Professional Experience

MOST RECENT

KNIGHT DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER
MAYNARD INSTITUTE

ENTREPRENEUR MAGAZINE

Consultant
Freelancer

Providing strategy, leadership, content-program planning and execution for multiple nonprofit organizations and others interested in preserving journalistic values in digital era.

Tackling complex issues, crafting easy-reading, intriguing stories and web content

• Created, built www.socalminds.com, a content-aggregating web project that aims to capture the amazing talent, research and ideas percolating in the huge intellectual industry-community in Southern California
• Developed, led multi-day strategy, leadership program for Knight Foundation for publishers, editors of top online ethnic news organizations from across the county
• Honed, polished online, print editing skills in summer-long program for talented, aspiring editors of color hoping to diversify newsrooms at major media organizations nationwide
• Wrote about difficult health coverage issues from employee, company view for Entrepreneur Magazine

LOS ANGELES TIMES 1988-2008

Senior Editor, Special Projects

Reported to top news executives tackling strategic, practical, administrative concerns in staffing sprawling, 24/7, elite news-gathering force. Recruited, evaluated, developed, renewed, redeployed, retained talent. Dispatched newsroom HR tasks, such as compensation, discipline, diversity, immigration, compliance with state- and corporate-mandated initiatives. Dealt with downsizings, layoffs.

• Earned praise, highest trust from ranking editors, rank-and-file staff. Readily, repeatedly sought for coaching, counseling, mediation, other confidential, hardest-case assignments, saving firm untold sums via talent rescue, retention or in deterring litigation, other worst cases
• Expanded, improved performance management with oversight, follow-up to evaluations by dozens of supervisors of as many as 1,100 staffers. Conducted database analyses, advanced research for talent assessments. Ran beloved awards program with a budget as high as seven figures.
• Delivered cost-effective, popular, productive staff development (training) for range of crafts (writing, editing, graphics, photo, internet-multimedia) tapping internal, external talent. Built national network of industry, academic, nonprofit contacts to boost institutional reputation, create more training options. Played key role as contact, host for local leaders, international dignitaries interacting with a top civic institution of Southern California

• Tapped spectrum of resources, especially technology, to develop, communicate, enforce company-newsroom policies / best practices, a critical issue for oft-contentious staff scattered around the world and operating around the clock.
• Took on temporary senior assignment editor roles to get range of departments past staffing crises or emergencies, working in Food, Travel, Foreign and other area to relief, pleasure of beleaguered section chiefs.

Acting Associate Editor, Editorial / Opinion Pages

Assigned, edited prize-winning Editorial writers and helped run department of 40 as key deputy. Met with international, national, local policy-makers, dignitaries, officials to investigate, analyze complex issues. Helped determine Times positions on local, national, international issues as Editorial Board member.

• Honored with peer approval, when Editorial Page Editor and Board members asked me to stay in job, which I undertook as interim personnel consulting challenge at request of boss
• Recognized by senior management for juggling my Editorial-Opinion Pages work, while maintaining full duties in home department
• One Editorial Board member won that year’s Pulitzer Prize; another Board member named one of the two other Pulitzer finalists.

Special assignment to The Editor

Hand-picked by Executive Vice President for high-profile, increasingly responsible tasks.

• Earned bonus, honors from CEO, Publisher and EVP for “42s Project,” initiative aimed at retaining, refreshing, repositioning midcareer talent with added benefit of greater candor about and consideration to performance, assignments that comprise all staffers’ careers. For the initiative:
• Jump-started tired training program, bringing in at low cost and in short order, a half-dozen Pulitzer-winning authors, a Nobel Laureate and best-selling mystery novelist to energize colleagues in career-destination institution on benefits of continuous growth on job.
• Created with community leaders new fellowships for Times journalists at major institutions like USC, Rand, Pacific Council. Rewrote policy to permit more participation in fellowships, writing books and for staffers in challenging situations – including women juggling family obligations – to find more time to renew themselves.
• Cajoled, enrolled up to 15% of professional staff – in excess of 100 people annually – to take on top industry training programs or new development efforts in newsroom, including lauded weeklong seminars for middle managers
• Managed, as newsroom point-person, multimillion-dollar, content study by University of Missouri Journalism School, working with deans, tenured Ph.D professors and grad researchers. Study, which scrutinized diversity issues like race, gender, was one of largest of its kind and resulted in coverage changes, papers in academic journals.

Assistant Foreign Editor

Assigned, edited, managed elite, prize-winning correspondents spanning globe, numbering 30-35, increasing to as many as 500 for Gulf War I. Central role in planning, executing ferociously competitive coverage in what NYT called “one of the greatest runs of international news since the Great Wars,” including Soviet Union collapse, Balkan wars, China’s big leap, Japan’s slump, political conflict-bloodshed in Africa, Mexico. Handled vast daily, enterprise coverage; magazine-length features; special sections; projects, investigations.

Oversight of editing staff of 20. Liaison to every part of huge, complex media organization. Represented boss, department at major news meetings, as well as events with top executives, policy-makers, diplomats and other influentials.

Acting Editor, Acting Deputy Editor, Assistant Editor, View Section

Assigned, edited, managed, finally headed Features-Lifestyle section with more than four-dozen reporters, three-dozen assigning and production editors, bevy of free-lancers in time of whirlwind change. Dealt with range of storytelling methods, writing and reporting skills and wildly divergent topical material. Managed budget in excess of $3 million.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

Editing

SERVED as: Sunday Metropolitan Editor, Night City Editor, Suburban Editor, Zoned Editions Editor, Denver Post; Assistant Suburban Editor, copy editor, Miami Herald; Copy editor, picture editor, Houston Chronicle; Dow-Jones Newspaper Fund Copy Editing Intern, Detroit Free-Press; Managing Editor, Daily Northwestern.

Reporting

SERVED as: staff writer, Miami Herald;. Denver Correspondent (free-lance), Time Magazine; intern, Chicago Tribune, Binghamton, N.Y., Evening Press, Sentinel Newspapers, Denver.

EDUCATION, FELLOWSHIPS, CERTIFICATES:

Bachelor’s degree, Journalism, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
Master’s degree, Journalism, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
Fellow, U.S.-Japan Newspaper Publishers’ Exchange Program
Fellow, Poynter Institute, American Press Institute
Executive Leadership Program, Asian American Journalists Assn.
Certificate, Mediation Training, UCLA, Los Angeles

RELATED PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:

TEACHER-COACH: Guest faculty, Maynard Institute Summer Editing Program (Univ. Nevada-Reno, UC Berkeley, Univ. Arizona); Journalism adjunct, USC Annenberg Journalism School; Metropolitan State College, Denver. Guest lecturer, Loyola Marymount Law School, Poynter Institute, American Press Institute

INDUSTRY, COMMUNITY: Member, Asian American Journalists Assn. (founder, Denver Chapter; national, Los Angeles board member); Board member, Journalism Center on Children and Families, Univ. of Maryland; Member, Diversity Committee, Newspaper Assn. of America; Mentor, Daniel Pearl Foundation-Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship program; Member, Selection Committee, Alfred Friendly program

AUTHOR: “Covering the Stars,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 2006; “An Editor’s Dissent,” Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal, 1999; contributor, “How to Cover Asian Americans,” `How to Cover Arab Americans,” “Asian American Coverage: a Content Analysis,” AAJA.