Barbara Kessler, editor of GreenRightNow, has worked in newsrooms in the Midwest and South since graduating from Northwestern University in Chicago. She has been a television reporter and producer, covered the military in Georgia, and wrote for The Dallas Morning News for several years. Her hobbies include organic gardening, vegetarian cooking and photography. She volunteers on her school district’s nutrition committee and with the Boy Scouts.

Harriet L. Blake, contributor, is a veteran editor formerly with The Dallas Morning News and the Washington Post. A 1977 graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, she got her start in journalism at the Post where she worked in features. At the Morning News, she edited a Sunday lifestyles section on Texas newsmakers. Since relocating to the Boston area, she is pursuing a longtime passion chronicling environmental news and all things green.

Clint Williams is a 30-year journalism veteran who has covered politics, lifestyle trends and environmental issues for newspapers from Florida to Arizona. He paddled Georgia’s Chattahoochee River from the mountains to the sea and rode the roaring rapids of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in pursuit of a good story. And he’s hiked to the top of Mount Whitney and to the bottom of the Grand Canyon just for fun. He went to college at Brevard College and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill back in the days when there was a draft.

Shermakaye Bass, contributor, has been covering news, features and foreign affairs for more than two decades. A former staff writer for The Dallas Morning News, she now lives in Austin and freelances for a wide range of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Austin American-Statesman and The Good Life magazine. In 2001, Bass’s interest in the environment took her to Nepal in 2001, where she co-organized the nonprofit Clean Nepal to institute recycling programs and create conservation awareness in the remote regions of the Himalayan Annapurna Massif. During the clean-up, groups of American and Nepali volunteers canvassed and cleaned more than 20 Himalayan villages.

Diane Porter, contributor, is a veteran editor with more than 20 years’ experience in the newsrooms of The Austin American Statesman, The Arizona Republic and The Washington Post, editing features, arts & entertainment and education reporters. She grew up in Denver, before the Rocky Mountains were perennially hidden in a brown cloud, and lived in a co-op dormitory at the University of Kansas. She saves boxtops and aluminum can tabs for her nieces & nephews, recycles like a crazy person and has been known to stop her car to rescue junk on the side of the road, much to the delight or consternation of her passengers.

John DeFore, contributor, started his professional life as a full-time recycler: Upon graduating from the University of Texas, he opened a store devoted solely to the trade and resale of used CDs. Since leaving retail, he has written about arts and culture for such publications as The Hollywood Reporter, Blender, and Slate; he is also a regular contributor to The Austin American-Statesman. In his Central Austin neighborhood, DeFore’s 1991 Honda is a neighborhood landmark: Rarely used, it is almost always stuffed with recyclables that aren’t accepted at the curb.

Catherine Colbert, contributor, has been writing professionally for 18 years since graduating from the University of North Texas with a degree in journalism. She has been a staff writer for several trade magazines, a medical writer for a pharmaceutical development company, a technical writer for computer manufacturers and consultants, and for the past five years a business writer and analyst covering the consumer products, manufacturing and retailing industries. Colbert is raising two environmentally conscious sons, who, through their Montessori education, have taught their mom some valuable tips, too. Starting with simple concepts, such as shopping for items at the local farmer’s market to harvesting rain water and water from showers warming up, they are learning from each other how they can help to sustain our precious resources.

Nima Kapadia, intern/contributor, is a senior at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where she is majoring in journalism with teacher certification. Kapadia has been involved in journalism since high school, serving as the editor-in-chief of her high school and college publications and winning some 30 local and state journalism awards for student reporting and design. Her work has been recognized by The Dallas Morning News, University Interscholastic League, and the Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities where she received a Barbara Jordan Media Award. In her spare time, Kapadia enjoys reading, traveling and learning about how individuals and businesses can become greener.

Emily Speir, contributor, graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, as a dance major and is now a sophomore Human Ecology student at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Her interest in sustainability and the environment comes from a childhood spent periodically visiting a small family cabin nestled into the mountains of New Mexico along the Pecos River. There she learned to appreciate and find joy in the wonders of the natural world. Now, through her writing and photography, she hopes to share that joy with others.