I’m an Emmy award-winning independent multimedia journalist and filmmaker born and raised in Kailua, Hawaii. I worked in the journalism industry for more than two decades in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Last summer I moved with my family back to Hawaii — we landed in Haiku, Maui. Twelve days after we arrived on Maui, the island was swept by deadly wildfires. I reported on the fires with NBC’s Digital Documentaries team, and a year later I wrote about the experience in a personal essay for The Atlantic. I’m now working on a book, a reported memoir that examines the legacies of colonialism throughout the Hawaiian Islands and the relationship between colonialism and climate change. During the 2023-24 school term I was an Asper Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia journalism graduate school. I’ve directed and produced projects for ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and VICE — including a six-episode illustrated documentary series for VICE News called Correspondent Confidential. I was Senior Multimedia Producer at the Center for Investigative Reporting, where I led digital storytelling and multimedia projects for six years. The illustrated video I directed and produced for CIR — “In Jennifer’s Room” — won a national Emmy award for New Approaches to News and Documentary, as well as a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, a Gracie, and other awards. My specialty is developing powerful character-driven narratives that experiment with video, audio, photography, animation, and interactive graphics to push the boundaries of storytelling on the Web and other platforms. Before I got into multimedia I was a magazine and book editor, newspaper reporter, video journalist, and travel book author. I completed a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley in 2005.