of topics, including community activism in the Bay Area, climate change, infrastructure, and politics. He writes news and feature stories for LocalNewsMatters.org and has done a variety of research projects for Bay City News Foundation.

Caroline Crawford

Caroline Crawford has worked as music historian in UC’s Bancroft Library since 1987, documenting the lives of composers and jazz and blues musicians. She has written for Opera magazine and Opera News and played piano with Bread and Roses for many years.

Iris Crawford

Iris M. Crawford began her journalistic training with the Maynard Institute of Journalism Education’s Oakland Voices. Currently an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she covers all things social justice with a particular interest in climate justice and arts & culture. She has bylines in The San Francisco Chronicle, Rewire, People’s World and more. 

Joe Dworetzky

Joe Dworetzky is a second career intern at the Bay City News Foundation. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years, representing private and governmental clients in commercial litigation and insolvency proceedings. Joe served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and from 2009 to 2013 was one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for managing the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in editorial cartooning. Joe earned a Master’s in Journalism from Stanford University in 2020. 

Victoria Franco

Victoria Franco is a Stockton-based reporter covering the diverse news around the Central Valley as part of the Report for America program. As a Stockton native, Franco is proud to cover stories within her community and report a variety of coverage. She is a San Jose State University alumna with a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism.  In her collegiate years she was Managing Editor for the Spartan Daily. From her time at the Spartan Daily she helped lead her staff to California College Media Awards and a General Excellence first place. Now, she hopes to take on the journalism world with her bilingual skill set to help tell those stories of people without a voice. 

Sue Gilmore

Sue Gilmore writes about arts, entertainment and books for LocalNewsMatters.org. She has been working in journalism for more decades than she cares to admit, focusing in more recent years on the coverage of books, classical music and dance and the defense of written English. She is also a sharp copy editor and lover of Bay Area culture. She worked for the Contra Costa Times and Bay Area News Group and lives in Orinda.

Rowena Gonden

Rowena Gonden has worked as a features writer and news reporter for the Bay Area News Group, where she won awards from the California News Publishers Association and covered stories on nearly every beat in eastern Contra Costa County from public safety, health and religion to education, local government and the Delta.

Gina Gotsill

Gina Gotsill, a longtime arts writer, covers a variety of topics for Bay City News Foundation. She studied journalism at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley, and her writing life has spanned news writing, editing, corporate communications, marketing and playwriting. She co-authored a business book, Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus, in 2010, and wrote and self-published a Spanish/English children’s story, A Spider on the Step, in 2014.

Tony Hicks

Tony Hicks covers Contra Costa County news and leads our Library Hub team. He previously worked for Bay Area News Group for 22 years as an award-winning news and feature writer, columnist, and music and film critic. He’s also written for Healthline, Berkeleyside, Diablo magazine, Riff magazine, Bay Area Parent, Parents Press, Oakland magazine, and BAM magazine. He grew up in the East Bay, attended SF State, and was the editor in chief of the Diablo Valley College Inquirer. He’s the father of four daughters and a violent cat. 

Thomas Hughes

Thomas grew up in San Diego in the late 20th century and later earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Global Studies from CSUMB. He spent 5 years as a local broadcast journalist on California’s Central Coast, covering local news and hosting talk shows focusing on global press freedom. He is currently earning a Master’s in Journalism from Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY in New York City. Thomas enjoys basketball, comedy, and turtles.

Kathleen Kirkwood

Kathleen Kirkwood works as the supervising weekend editor for Bay City News Service and also writes about environment and science issues. A journalist with three decades of reporting and editing experience in the Bay Area, she covered the community and city hall for the Oakland Tribune as a reporter before becoming city editor at the Trib. She was breaking news editor on the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Ship fire story for the Bay Area News Group.

Charles Lewis III

Charles Lewis III is a journalist, arts critic, and artist. He was born and raised in San Francisco and has frequently written about art, race, and the intersection between the two. His reports and op-eds have appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, the East Bay Express, SF Weekly, and his Local News Matters pieces have been reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle. His art reviews have been quoted by the most renowned organizations in the Bay Area. As a playwright, director, and actor, he’s had the pleasure of working with local titans ACT, Berkeley Rep, and Cal Shakes, as well as renowned independent houses the EXIT Theatre, PianoFight, and The Flight Deck. He can be found online at The Thinking Man’s Idiot.

