My Work
Journalism:
As a reporter for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, I earned the nickname “Front Page” among friends and not without merit.
Here are a few of my favorite articles and the ledes that make them great beginning with the piece that earned me a California Newspaper Association award for business writing about the locally famous owners of Kelly’s French Bakery passing the spatula to the next generation.
“Even after more than four decades of partnership, in work and life, Kelly and Mark Sanchez, of Kelly’s French Bakery fame, can’t remember ever getting into a single fight.”
For years, I have been mesmerized by the massive swarms of seabirds swirling and feasting on anchovies off Monterey Bay. To learn more, I wrote about it.
“Marine life and seabirds of all sorts, from pelicans and gulls to migratory terns and shearwaters, have amassed off the coast in recent weeks — flapping, squawking, swirling and diving — feathers flying in a feeding frenzy as each creature fights for their share of the anchovies swimming below the ocean’s surface.”
Meeting with the all-female design team at Ibis Cycles inspired me to quickly compose one of my favorite articles for the Sentinel, which merited 1,000s of likes on social media.
“Tucked away on the Westside of Santa Cruz, and with a manufacturing facility in Pajaro, mountain bike maker, Ibis Cycles recently added two new hires to its industrial design team, which is led by Ibis Cycles Partner and Designer Roxy Lo and consists of all women.”
However, not all of the news is feel-good on the Central Coast. I’ve been one of the first reporters on the scene of climate-fueled disasters such as the flood of the community of Pajaro in March 2023.
“Residents who stayed in their homes were abruptly awakened by bright lights and the sound of sirens early Saturday morning after the Pajaro River levee breached around midnight, flooding the North Monterey County community.”
When I heard two 20-somethings were fighting for the survival of a massive redwood in the city of Santa Cruz, I was compelled to tell their story but was horrified when the tree was axed despite the young couple’s effort.
“Like silent guardians standing sentry on Walnut Avenue near Santa Cruz High School, two intertwined redwood trees, technically considered one, have inspired reverence in passersby and nearby residents for close to a century, possibly longer.”
AI language generators use unthinkable amounts of energy to operate and a team of scientists at UC Santa Cruz are working to shrink the tool’s massive carbon footprint.
“Computer science researchers at UC Santa Cruz recently published a paper outlining a new language-generating model for artificial intelligence similar to those used in popular chatbots such as ChatGPT. But this one, called SpikeGPT, operates even more like a human brain.”
My time with the Independent Media Institute taught me so much about people who are doing innovative work to make the world a better place such as journalist-turned-attorney Frank Bibeau, who devoted his life to fighting for the “Rights of Nature,” and Mary Wood, who uses a similar legal tool to protect the environment called the “Public Trust.”
Copywriting:
My most recent copywriting gig was with the coffee alternative MUD\WTR.
Although renowned mycologist Paul Stamets turned down my interview request, I spoke to other pioneers in the mushroom field to put together articles such as “How do mushrooms communicate?”
“Anyone in a successful long-term relationship knows that the key to a harmonious, even symbiotic, existence is clear and regular communication. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the world of fungi.”
I also had the privilege of profiling interesting characters like Dr. Mary Pardee:
“Pardee’s path as a functional medicine and naturopathic medical doctor is paved by a desire to understand the connection between mind and body. This path has led her, among other places, to the Costa Rican jungle to sit with the sacred psychoactive plant medicine ayahuasca.”
Alongside psychiatrist Raghu Appasani, MD.
“While many high school students in the mid-2000s were busy pirating music and meticulously adjusting their top friends on MySpace, Raghu Appasani was testing hypotheses in the neuroscience labs at Harvard University. “
I also explored whether mushrooms can save the world.
“It’s clear that the fungal kingdom is no longer as feared as it once was in most of the Western world, with culinary interests moving beyond button mushrooms and portobellos, and fungi-related products springing from startups like mushrooms after the rain.”
I have written more advertorials, company profiles and reviews than I can count, many of which only exist in physical print such as my work in Santa Cruz Waves, for the Dominican Hospital Foundation’s Focus Magazine, and the first publication I turned to the dark side for, Good Times Weekly, among others.
Photography:
At the Santa Cruz Sentinel, I became an incidental photojournalist.
Check out a select few of my hundreds of published photos here.