City & County Initiatives
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Resilience Hub
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Managing Editor
Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Senior Editor
Cariad Hayes Thronson
Assistant Editor
Sonya Bennett-Brandt
Community & Social Media Editor
Isabella Eclipse
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Afsoon Razavi
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Darren Campeau & Tony Hale
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Giant Rabbit
is a freelance journalist from San Francisco who writes about water policy in California, rivers and salmon, marine conservation and climate change. His work has appeared at NPR.org, Smithsonian.com, Yale Environment 360, Hakai, CalMatters and Bay Nature, among many other outlets.
13 Posts
writes about the nature, history and culture of California. Trained as a geographer at San Francisco State University, her passion is to look for the intersection of influences regarding a place or an event. She is a frequent contributor to Estuary News Group and Bay Area Monitor. Her work has also been published in Smithsonian, High Country News, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. She is the award-winning author of Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California's First Poet Laureate.
5 Posts
is a science journalist based in the Bay Area. She writes about ecology, agriculture and climate science and spent many years working in public radio. An alum of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, she began her post-grad school career in Fairbanks, Alaska and has also worked in western Massachusetts and central Iowa. In 2022 she was selected as the lead science communicator aboard the JOIDES Resolution research vessel. She lives on a hill that on a clear day offers views of the Bay and Mt. Diablo.
1 Post
is KneeDeep’s managing editor. She is a Bay Area environmental writer, former editor of Estuary News magazine, and a co-author of a Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press 2011). For the last decade, she’s been reporting on innovations in climate adaptation on the bayshore. She is also an occasional essayist for the San Francisco Chronicle. In other lives, she has been a vintner, soccer mom, and waitress. She lives in San Francisco. See her work at bayariel.com and follow her at @sfbayariel.bsky.social
37 Posts
is a science writer based in Brooklyn, New York. With a background in animal science and biology, she enjoys writing about emerging environmental issues, wildlife, and conservation-related science. When not reading or writing, she's playing outside with friends or inside with her cat, Sandy. Photo: Lisa Strong. @heysmartash
2 Posts
is a journalist based in San Francisco who covers climate and environmental justice. Previously, they worked at the San Francisco Chronicle on SFNext, a civic engagement initiative, where they covered a range of city issues spanning homelessness, digital inequity, and downtown recovery. Brown is a 2022 graduate of Columbia Journalism School. They grew up in San Francisco and still call the city home.
6 Posts
reports on legal and political issues. She has served on the staffs of several national publications and is a long-time contributor to Estuary News. She lives in San Mateo with her husband and two children.
16 Posts
is a freelance science writer and coordinator for a nonprofit organization in San Antonio, Texas. She has a masters in biology at UTSA. She regularly writes for Envirobites. Her writing is shaped by her professional background in research, education, and nonprofit mental health, substance abuse, and healthcare programs.
1 Post
is an author and award-winning journalist based in San Francisco. He has written for dozens of national publications, including Harper's, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Guardian, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, and Columbia Journalism Review. He is the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. Visit www.christopherdcook.com.
2 Posts
is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vogue and Westways, among others, and can be viewed at www.constancesommer.com.
4 Posts
Cristina Deptula is a freelance science, technology, medicine, and ecology writer from the East Bay, and a community correspondent for KneeDeep. She's a former planetarium docent at Oakland's Chabot Space and Science Center and one of the organizers of the Hayward Lit Hop.
3 Posts
is based in the East Bay and frequently writes about technology and the environment. He has a background in environmental education, environmental journalism, and as a writer/consultant for frontier technology companies. He is most interested in how people and communities use technology to organize, communicate, and adapt to a changing climate.
3 Posts
is based in Southern California. She holds a bachelor's in English Literature and Spanish from UCLA and a master’s in both business and Spanish-language journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in New York. She has covered the eastern Coachella Valley, including the cities of Indio and Coachella, at The Desert Sun for almost three years. Her work has also appeared in NBC Chicago, American Banker, Bloomberg and USA Today, among other outlets.