Harika Maddala

Harika Maddala is a photojournalist based in Stockton, covering the news around San Joaquin County for Bay City News and its nonprofit news site Local News Matters. They are a Report for America corps member and a CatchLight Local Fellow. Maddala also documents the homelessness crisis as a research fellow at the Starling Lab for Data Integrity, which was co-founded by Stanford University and the University of Southern California. Born and raised in India, Maddala is fluent in Telugu, Hindi and Kannada, and moved to the U.S. at age 19. As a staff photographer and photo editor for San Francisco State’s newspaper, the Golden Gate Xpress, they covered police violence, prison transfers and environmental racism, and placed in the top 10 in the Hearst Journalism Awards 2021. In the same year, they also won the Fran Ortiz grant for their work with the families who lost their loved ones to police violence in the Bay Area. 

Janis Mara

Janis Mara does reporting and editing for Bay City News and Local News Matters. She has worked at the Oakland Tribune, the Marin Independent Journal and Adweek, winning California News Publishers Association and Digital First Media awards for video, investigative work, business coverage and education writing.

Randy Myers

Randy Myers hails from a small Northern California town and has been ensconced in the Bay Area for nearly three decades. He’s eager to turn 30 this coming year. Yeah, right. He’s been a sports writer, sports editor, editorial writer, features editor, arts and entertainment editor, online news producer and for many years a film reviewer/journalist, including author of Pass the Remote on Local News Matters. He adores the vibrant, dynamic energy of the Bay Area arts and entertainment scene. He divides his time between being a writer and being a group exercise instructor/trainer

Susan Nash

Susan Nash reports on legal matters for Local News Matters and also writes about issues relating to aging and technology. She has recently been a Fellow at the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute, where she studied the interaction between social media and democracy, and a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity, where she worked on digital literacy and access for older adults. Susan practiced law in Los Angeles for 35 years, representing individual and corporate clients in civil and criminal cases. She is now a Giants fan and lives in Palo Alto.

Elena Neale-Sacks

Elena Neale-Sacks is an audio and print reporter based in Oakland and Berkeley, with a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Elena also works part-time as a research assistant for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and was a summer intern at Open Vallejo, in partnership with Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program and Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center. She has previously reported, produced, and edited for the podcast Talk Policy To Me and reported on the integrity of the 2020 election for CalMatters’ Votebeat project. When she’s not reporting or editing, Elena loves finding new hiking trails in the Bay Area, drinking strong coffee, and watching Survivor.

Jessica Pasko

Jessica Pasko, a contributor to Bay City News Foundation, has been a journalist and communications professional for 15 years. An East Coast native, she’s worked for publications throughout the Santa Cruz/Monterey area, Chicago and New York State, including a stint with the Associated Press. She lives in Santa Cruz.

Kiley Russell

Kiley Russell writes primarily for Local News Matters on issues related to equity and the environment. A Bay Area native, he has lived most of his life in Oakland. He studied journalism at San Francisco State University, worked for the Associated Press and the former Contra Costa Times, among other outlets. He has covered everything from state legislatures, local governments, federal and state courts, crime, growth and development, political campaigns of various stripes, wildfires and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Katy St. Clair

Katy St. Clair got her start in journalism by working in the classifieds department at the East Bay Express during the height of alt weeklies, then sweet talked her way into becoming staff writer, submissions editor, and music editor. She has been a columnist in the East Bay Express, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Examiner. Starting in 2015, she begrudgingly scaled the inverted pyramid at dailies such as the Vallejo Times-Herald, The Vacaville Reporter, and the Daily Republic. She has her own independent news site and blog that covers the delightfully dysfunctional town of Vallejo, California, where she also collaborates with the investigative team at Open Vallejo. A passionate advocate for people with developmental disabilities, she serves on both the Board of the Arc of Solano and the Arc of California. Her story “A Very Special Concert,” about Huey Lewis’ loyal fanbase of developmentally disabled listeners, garnered her an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music writing and inclusion in Da Capo Press’ “Year’s Best Music Writing” book, edited by Mary Gaitskill. She lives in Vallejo.

Lydia Sviatoslavsky

Lydia Sviatoslavsky is an Oakland-based journalist and digital media consultant. She has previously penned arts & culture content for Audiofemme, Broke-Ass Stuart, and Collectors Weekly. She is a recent graduate of Mills College in Oakland.

Felix Uribe

Felix Uribe is a photojournalist who works on equity projects. He was born and raised in Silicon Valley and currently is a resident in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, where he’s committed to highlighting the beauty of his neighborhood that’s often misunderstood and ignored. Passionate about life’s “in-between moments,” Felix has been a Catchlight Local Fellow, working in partnership with Bay City News Foundation to document economic disparities and what it takes to stay in the Bay Area.

