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Naomi Starkman is the founder and the editor-in-chief of Civil Eats. She was a 2016 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. Naomi has worked as a media consultant to Newsweek, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, WIRED, and Consumer Reports magazines. After graduating from law school, she served as the deputy executive director of the City of San Francisco’s Ethics Commission. Naomi is an avid gardener, having worked on several organic farms.
Matthew Wheeland is the managing editor of Civil Eats. He is a veteran environmental journalist who has covered a wide range of environmental, sustainability, and social-justice subjects over the past 15 years. He previously served as managing editor of GreenBiz and AlterNet. He lives in the Bay Area with his family, is a dedicated home cook, an avid cyclist, and an enthusiastic (if less-than-fully successful) gardener.
Twilight Greenaway is the executive editor of Civil Eats. Her articles about food and farming have appeared in The New York Times, NPR.org, The Guardian, NBC News, Modern Farmer, Gastronomica, and on Grist, where she served as the food editor from 2011-2012. See more at TwilightGreenaway.com.
Christina Cooke is an associate editor at Civil Eats. Based in North Carolina, she has covered people, place, science, business, and culture for venues including The New Yorker, The New York Times, TheAtlantic.com, The Guardian, Oxford American, and High Country News. In the past, she has worked as a staff writer for the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Tennessee and a weekly paper in Portland, Oregon. She teaches interviewing and nonfiction writing at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Find out more at www.christinacooke.com.
Tilde Herrera is an associate editor at Civil Eats. She has written about food, business, and sustainability for publications including AdExchanger, GreenBiz, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury-News, and Grist. A Bay Area native, she lives in San Francisco with her husband and son, who loves tacos almost as much as she does.
Lee van der Voo is a contributing editor for Civil Eats based in Oregon. Her investigations of food, energy, and climate issues have appeared in ProPublica, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, and Seattle Weekly, among others. She is the former managing director of InvestigateWest and the author of The Fish Market, a book in which she chronicles the commoditization of fish. She does get seasick. She is not easily deterred.
Kalisha Bass is the membership manager for Civil Eats. She manages Civil Eats’ subscription platform, serves as the primary contact for members, and creates various engagement opportunities for them. Since joining the team, she has introduced a members’ Slack community and revived the Civil Eats Salon as a way for members to engage with reporters, industry experts, and each other.
Lisa Held is Civil Eats’ senior staff reporter. Since 2015, she has reported on agriculture and the food system with an eye toward sustainability, equality, and health, and her stories have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. In the past, she covered health and wellness and was an editor at Well+Good. She is based in Baltimore and has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism.
Grey Moran is a staff reporter for Civil Eats based in Queens, New York. Their work has appeared in The Atlantic, Grist, Pacific Standard, The Guardian, Teen Vogue, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Intercept, and elsewhere. Grey writes narrative-based stories about public health, climate change, and environmental justice, especially with a lens on the people working toward solutions.
Marisa Martinez serves as the audience engagement editor at Civil Eats. Previously, she worked as an audience engagement editor at the Los Angeles Times, with a specific focus on social media distribution for the broader newsroom. Additionally, she’s worked as a fellow for CalMatters and KCRW, where she reported on higher education and general news. She lives in the Inland Empire with her husband and corgi and enjoys spending time at local, dog-friendly microbreweries.
Wesley Brown is a senior reporter for Civil Eats. Based in Arkansas, he is the former publisher of the Daily Record, and a long-time business and political reporter whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Dow Jones international newswires, the Associated Press and dozens of top U.S. newspapers. Wesley is also a board director for the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, and serves on the Arkansas Freedom of Information Task Force. He is also chairman of deacons at Christway Missionary Baptist Church in Little Rock.
Based in Southampton, New York, Alexandra is a 2023-24 Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Fellow covering American seaweed farming for Civil Eats. A multi-media journalist, her writing appears in The New York Times, The Guardian and Outside Magazine; she is also the host Long Island TV show “South Fork Sea Farmers.” In her freetime, she operates a hobby oyster farm.