• Work through Lightbox Collaborative, Wonder: Strategies for Good, and The Opportunity Institute. Focus primarily on immigration, education, and race and equity issues.• Mentor and trainer for the SPIN Academy, which provides communications trainings for social change advocates.• Developed messaging that was credited with convincing California lawmakers in 2017 to allow low-income families to keep their affordable child care after getting raises with the new minimum wage (the bill had failed previously). About 280,000 children were able to keep their child care.• Led name change and an overhaul of branding and communications strategy for Immigrants Rising, a nonprofit working to expand educational resources and opportunity for undocumented young people. Immigrants Rising’s executive director discussed the process in a blog post: “What’s in a Name? Branding Insights from Immigrants Rising.”• Helped develop and write equity brief for Getting Down to Facts II, a project of three dozen studies examining a decade of reform efforts in California public schools.

• Expanded funding base from one to five foundations: MacArthur Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Unbound Philanthropy, Four Freedoms Fund, and Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation.• Developed new programs, which include a fellowship training for journalists, an immigration data hackathon (Migrahack), and webinars. • Redesigned website and conducted marketing and publicity.• Overhauled board of directors, which now includes a civic hackathon expert, a Tides Foundation executive, an immigration labor consultant/former Rosenberg Foundation program officer and the managing director of the John S. Knight Fellowships at Stanford.• Raised profile of organization through articles in media outlets, social media outreach and our own blog posts. Examples included:MediaShift, “Migrahacks Bring Greater Diversity to Hackathons,” April, 22, 2015.The Nation, “Hacking for Immigrant Rights,” Sept. 9, 2013. Poynter.org, “Migrahack Brings Together Journalists, Programmers and Community,” Dec. 24, 2013.• Oversaw contract workers and vendors and accounting/finance operations.

One of 20 journalists from around the world chosen for prestigious one-year fellowship. Developing an online project to help connect California journalists with immigrants.

Consultant, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees.Contributing editor, Catalyst-Chicago education magazine.Stories published in The Washington Post Magazine, Washington Monthly, People, Bloomberg News, Business 2.0 and other publications. Specialized in writing about social issues. Taught writing classes for StoryStudio Chicago, Poynter Institute, Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute, Hearst Symposium.

I wrote award-winning feature stories about immigrant communities, and a portfolio of those stories are anthologized in "Best Newspaper Writing 2007-2008," published by the Poynter Institute. I also reported on stories that prompted readers to demand accountability from public officials, including forcing the police department to change its unorthodox methods of investigating massage parlors as well as questioning a judge's decisions in sex offender cases.

Reporter, downtown office. Covered breaking news, courts, crime and underserved communities.