Meg Waite Clayton

Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times and international bestselling author of seven novels, most recently the Jewish Book Award finalist “The Last Train to London” (coming soon in 20 languages). She has written more than 100 short pieces for publications including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Forbes, and Runners World. She curates the monthly Bay City Books column for Local News Matters. megwaiteclayton.com

Amelia Williams

Amelia Williams is a bilingual San Francisco journalist covering culture, local history and cannabis. Her work has appeared in Leafly, SFGate, and SF Chronicle Datebook among others. She contributes features stories to Local News Matters.

Kevin Wing

Kevin Wing is a two-time Emmy Award-winning journalist who is a supervising editor for Bay City News. A seasoned communications and public relations professional, he has worked as a news reporter, producer, special projects producer, writer, field producer, assignment editor and news anchor. At KNTV NBC Bay Area, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for best breaking news.

Olivia Wynkoop

Olivia Wynkoop is a student journalist at San Francisco State University, originally from Dixon, California. She’s formerly been managing editor, social media editor and reporter for her university’s student-run paper, Golden Gate Xpress. She also previously interned at the San Francisco Examiner and News Break. She has a flare for local politics and Bay Area-based human interest stories. Olivia is a swing shift editor at Bay City News.

Pete Young

Pete Young is a supervising editor for Bay City News Service. He worked on the metro desk of the New York Times and as California editor for Bloomberg News. He was executive editor of the Monterey County Herald and taught reporting and editing as an adjunct professor at New York University. As an advisory board member of the Alfred Friendly Foundation, he mentored journalists from nations with underdeveloped media including Egypt, Malawi, Namibia, and the Czech Republic.

Catherine Allen

Catherine Allen is a data intern through the Dow Jones News Fund. She is a rising senior at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, with a major in journalism and minor in statistics. Catherine previously served as editor in chief of Mustang News, Cal Poly’s multimedia news organization. She is passionate about public policy’s impact on communities and individuals and often writes about housing and homelessness, public health and politics.

Benjamin Coleman

Benjamin Coleman is a recent graduate from UC Berkeley where he triple-majored in English, Political Science and Legal Studies with a Journalism minor. Benjamin spent four years as a sports reporter, podcast producer and sports editor for the Daily Californian. Benjamin joins Bay City News as a Dow Jones News Fund digital media intern. In his free time Benjamin is passionate about reading, watching movies and spending time outside. 

Deidre Foley

Deidre Foley is an intern at Bay City News and an MA candidate at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she specializes in data journalism and health & science reporting. Previously she was managing editor for the San Francisco Foghorn and has bylines in the NYCity News Service, Byklner and the Nagazasshi. Deidre is interested in using data and visuals to tell social justice and human interest stories.

Helena Getahun-Hawkins

Helena Getahun-Hawkins is an intern at Bay City News through Stanford’s Rebele Fellowship. She’s a rising junior at Stanford majoring in International Relations and minoring in Spanish. She writes for The Stanford Daily under the campus life desk and was most recently managing editor of the Daily’s podcast section. She enjoys covering stories that center around education policy, immigration policy, and identity. Outside of journalism she enjoys drawing, yoga, listening to music, and watching TV.

Spencer Otte

Spencer Otte recently graduated from Cal State Fullerton, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. At Fullerton, he was the news editor and editor-in-chief of The Daily Titan and covered the 2022 midterm elections, the 2021 Orange County Oil Spill and President Biden’s visit to Irvine. This summer, Spencer was selected to be an editing intern through the Dow Jones News Fund.

Lydia Sidhom

Lydia Sidhom is a rising third-year at UC Berkeley studying Data Science and Political Science. She is a Dow Jones News Fund intern for Bay City News. Lydia was a lead beat reporter, deputy news editor and projects developer for The Daily Californian and will be a deputy projects editor there this fall. She enjoys telling stories through data. In her free time, Lydia loves to read, bake and travel. 

Prachi Singh

Prachi is a Dow Jones News Fund intern at Bay City News. She is a journalism graduate from University of Southern California. She previously worked at Annenberg Media as a Multimedia Journalist and the Managing Editor. Prachi has covered social justice, climate and human interest stories. She is interested in written and visual storytelling.

