Editor-in-Chief
Michael F. Fitzgerald joined Cambridge Day in September 2025. He has been part of six journalism startups, one of which, “ZDNet,” is still going strong. He’s been editor of “Nieman Storyboard,” the premier site covering narrative storytelling, articles editor at the “Boston Globe Magazine,” and editor in chief of “Harvard Public Health” magazine. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including The Economist, Fast Company, and the New York Times.
Senior Editors
Shraddha Chakradhar is a freelance editor and has been contributing to the Cambridge Day team since January 2026. A science journalist by training, she spent more than a decade writing and reporting stories about health, medicine and other scientific topics for outlets including Nature Medicine and STAT. In recent years, she has been editing, including at Nieman Journalism Lab and at Science magazine, where she helped oversee the newsroom’s coverage of issues at the intersection of science and society.
John Summers is President and Editorial Director of Lingua Franca Media, Inc and a former Editor-in-Chief of The Baffler magazine. Summers has held academic appointments as Lecturer on American Studies at Columbia University, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Boston College, and Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University. The author of “Every Fury on Earth,” he’s published a hundred-plus essays in newspapers, political magazines, and literary journals and edited five books of cultural criticism. Simon and Schuster will publish his biography of the sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-1962). His Ph.D. in history comes from the University of Rochester. His work is archived at his personal website: johnsummers.co
Production Editor
Genevieve Savage is a third-year undergraduate student at Northeastern University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English and Political Science. Before starting at Cambridge Day, she previously worked at To Vima English Edition in Athens, Greece, where she wrote daily news articles and select opinion pieces spanning film and media, the environment, and cultural criticism. Based in Boston, she’s rarely content to stay on one side of the river and often crosses the Charles to settle with a book and matcha near Harvard Square.
Reporters
Julia Carpi has been writing for Cambridge Day since she graduated from Tufts University with a degree in International Relations and Spanish. She reports on education topics, from toxic workplace allegations, to disparities in student outcomes, to policy matters concerning parents and students. In addition to writing, she has experience in multimedia journalism and has previously reported for Boston.com, El Mundo, and Arlington Community Media. You can reach Julia at juliacarpi99@gmail.com.
Jeanine Farley worked in educational publishing for many years. Her work has appeared in hundreds, if not thousands, of textbooks, workbooks, videos, labs, computer games, assessments (tests to most people), and other products. So far, she has written more than 242 installments of Wild Things for Cambridge Day. Jeanine enjoys bicycling, photography, and night hikes. One day last fall, she walked the 27-mile Boston City Trail from Mattapan to Bunker Hill.
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom teaches writing at the Cambridge Center for Education, was a film programing consultant at the Kennedy Center, is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
Claire Ogden is a freelance journalist and nonfiction film producer based in Somerville. She joined Cambridge Day in April 2022 and has also written for WBUR and Boston Art Review. A short documentary she co-produced, “Sound & Color,” will premiere at the Salem Film Festival in 2026.
Jane Petersen covers city council, breaking news, and local businesses for Cambridge Day. Her work has also been featured in CommonWealth Beacon. Prior to her journalism career, she worked at an environmental and economic consulting firm in Cambridge. She has a Bachelor’s in Political Economy from Williams College and a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the HKS Student Policy Review.
Sydney Wise is a freelance reporter covering Somerville and Massachusetts politics for Cambridge Day. Her research and reporting has been featured by the PBS News Hour, the Body & State Podcast, the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, and the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies. By email: smagnoliaw@gmail.com. On Bluesky: @sydneyywisee.bsky.social
Board of Directors
Amira Valiani, director: Amira is an entrepreneur and policy professional. She’s a repeat founder, and most recently built and sold Glow, a podcast monetization software, to Libsyn (LSYN) in 2021. Amira is on the strategy and growth teams at the Solana Foundation. Previously, she served as senior adviser to the deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, as a speechwriter to the secretary of state and as an adviser in the State Department Office of Policy Planning under Jake Sullivan. Amira has an MBA/MPA from the Wharton School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She’s lived in Cambridge since 2014.
