WFAA 8 Project Green WFAA.com

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 at the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, and wrote for The Dallas Morning News for 13 years. Her hobbies include organic gardening, vegetarian cooking and photography. She serves on her local school district’s nutrition committee and is a member of her city’s environmental action group, working to extend recycling and native planting programs.

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, and later, community news. Since relocating to the Boston area, she is pursuing a longtime passion chronicling environmental news and all things green.

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, an area which had been overlooked during the well-publicized clean-ups in Nepal’s Mount Everest region. Both regions suffer from heavy trekking traffic and an accumulation of plastic water bottles and refuse, which threaten to clog critical water systems and degrade the sensitive Annapurna ecology. During the clean-up, small groups of American and Nepali volunteers canvassed and cleaned more than 20 Himalayan villages at altitudes of 9,000 to 18,000 feet, and conducted sustainability programs in each community.

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.
Nima Kapadia, 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. She served as the editor-in-chief of her high school and college publications, and recently completed an internship with her university’s public affairs department. Kapadia is also the recipient of 30 local and state journalism awards for 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 and traveling. She also enjoys 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. She is now a first year 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.