3 Posts
writes about wildlife ecology and environmental science. Her background as a wildlife biologist often leads her to stories about the joys of scientific discovery and the ways that people interact with, and about, the environment. See her website for her writing and photography
1 Post
Emily Harwitz is an independent writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently based in the Bay Area. Trained as a scientist and journalist, she also draws from her experience working in conservation to tell stories that inform, inspire, and spark engagement with the natural world. She aims for the crossroads of art and adventure. See her work at emilyharwitz.com
2 Posts
covers sea level rise, flooding, and other topics around the San Francisco Bay Area. His stories and essays have been featured in Sierra Magazine, Earth Island Journal, Estuary News, and the Progressive Populist, among other outlets.
9 Posts
is an environmental consultant and science writer. Her first article, at age eight, was about the behavior of ducks as observed from the roof of her family’s barn. It went unpublished. She later received Masters degrees from the Columbia Schools of Journalism and Earth and Environmental Science. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Modern Farmer, Bay Nature, Estuary News, and many more publications—including literary magazines and CEQA documents. Her botany blog can be found at flowersofmarin.com and her website is jacobacharles.com. A sixth-generation Sonoma County resident, she divides her time between Petaluma and her family home near the Gualala River.
16 Posts
is a freelance journalist and editor living happily car-free in El Cerrito. With Robert Johnson, she is co-author of Berkeley Walks, a book of self-guided walking tours published by Heyday Books. She was managing editor of University of California's California Agriculture journal and a research and science communicator for Kaiser Permanente. Her writing has appeared in Estuary News, Bay Area Monitor, Berkeleyside, and other publications.
2 Posts
writes about endangered and invasive species, climate and ecosystem science, environmental history, and water issues. He is also "a semi-obsessive birder" whose pursuit of rarities has taken him to many of California's shores, wetlands, and sewage plants.
3 Posts
is an environmental journalist and author of sixteen books and several hundred other published works. He is also the winner of the James D. Phelan Award, the Commonwealth Club Medal in Californiana, and the David R. Brower Award for Service in the Field of Conservation. He writes on California water policy and history, and on other topics intertwined with climate change.
7 Posts
is a journalist incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison; senior editor at the award-winning San Quentin News; and member of the Society of Professional Journalists, where he was awarded its Silver Heart Award in 2017 for being “a voice for the voiceless.” Haines’s work has appeared in Solitary Watch, The Guardian, The Appeal, Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, Above the Law, UCLA Law Review, Life of the Law, The Oakland Post, California Prison Focus, LA Progressive, CalMatters, Witness LA, and Street Spirit. In 2020, Haines was awarded the PEN Prison Writing Contest’s Fielding A. Dawson Prize in Fiction.
1 Post
is a bilingual journalist who reports on the environment and communities often overlooked in mainstream narratives. He covers housing, local government, migration, climate, conflict, and transitional justice in Colombia and the United States. His work has taken him from rural Colombia to city council chambers in California, where he focuses on how policy decisions shape people’s lives. He is a UC Berkeley California Local News 2024 fellow based in the Bay Area.
3 Posts
is a Peninsula-based journalist who writes about the environment, the outdoors, food and government. Her work has appeared in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Palo Alto Weekly, the Mountain View Voice, The Almanac and PUNCH Magazine. She was a community engagement fellow (2018) and a data reporting fellow (2020) with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
1 Post
is a science writer specializing in the natural history and environment of California and the West. With Ariel Rubissow Okamoto, she coauthored Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press, 2011), for which she shared the 2013 Harold Gilliam Award for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. When not hiking, bicycling, backpacking, or enjoying other outdoor adventures, she is the director of communications for the University of California Natural Reserve System.
1 Post
is a freelance science journalist based in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She has a background in marine biology and toxicology, and is a graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. Her reporting covers a wide range of topics, from physics to biomedicine to agriculture, but she’s most passionate about the stories that directly impact her local community. Her work has appeared in Bay Nature, California Local, Live Science, and Popular Mechanics, among others.
3 Posts
is a multimedia journalist who reports on energy, environment, sustainability, food, and culture. Her preferred forms of storytelling are through film (shooting and editing video) and narrative writing. Kristine’s work has been published in The Guardian US/UK, Sierra Magazine, Modern Farmer, Bay Nature, The Huffington Post, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Civil Eats, and other publications. Prior to becoming a journalist, she worked for environmental justice and public health organizations. For KneeDeep Wong interviewed and filmed a new leadership academy for Oakland residents building climate resilience.