Mary McGrath, clerk, director: Mary is an award-winning public radio and podcast producer. She’s the co-founder and executive producer of Open Source Media, an independent production company known for its signature program, “Open Source,” which launched in 2003 as the first (and still the longest-continuing) podcast. Mary was a principal in a group formed to acquire The Boston Globe from The New York Times in 2009. She was the co-creator and producer of “The Connection,” a call-in talk program on WBUR radio in Boston, and she has created and produced many other programs for radio and television. Mary grew up in Boston in a family of journalists and lives in Cambridge with her husband.
Niko Emack, director: Niko is an award-winning leader with experience in political communication, civic engagement and education. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, NPR, Foreign Policy, WBUR, NBC Boston, Fox 25, CBS and more. He is a member of the faculty at Emerson College, where he teaches in the Department of Communication Studies. He’s also taught at the Gwen Ifill College of Media, Arts and Humanities at Simmon University and the Frederick E. Berry Institute of Politics at Salem State University. Niko was born and raised in the city and is proud to coach the boys’ varsity soccer team at Cambridge Rindge and Latin.
Raffi Freeman, president, treasurer, director: Raffi focuses professional work across climate change mitigation and housing advocacy. He is managing partner at Izuba Energy, a premier developer of renewable energy projects in Africa, and fractional head of strategy/business development for a range of climate-tech startups. Previously he was vice president of business at a leading Lidar mapping and robotics technology company, Ouster (OUST). He has 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, investor and adviser in industrial startups. He started his career at McKinsey & Co. as a business analyst. He is a board member of the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust and the Cambridge Community Foundation.
Richard Harriman, director: Richard is the former chief executive of Synecticsworld, an international consultancy in innovation founded in Cambridge. He was a senior innovation fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at at Harvard and a senior social innovation fellow at Babson. He has been involved in the community, including at the Cambridge Community Foundation, where he served for 10 years as chair of the board.
Cambridge Local News Fund Advisory Board (at the Cambridge Community Foundation)
Kristen Wainwright, chair: Kristen works at the intersection of business and the arts. She served as the director of visual arts for the city of Boston, was a founding vice president of advertising agency Digitas and was co-founder of the Boston Literary Group. Her nonprofit board work includes extensive service to the Cambridge Community Foundation, Cambridge Club, Cambridge Dispute Settlement Center and the Shady Hill School. She is the president of the Cambridge Mother’s Club.
Jim Maloney: Jim has been a lifelong leader in Cambridge’s city government. For 20 years he was chief operating officer of Cambridge Public Schools. Before that, as assistant city manager for fiscal affairs he advised the mayor on financial, operational and economic development issues for two decades. While raising his family in Cambridge, Jim spent countless evenings speaking to groups across the city. Recently retired, he is an avid walker and actively tracks Cambridge news and developments.
Lori Lander: Lori is passionate about civic engagement. She co-founded and co-directs Many Helping Hands 365, which organizes an annual MLK Day of Service involving 3,000-plus volunteers. Since 2010, Lori has hosted monthly breakfast gatherings of 50 to 70-plus people to discuss topical issues as varied as race, education, affordable housing, arts and social change. She serves on boards within the Cambridge Arts Council, Cambridge Community Foundation and Cambridge Health Alliance. A lawyer (JD, University of Miami), Lori is a painter with many exhibitions to her name.
Martha Bedell: Martha, a longtime Cambridge resident, is an architect (Harvard, M. Arch) with a residential design practice. She has extensive board experience in nonprofit organizations including Fenway High School in Boston, the High Spirit Community Farm in Great Barrington, Shady Hill School and The Philanthropy Connection. Her expertise and experience include strategic fundraising and board governance.
Pastor Larry Kim: Pastor Larry Kim has served as senior pastor at the Central Square Church since 2005. Hailing from Southern California, he is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School (after Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary) and enjoys “reading books I should have read in high school.” Larry also serves as co-chair of the Cambridge Peace Commission. He and his wife are raising three children all attending Cambridge public schools. He is passionate about how local news shapes the community, drives conversations and promotes civic engagement.
Past Team Members:
Marc Levy, founding editor