Our Board

Geeta Anand, editor-in-chief of VTDigger and former dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, is a former reporter for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, where she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002.  She began her 27-year career as a fulltime journalist at the Cape Cod News and the Rutland Herald and is a strong believer in the benefits of early career training at small news sites. 

Joe DeRisi, President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, is also a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF. When Covid testing sites were nearly non-existent early in the pandemic, DeRisi, members of the Biohub, UCSF, and graduate student volunteers built a clinical testing lab in only eight days. The lab processed the results of the city’s first major testing study. Carried out in the Mission District, it established definitively that Latinx, essential workers were the group most impacted by the virus and that many carriers were asymptomatic, findings that changed the way the city had to approach the virus.

Frances Dinkelspiel, chair of the board, is an award-winning journalist, author and co-founder and former executive editor of Cityside, the nonprofit news organization behind Berkeleyside and The Oaklandside. Her journalism has appeared in many places, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times,  and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her first book, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, was a SF Chronicle bestseller. Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California was a NYT bestseller.

Christopher Haugh, treasurer,  has more than a decade of experience in the private sector, media, and the U.S. government. Currently, he is a senior advisor at Roadrunner Venture Studios, where he works to transform deep tech into new companies. Chris previously advised companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 500s in the technology, media, and education sectors on business operations, fundraising, marketing, and branding. He is the co-author of the 2021 book Union: A Democrat, a Republican, and a Search for Common Ground. He is a former speechwriter for Secretary John F. Kerry and has worked for The Atlantic and The San Francisco Chronicle. Chris holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives with his wife in the East Bay.

Amanda Martinez, is a digital communications specialist for UCSF’s Department of Obstetrics Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, worked at Mission Local from 2008 to 2010. Amanda received a Master’s in Journalism from UC Berkeley and considers the Bay Area home even after leaving for more than a decade to work in New York’s media and communications industry. She was most recently director of multimedia production and outreach for John Jay College. She served as managing editor of Tribeca Enterprises and as a senior multimedia producer at NBC. Amanda is a current resident of the Mission District and got her first introduction to ethnic media while working for the local bilingual newspaper El Tecolote.

Doug Ng is a design consultant with extensive expertise in communications design, spanning user experience, digital strategy, and brand development. Doug most recently served as News Platforms Director at Cityside, a nonprofit organization supporting local journalism. At Cityside, he focused on improving the functionality and accessibility of digital tools and supported the organization’s efforts to connect with local communities. A proud San Francisco native and Lowell High School graduate, Doug now resides in Berkeley with his family, where they remain passionate about community and education.

Genisha Saverimuthu is a product strategy leader at Google, driving growth in emerging markets for user products such as Google Search, News, Maps, and Payments. Earlier in her career, she launched The Washington Post‘s first loyalty program, led global strategy on the executive team at BuzzFeed, and advised media and technology CEOs as a McKinsey consultant. She currently serves on the nonprofit boards of Phillips Exeter Academy, a leading secondary boarding school, and SAMBAL, which provides technology education to children in Sri Lanka.  Genisha lives in San Francisco with her husband and holds a B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.  

Andrea Valencia studied at Instituto Superior de Intérpretes y Traductores in Mexico City; she has been involved with Mission Local’s bilingual efforts since 2008. She has also worked as a linguist at Square, Apple and Samsung. Valencia recently co-founded Linguaficient, where she works as a community and conference interpreter based in the Mission.

Elizabeth Zitrin, a longtime Mission resident, is a lawyer with an enduring interest in criminal justice issues. She is the past president of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and a board member of the Southern Center for Human Rights and Witness to Innocence, the organization of death row exonerees. 

From Mission Local: 

Lydia Chávez founded Mission Local in 2008 as an opportunity to engage her students at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in news coverage outside the classroom. The site has been independent since 2014. Chávez worked at The New York Times in the 1980s as a business and metropolitan news reporter, and as a foreign correspondent. She is the author of The Color Bind, California’s Battle to End Affirmative Action.

Joe Eskenazi, managing editor of Mission Local, was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended UC Berkeley. He was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. His work has also appeared in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.), San Francisco Public Press, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Dallas Morning News. Joe is an ex-officio member of the board.

Founding Board members (now emeritus)

Marty Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post from 2013 to 2021, previously led the Boston Globe and the Miami Herald. Baron has also held senior editing positions at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. He is on the board of trustees of the Knight Foundation and in 2023 published Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post. Baron, a fluent Spanish speaker, also advises a Spanish-language news site.

Mimi Chakarova, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, is the founder of Still I Rise Films, a site that creates, produces and funds projects that celebrate people who persevere in the face of challenges. Chakarova, the director of six full-length documentaries, won the 2011 Daniel Pearl Award
for International Investigative Journalism for her documentary, The Price of Sex.

Kuang Xu, a Mission resident and Associate Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, earned his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. Xu grew up in Suzhou, China, where he accompanied his father, a journalist, on interviews. He has been an active
story advisor (and occasionally a translator) for Mission Local.