My passion throughout my journalism career centers on breaking exclusive, meaningful and in-depth news, leading social-media and strategy-setting projects that are intellectually stimulating, and contributing to a hungry yet responsible and engaging news organization.

My experience as an adjunct professor of journalism at DePaul University includes creating an archive of student interviews with path-breaking women in Chicago media; initiating a partnership with a Chicago Tribune-affiliated bilingual publication to publish my students’ in-class, deadline-written news stories; and coordinating a two-week conference for visiting journalism deans and department heads from Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia, featuring Chicago media leaders’ presentations, global exchange learning insights and university student newsroom tours.

Strengths:

• Ability to lead projects, work independently and juggle multiple responsibilities on deadline;
• Motivated by meeting interesting people, being engaged in high ideals, and sinking my teeth into engaging topics;
• Skillful in a variety of media, including writing short “deadline” articles, long magazine pieces and white papers, and envisioning marketing opportunities such as virtual concerts in Second Life;
• Ability to bring people together to further a common and higher goal.

Experienced journalist with deep subject matter expertise and ability to write engagingly on deadline about everything from crime to community politics to business, medical, scientific and technological breakthroughs.

EXPERIENCE:

9/99 — Present

Chicago Sun-Times. Freelance writer for the Wellness section.

• Seventeen years as a full-time staff reporter writing exclusive business stories and incisive insights into major retailers and their leaders. Examples include one-on-one interviews and exclusives with Jeff Bezos, Vera Wang, Kate Spade, David Yurman, Rose Marie Bravo and Eddie Lampert.
• Fifteen years writing community-focused weekly technology columns, profiling Chicago-area startups with breakthrough ideas such as Zealous Good, Lightspan Digital, Orbit Media Studios, Chicago PT, PrepMe.com, WebCollage and JustGrapes.net. Constantly cultivating grass-roots sources for unrivaled column “scoops,” in addition to covering daily breaking news stories.
• In-depth cover stories on liquor stores being categorized as grocery stores in poor areas and features of women in low-income neighborhoods duped in mortgage scams.

Other achievements:

• In-depth reporting award from the Virginia chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for exclusive investigative stories uncovering a lawyer’s duping of illiterate coal miners of their black-lung benefits in the Appalachian coalfields;
• Investigative reporting award from the Tennessee chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for an exclusive series of stories revealing abuses at a nursing home owned by the local state senator.

6/98 —               Freelance Writer and Editor

Present

• Write cover stories for the Society of Women Engineers’ (SWE) magazine, controlled circulation of 18,000, including the emergence of new engineering careers stemming from the “green” environmental movement.
• Won several writing awards for SWE magazine, including a career column nominated as a finalist for a 2019 FOLIO Award; the 2018 Grand Award from the Awards for Publication Excellence for stories in the Society of Women Engineers magazine’s Research issue; the 2013 Grand Award for a cover feature on diversity’s advantages in engineering education, and the Feature Writing Award of Excellence at the APEX 2010, the 22^nd annual Awards for Publication Excellence, for a cover story on how historically black colleges and universities are maintaining their niche in furthering the engineering careers of African-American women;
• First business correspondent for org, a global e-zine with monthly readership of 4 million, with stories such as women trapped by the subprime mortgage crisis and why women have lower retirement savings than men;
• Contributing writer for MARCH magazine, a 2009 start-up publication profiling female business owners and executives;
• Wrote columns for On Wall Street magazine, circulation 91,400, on IRS rule changes governing 403(b) accounts and financial analysts’ advice for 2008 investments;
• Covered USA Today’s technology innovations for the newspaper’s 25^th anniversary issue published by Advertising Age and Creativity magazines;
• Reported deadline stories for Telecom ’99 Show Daily, Oct. 10-17, Geneva, Switzerland. Published by CMP Media Inc., in cooperation with BusinessWeek magazine;
• Former editor of two on-line newsletters: the former com magazine’s weekly update compiled from daily news stories, and Financial Aid Advisor, responsible for aggregating news for graduate and undergraduate university financial aid administrators;
• Worked as adjunct faculty member at Columbia College. Taught Fall 1999 required course, “Information Search Strategies,” to undergraduate journalism students.
• Teach second-level journalism courses as an adjunct faculty member at DePaul University.

9/98 —                American Medical News, Chicago. Business and Technology Editor.

4/99

• Generated story and art ideas and oversaw their presentation for the Business and Technology section of this 335,000-circulation, must-read weekly for the nation’s physicians. (Hired by a protégé of Dr. George Lundberg, former editor of JAMA.)
• Oversaw 10 freelance writers and one full-time reporter.
• Wrote bimonthly column, “Technically Speaking,” highlighting the latest technological trends, such as electronic prescriptions and remote robotic surgery, in the health care industry.

9/95 —                Telephony magazine, Chicago. News Editor.

4/99

• Supervised six reporters, including West Coast and East Coast bureau chiefs and assistant news editors in Dallas and Chicago.
• Oversaw weekly news coverage for the leading national trade journal in its niche.
• Reported news on deadline from trade shows in Singapore and Geneva, Switzerland.
• Awarded a fellowship by the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, College Park, Md., to attend a seminar on “Cyberspace: The Business,” October 1996.

4/88 — The Times of Northwest Indiana, Hammond and Munster, Ind.

9/95

• Promoted from news reporter in Hammond, where stories included breaking a paperwork coverup at the city sewage-treatment plant, to Illinois Statehouse reporter, where responsibilities included filing breaking news of the governor’s announcements and the Legislature’s votes on issues ranging from building a third Chicago airport to opening riverboat casinos.
• Promoted to West Lake County Bureau Editor, overseeing four full-time staff writers, 15 part-time correspondents and three copy editors.
• Planned and edited Lifestyles section projects on an African-American woman’s exchange trip to Germany (August 1994) and the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising (October 1994). The Northwest Indiana Jewish Federation cited the latter when it presented The Times with its 1994 News Media Award.

 EDUCATION:

4/93                      University of Chicago. Completed graduate class in Public Policy Studies, Grade of A.

2/83                        Emory & Henry College, Emory, Va. B.A. degree in Mass Communications, Cum Laude.

AFFILIATIONS, MEMBERSHIPS:

Past President, Chicago chapter of the Association for Women Journalists, 2000-2003; Member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters & Editors and The Art Institute of Chicago.