Susan Mernit is editor & publisher of Oakland Local a news & community hub for Oakland, CA focused on social justice issues that combines reported stories with community media & diverse voices and training to bridge the digital divide. A former VP at AOL & Netscape, & a former Yahoo Senior Director, Mernit was consulting program manager for The Knight News Challenge, 2008-09 and is a 2012 Stanford Carlos McClatchy Fellow. She has consulted with many non-profit organizations on strategy, product development and social media/engagement, including Salon.com, TechSoup Global, Public Radio International and the Institute for Policy Studies/Economic Hardship Reporting Project, led by Barbara Ehrenreich.  She is a circuit rider for The Knight Community Information Challenge, a former Senior Fellow for the Reporting on Health project at USC and has been a facilitator for The Knight Digital Media Center at The Annenberg School of Journalism, USC. In 2011, she launched Code for Oakland, a one-day tech event focused on building apps to serve Oakland community. She was at TechStars in 2008 with a start-up that failed, an invaluable experience.

Mernit is passionate about local media, publishing platforms, web and placed-based digital training, and Oakland.  She is super interested in how tech and civic engagement amplify both social change and economic development and is trying to put some of her ideas to work in Oakland, CA. In her free time, she’s into hiking, growing veggies, urban farms, poetry, blogging, and her new dog. Learn more at susanmernit.com and her consulting site, houseoflocal.org.