Susan 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. She is also the consulting web strategist for The Center for Investigative Reporting's California Watch project.

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 is a contributing editor at BlogHer, a blogger, and a 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, and with The Maynard Institute, and is the Keynote program chair for the October 2009 Online News Association conference in San Francisco.

More data here:

·      Oakland Local: oaklandlocal.com

·      Personal Blog: susanmernit.com/blog

·      Twitter: twitter.com/susanmernit

·      Friendfeed: friendfeed.com/smernit

·      Linked In: linkedin.com/in/susanmernit

·      BlogHer: blogher.com/blog/susan-mernit

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