Nibras Suliman

Nibras is an intern at Bay City News through the Emma Bowen Foundation. She is a rising senior at the University of California, Berkeley, studying Media and Data Science. She is passionate about the intersection of data and journalism and previously served as the deputy editor of the data department at the Daily Californian. She spends much of her time reading and writing and is always looking for ways to support local, community-based organizing efforts. 

Charles Wellington Ayitey

Charles is a Knight Foundation intern at Bay City News and a Master of Journalist candidate at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He freelanced for Oakland Side and Oakland North on race, equity, and health outcomes in the Bay Area. Before his graduate studies, Charles worked as a Business reporter in Ghana, West Africa, covering financial markets and rising startups. At Bay City News, he is interested in reporting on public health and the intersections of race and equity in the Bay Area.

Molly Burke

Molly Burke is an intern on the data team at Bay City News. She is studying investigative journalism at Northwestern University. She has previously covered breaking news for The Sacramento Bee and The Denver Post. Molly has also worked on investigative projects surrounding no-knock warrants and nursing home deaths through the Medill Investigative Lab and The Washington Post.

Astrid Casimire

Astrid Casimire was a summer 2020 intern for Bay City News covering equity issues, the coronavirus pandemic and breaking news in San Mateo County. She graduated from Stanford University’s journalism program in 2020 and has written for The Stanford Daily, Peninsula Press, and the Trinidad Express Newspaper. She currently lives in East Palo Alto and was hired as a full-time reporter for Bay City News Foundation in 2020.

Kasey Carlson

Kasey Carlson, a journalism graduate from the University of Missouri, worked at BCN in the summer of 2019. She did stories on crime, fires, civic affairs and court hearings about a local journalist whose home was illegally raided by police. She went on to take an assistant editor job at Feast Magazine in St. Louis, MO.

Isaac Ceja

Isaac Ceja is currently a 2^nd year student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism with a concentration in photojournalism. He has experience shooting studio and field portraits, sporting teams like the Oakland Roots and is currently working on a photo project about 924 Gilman in Berkeley. Outside of journalism he enjoys trying new restaurants, playing guitar and watching movies. 

Mark Allen Cu

Mark Allen Cu is a current first-year student at Stanford University studying Communication and International Relations. Growing up on the San Diego-Tijuana border, Mark specializes in telling underreported stories about culture, identity, and world politics. Along with being a BCN intern, he is also a staff writer at The Stanford Daily and a regular contributor to local publications in San Diego and the Bay Area. His interests outside of journalism include photography, listening to R&B, and supporting small businesses.

Christine Delianne

Christine Delianne was a rising junior at Stanford University when she joined Bay City News in the summer of 2021. She was The Stanford Daily’s equity reporter for the news section and an editor for The Grind, the personal narrative section. She’s also an avid runner and the most-cutthroat Family Feud host you’ll ever meet. 

Ally Dickson

Ally Dickson is a rising junior journalism student at New York University. She is originally from Los Altos, CA. Ally is also majoring in International Relations. Last semester, Ally started writing for her school paper, Washington Square News at the News Desk. She covered stories including the Admissions tours being harassed and Climate Change Protests around New York City. In addition to the school paper, she is a part of the French club and enjoys working as a hostess. 

Mengyuan Dong

Mengyuan Dong is a first-year grad student at UC Berkeley, where she’s pursuing her master’s degree in journalism. Originally from Beijing, China, Mengyuan has interned at Chinese news outlets covering COVID-19, environment and global issues and produced data-driven stories. She also gained reporting experience at UT Austin as a news reporter for The Daily Texan when she was an undergrad there. Mengyuan’s interests include environmental issues, public health and social justice. She is excited to learn more about breaking news coverage and using data to make stories more engaging. 

Ugur Dursun

Ugur Dursun, as a student at Stanford University, worked for two summers at BCN, in 2019 and 2020 before joining the staff. They worked on covering breaking news and curating social media for Bay City News, Bay City News Foundation and LocalNewsMatters. Their special project was to help create the site’s COVID-19 Information Hub to keep Bay Area residents informed about the pandemic.

Joe Dworetzky

Joe Dworetzky was a second career intern at the Bay City News Foundation in the fall of 2020. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years, representing private and governmental clients in commercial litigation and insolvency proceedings. Joe served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and from 2009 to 2013 was one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for managing the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in editorial cartooning. Joe earned a Master’s in Journalism from Stanford University in 2020. He was hired by BCN Foundation in 2021 to cover legal affairs, write about local culture and work on a cartooning project.

