Sylvia Wright Email & Phone Number

• 2017: Edited reports by C.J. Rodier, Ph.D., of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation at the University of California, about improving transportation options for disadvantaged rural residents in California's San Joaquin Valley.• 2016: After a 20-year hiatus, I resumed editing documents about evidence-based medicine for Mary Hiller and her data-powered yet patient-centric services at MedExpert Inc. in Silicon Valley. (In the 1990s, Mary and I produced the most widely read newspaper medical-advice column in the world.) I've edited reports of a cost-reduction program in Alaska; RFPs for care coordination contracts in Michigan and Pennsylvania; and case studies of successful customer services provided by MedExpert staff members.• 2017: Wrote for The Sacramento Bee about a rare duck that birders feared would be shot by hunters. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article124394029.html• 2016: Taught enviro-science undergrads and law students at University of the Pacific how to describe their work with passion and clarity to legislators and news media.• 2016: Wrote for Smithsonian.com about the archaeological hunt for the site of the worst massacre of Native Americans by the U.S. government. • December 2015: I wrote four op-eds about drought policy for the UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy. 1. “Drought: El Niño is not the cavalry" -- http://bit.ly/2o2sNYQ2. "Groundwater: The crucial challenge" -- http://bit.ly/1X3LF5I3. "The need for a biodiversity policy" -- http://bit.ly/1SuSoz44. "Forest health" -- http://bit.ly/1YsSyL0

Director of Communications. We're getting powerful research findings out of the university and into the public policy arena, for better science-based government.

Davis, Calif.

Director of Communications. We're the top university research center in the world on clean cars, fuels and public policy.

Director of Communications. We're helping people use less electricity with smarter lighting and air-conditioning systems.

I promoted the University to internal and external audiences through traditional and new media. The majority of my work was writing about our environmental science & policy research for general audiences. Also, from 2008-2011, I taught workshops where scientists learned to conduct news interviews with skill and ease. For 9 months in 2004, I directed the University's news operations.

I subcontracted to science writer Larry O'Hanlon to pick the newsiest from 100's of abstracts, interview researchers, and write advance news releases for the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, 27–30 Oct. They had good results. Stories in ClimateWire, Weather.com, others.

For this monthly newsletter, I wrote research-based health advice for older, educated, affluent subscribers. Some of my stories were repurposed in Consumer Reports magazine.

I managed five reporters, guided the newspaper's science, medical, health, weather and environmental coverage, and directed the production of two weekly news sections (Science & Medicine, Health & Fitness). I oversaw the staff photographers and graphic designers working on these pages. I also commissioned and edited work from freelance writers. In my first week as editor, the deadly 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area. I dispatched reporters from under my desk as aftershocks rolled through. Our Mercury News staff won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting for our work.

I managed nine full-time copy editors, and several part-timers, producing the paper’s Living, Food & Wine, Home & Garden, Travel, Arts & Books, Religion & Ethics, and Friday entertainment sections. It was our job to design the newspaper pages, write all headlines and photo captions, and rigorously review all text for accuracy in grammar, punctuation and spelling.

B.A., Mass Communications

Knight Science Journalism Fellowship

Education record

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