About Susan

Susan Mernit is an innovator and media entrepreneur working to help local communities build civic engagement, improve economic development and give voice to people of color and those in underserved communities through amplifying the power of local media and discussion on the web.

Mernit is the founder of Oakland Local, a news & community hub for Oakland, CA focused on environmental, food, development and social justice issues, and the recipient of a 2009 New Voices grant from J-Lab at American University. Oakland Local is recognized as one of the most interesting and unique local sites in the country because of its civic engagement model and its training academy and programs.

Mernit often works as a consultant, trainer, and coach, and is interested in projects focused on community media, bridging the digital divide, new revenue models for media, media entrepreneurship and product strategy. 

For 10 months she was the consulting web strategist for The Center for Investigative Reporting's California Watch project. She is currently a circuit rider for the Knight Foundation Community Information Challenge.

A former VP at AOL and Netscape, and a former Yahoo Senior Director, Mernit was the consulting program manager for The Knight News Challenge in 2008-09, as well as a consultant to organizations including Salon.com & TechSoup Global, where she led the re-design of their portal.

Mernit spent summer 2008 at TechStars, incubating a company that died; that experience has super-fueled her energy. She has been a contributing editor at BlogHer, a blogger, and was the co-founder of Public Media Collaborative, a volunteer group focused on training nonprofits, ethnic media & community groups on using social media tools.

A popular trainer and speaker, Mernit works regularly with The Knight Digital Media Center at USC's Annenberg School. She was the Keynote program chair for the October 2009 Online News Association conference in San Francisco.

More data here:


 

Check out her LinkedIn Profile and the Wikipedia entry for more info. Or send her an email.

 

Susan Mernit

Search