Paige Ellis

Paige Ellis worked as an intern for Bay City News in the summers of 2021 and 2022 prior to entering her junior year at UCSB. She worked on social media platforms for Local News Matters and a geotagging mapping project to help identify areas that need more coverage in the region. In her studies at UCSB, she is a communications major with an emphasis in journalism. She has a strong interest in culture, arts, and social justice.

Diego Felix

Diego Felix was an intern in 2020 while also pursuing studies in journalism and criminal justice at San Francisco State University. Hailing from the East Bay, Diego hopes to become a sports reporter. He has always been fascinated by criminology. His work at BCN included breaking news reporting and writing.

Tilly Friedlander

Tilly Friedlander, a junior at UCLA, worked for a full summer at BCN in 2020. In addition to writing breaking news and stories about the North Bay, Tilly helped to build the COVID-19 Information Hub and wrote stories about equity issues in the community and inspiring efforts to help each other during the pandemic.

Alexandra Jade Garcia

Alexandra Jade Garcia is a current sophomore at UC Berkeley studying Society & Environment. Her experience growing up in the South Bay Area has been formative to her passion for social and environmental justice. She is interested in climate change portrayal in the media; especially on how it builds community resilience. Through her internship with Bay City News, she is very excited to explore the world of reporting.

Olivia Green

Olivia Green is a senior multimedia communications student concentrating in journalism at Howard University. She’s worked as a feature reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and Howard’s The Hilltop, and has managed social media accounts for other campus organizations. Most recently, Green worked with the American Urban Radio Network as a White House correspondent intern. Olivia’s experience in print, radio broadcast, and social media has only encouraged her passion for storytelling. She looks forward to expanding her skills with Bay City News

Jackson Guilfoil

Jackson Guilfoil was a Bay City News intern in 2021, writing about news and features for the newswire and Local News Matters. He earned his degree at UC Santa Barbara, where he wrote for the Daily Nexus, covering a variety of beats from labor issues to student resources. Jackson also wrote for OC Weekly, a hell-raising Orange County alt-weekly famous for stories which exposed unethical behaviors from elected officials during its runtime from 1995 to 2019. He also wrote for UC Berkeley’s student newspaper the Daily Californian and the Tenderloin Tribune, his own project.

Victoria Hsieh

Victoria Hsieh was a sophomore at Stanford University while working as an intern at BCN. She has been studying computer science. She has a strong interest in health equity and mental health advocacy and currently writes for her school paper The Stanford Daily.  

Thomas Hughes

Thomas grew up in San Diego in the late 20th century and later earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Global Studies from CSUMB. He spent 5 years as a local broadcast journalist on California’s Central Coast, covering local news and hosting talk shows focusing on global press freedom. He is currently earning a Master’s in Journalism from Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY in New York City. Thomas enjoys basketball, comedy, and turtles.

Rya Jetha

Rya Sara Jetha is a summer 2022 business reporting intern at BCN through the Dow Jones News Fund. She is a rising senior at Pomona College studying history and politics. She interned at The Indian Express in Mumbai and writes for The Student Life, the newspaper of the Claremont Colleges.

Jana Kadah

Jana Kadah was a San Jose-based intern covering the South Bay in the summer of 2020. Before coming to Bay City News, she reported on the refugee crisis in Greece and Italy in Arabic and worked as the managing editor for San Jose State’s daily newspaper, Spartan Daily. From that year, she won first place in best newspaper at the California College Media Awards and received first place for Enterprise News Story from the California News Publishers Association in 2019. She is passionate about racial justice, inequity and local politics. She was hired as a full-time reporter for Bay City News Foundation and later joined San Jose Spotlight.

Dania Kalaji

Dania Kalaji is a rising senior at the University of Georgia in Athens studying journalism and minoring in film studies. An award-winning journalist, she will be a Dow Jones News Fund copy editing and multimedia intern with BCNF and Local News Matters, where she will coordinate social media, create news packages and report. Kalaji is the digital managing editor of The Red & Black, UGA’s independent student newspaper. She was previously the assistant news desk editor and reporter, and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion chair. Kalaji previously worked for the Pensacola News Journal with Gannett, the USA Today Network and was Freedom Forum Chips Quinn Diversity in Journalism Scholar. Currently, she is an ambassador of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. 

Stephanie Lam

Stephanie Lam was a 2021 summer intern for Bay City News while working toward a journalism degree at San Jose State University, where she was the assistant news editor for the student run newspaper, Spartan Daily. She is interested in reporting on local issues and learning more about how communities are adjusting to life in the pandemic. She helped with the wire service at Bay City News and wrote feature stories for Local News Matters. 