1 Post
is a freelance reporter in New York. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, the Revelator, Vegetarian Times, New York Focus, and Washingtonian Magazine. She was previously a reporter at Inside Higher Ed. She is interested in the challenges of environmental preservation and how people choose to navigate them. She was inspired to write about second-growth redwoods, the focus of her first article for KneeDeep, when visiting the beautiful forests and coasts of California.
3 Posts
is a freelance photographer situated in the Bay Area. Most of his work focuses in photojournalism and the fine arts. He graduated from the University of California, Davis with a bachelor’s degree in international relations, drawing him toward a global political perspective in many of his works. Rooted in the desire to affect social change, his pieces reflect an alternative way of seeing, recording and understanding events and social relations. His photos can be found in KneeDeep articles. In his spare time, you can find him surfing and exploring the California coast, or brewing some delicious concoctions.
0 Posts
spent several years as the theater and dance writer for Metro Silicon Valley. More recently, she writes about conservation and sustainability with a focus on solutions. She was a 2022 Kiplinger Fellow in climate change reporting, and her work appears in many online and print magazines, including Mongabay, Civil Eats, Earth Island Journal, and Corporate Knights.
1 Post
is a freelance science journalist. Her writing has appeared in Slate Magazine, Live Science, Yale Climate Connections and around the internet. @duffmegs.
2 Posts
was born and partly raised in the Bay Area. He employs his love for nature and his interest in people to help tell the unfolding story of the living Earth. He has worked for The Nature Conservancy and the arts and education nonprofit NaNoWriMo, taught English in Madrid-based High School equivalent, and volunteers with The Marine Mammal Center. He is the editor of the Bay Area Monitor and also writes for Estuary and AcclimateWest.
6 Posts
is a freelance science and environmental journalist who contributes to Environmental Health Perspectives, Environmental Health News, Sonoma magazine, and other regional and national websites and publications, on topics ranging from environmental health and climate change to ecology and biology. He lives in Petaluma with his wife, two boys, and four egg-laying ducks.
8 Posts
has been a Research Geologist with the USGS in Santa Cruz since 2003, is the Project Chief for the Coastal Climate Impacts Project, and Co-Developer of the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS). His research focuses on coastal hazards driven by storms and sea level rise across U.S. beaches and estuaries. He is a science advisor for KneeDeep's investigative 2022-2023 Extremes in 3D series.
1 Post
an Indian journalist and author, has penned three books, won over a dozen Indian and international awards, and contributed to over 50 publications worldwide, including the BBC, CNN, Scientific American, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and National Geographic. www.pujachangoiwala.com
1 Post
is an independent science journalist who covers water, climate resilience, and environmental policy. Her work has appeared in bioGraphic, C&EN, High Country News, Maven's Notebook, Scientific American, and elsewhere. She’s a Pulitzer Center grantee, an Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources fellow, a contributor to The Craft of Science Writing, and a UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program alum and mentor. Robin lives in the San Francisco Bay Area near the Suisun Marsh, the largest brackish wetland on the West Coast. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
7 Posts
is a Colombian journalist, educator, illustrator and anthropologist based in New York City. He worked in the education department of the American Museum of Natural History and recently completed an MA in bilingual journalism at the Craig Newmark Journalism School. Twitter: rflorezsantiago
1 Post
is an interdisciplinary marine scientist and environmental writer with a focus on oceans, climate, and communities. Her work has appeared in publications serving a wide range of audiences, including Grist, JSTOR Daily, the Oxford Climate Review, and Estuary News. She was a 2022-2023 Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellow in Honduras and is a National Geographic Explorer.
15 Posts
is KneeDeep’s Assistant Editor and a freelance environmental journalist based in Berkeley. Her work on conservation and climate adaptation has appeared in Wired Magazine, the Guardian, and Bay Nature, among others. She lives next to a large tree that houses two squirrels, a scrub jay nest, a courteous skunk, and, intermittently, baby racoons. @sbennettbrandt.
1 Post
is a landscape operations professional with a focus on designing and maintaining sustainable and beautiful outdoor spaces. Growing up alongside his mother’s landscape maintenance company, Tong has always had his hands in the dirt; many of his first memories are of “helping” her plant and weed at job sites. After earning a B.A. in History at the University of Puget Sound, his passion for the outdoors led him to Portland Community College, where he studied landscape maintenance, water-wise gardening, organic cultivation, integrated pest management, and small business administration. He lives in the East Bay with his fiancé, two cats, and a large potted plant collection.
1 Post