In summary
The newest CalMatters team members expand our efforts to probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable.
The newest additions to the CalMatters team boost our work in serving Californians: expanding our investigative team, adding technology and Inland Empire coverage, empowering our fundraising efforts, and more.
“I’m excited to see the impact our newest CalMatters hires will make on the lives of Californians,” says CalMatters Editor-in-Chief Kristen Go.
Our newsroom started 2024 by welcoming four new reporters:
Sergio Olmos, an investigative reporter, has worked as a freelancer for The New York Times, National Public Radio, Oregon Public Broadcasting and other outlets from the United States and has covered the war in Ukraine. For The New York Times, he broke the news that FBI agents had set up extensive surveillance operations inside Portland’s racial justice protests.
Anat Rubin, who’s also an investigative reporter, has worked as a contributing writer for ProPublica and the Marshall Project. Last year, Anat’s story, The Scandal that Never Happened for ProPublica, revealed how Louisiana judges decided, in secret, “to systematically ignore petitions filed by prisoners, most of them Black, who claimed they had been unjustly convicted.”
With Anat and Sergio, our investigative team now includes six full-time reporters.
Khari Johnson is our first tech reporter. He previously covered artificial intelligence use by businesses and governments as a senior writer for WIRED and VentureBeat. His focus was on policy, power, human rights abuses, and telling the stories of people demanding accountability after being harmed by automation.
Deborah Sullivan Brennan is our new San Diego and Inland Empire issues reporter, a position jointly funded with Voice of San Diego and the Valenzuela Foundation. She was previously a reporter for 12 years at the San Diego Union-Tribune, covering county government, state politics, the environment, mental health, education and more.
Thomas Gerrity is a data scientist and our engineering manager for Digital Democracy. He has worked with Cal Poly faculty members and students in developing automated systems for surfacing news from legislative data. Born and raised on the central coast of California, Thomas has a master’s degree in computer science from Cal Poly.
And we have two new additions to the development team, which raises funding for our nonprofit newsroom:
Myra Marayag is our new gift officer in Southern California. She was head of Partnerships and Public Affairs at the Los Angeles Times and has extensive experience working with Fortune 500 companies across many facets of partnership marketing.
Bryndon Madison joins us as development manager. He has a background in journalism and nonprofit development and served most recently with Northern Valley Catholic Social Service. He has a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of California Santa Barbara.