Samantha Laurey

Samantha Laurey, a student at San Francisco State University, worked during 2020 to help document Martinez and parts of Contra Costa County with photographs that were published on Bay City News and LocalNewsMatters. She also did feature assignments like the SF Chinese New Year’s parade. Samantha continued her college studies, becoming Visuals Editor for the Golden Gate Xpress and a photo intern for the SF Examiner.

Camille Legendre

Camille Legendre joined the Bay City News team in 2020 as an intern on the overnight shift, writing and editing breaking news. She also curated stories from Local News Matters and news partners such as EdSource and San Jose Spotlight. She is a true Bay Area native, having lived in Emeryville, Oakland and San Francisco. She recently graduated from New York University Shanghai and is entering law school. She has a passion for traveling and in

Nuria Marquez Martinez

Nuria Marquez Martinez, a graduate of the UCB graduate journalism program, worked at BCN in 2018 and 2019. She did a variety of breaking news shifts and also worked on a package about non-citizens voting in the 2018 San Francisco school board election. She went on to become an editorial fellow at Mother Jones, an intern at NPR in Washington, D.C., and an associate producer at Axios.

Cash Martinez

Cash Martinez was a student journalist at San Francisco State University during their fall 2020 internship. They covered education, local politics, and LGBTQ+ issues in the North Bay. In the past, they have written for the Press Democrat, Sonoma Magazine, and the Bohemian. Martinez served on the SF State Journalism Student Advisory Board and was the founding president of the SF State chapter of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.

Megan Munce

Megan Munce was a Bay City News intern through the Emma Bowen Foundation in summer 2021 while a rising senior at Northwestern University studying journalism and political science. She served on Daily Northwestern’s editorial board for two years, covering student activism and pandemic recovery as the paper’s campus editor, and was awarded a regional Mark of Excellence Award in General News Reporting in 2021 for her coverage of students’ difficulties with mail-in voting. She also covered the 2021 Texas state legislative session as a reporting fellow for The Texas Tribune.

Claudia Russell

Claudia Russell was a senior at Head-Royce School in Oakland when she worked as an intern for BCN in 2018. Her special project was to create a comprehensive database of regional public agencies and public information officers to help the entire team with reporting resources.

Kate Selig

Kate Selig was a winter 2020 intern for BCN, writing a series of profiles about arts organizations and nonprofits published on Local News Matters. She was a rising sophomore at Stanford who took a year off to pursue journalism internships. She served as The Stanford Daily’s news managing editor and previously covered sports and politics for The Harvard Press and environmental news for the blog “… & the West.” She’s passionate about covering issues of equity and is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.

Rebecca Smith

Rebecca Smith is a rising senior at UC Berkeley where she is studying Political Science and Journalism. She is passionate about multimedia journalism and local news. Before coming to Bay City News, Rebecca worked in public radio at KQED and was the News Director for Cal’s broadcast journalism club, CalTV. She has a strong interest in covering local politics, education, breaking news and crime. 

Annie Steuart

Annie Steuart, a graduate of Head-Royce School, worked for a summer at BCN between high school and college in 2018. She wrote a lot of stories about Bay Area events, news and nonprofits. She entered Kenyon College as a freshman in fall 2019.

Olivia Wynkoop

Olivia Wynkoop was a student journalist at San Francisco State University, originally from Dixon, California. She’s been managing editor, social media editor and reporter for her university’s student-run paper, Golden Gate Xpress. She also previously interned at the San Francisco Examiner and News Break. She has a flare for local politics and Bay Area-based human interest stories.  After her internship at Bay City News, Olivia was in 2021 hired as a swing shift editor at the company.

Angilee Shah

Board chair & Edit-a-thons lead (Term began 2020)

Anna Kristina Moseidjord

Project manager

Katherine Rowlands

Finances and fundraising (Term began 2020)

Emily Gertz

Technical adviser (Term began 2020)

Jareen Imam

Events & communications (Term began 2020)

Chloe Lee Rowlands

Website & design (Term began 2020)

Molly Stark Dean

Flash edit and nominations lead (Term began 2020)

Ariam Alula

Board member (Term began 2022)

Jeanette Woods

Events & communications (Term began 2020)

Leezel Tanglao

Adviser (Term began 2020)

Meg Heckman

Board member (Term began 2022)