Staff
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Annie Gaus
Annie is a San Francisco-based journalist who leads SF Standard's coverage of City Hall. Prior to joining The San Francisco Standard, Annie spent years as a business, technology and finance journalist with past bylines at the San Francisco Business Times, Bisnow, TheStreet, The Guardian, Vice News and other outlets. She joined SF Standard after founding Public Comment, a local newsletter that was merged with the brand in 2021. Early in her career, Annie was a video journalist with Discovery Communications and taught writing at San Francisco State University. Born and raised in San Francisco, she enjoys the Giants and Warriors, stand-up comedy, foggy days, and going on long walks and Muni rides around her beloved city.
Nick Veronin
Nick has been writing and editing stories about the most pressing issues and interesting personalities in the San Francisco Bay Area — and beyond — for well over a decade. In his 15+ years in journalism, he's covered crime, health, tech, A&E, and much more. When he's not behind his computer, you might find him at The Bottom of the Hill or underneath the hood of his 1987 Jeep.
Matt Smith
Matt Smith was previously a special investigative reporter at Barron's and before that a staff journalist at The Center for Investigative Reporting. During the 1990s and 2000s Smith was San Francisco news columnist for Village Voice Media. Smith graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and from Reed College. Before his career in journalism Smith was a professional bicycle racer.
Jesse Rogala
Jesse Rogala is a senior video journalist at The San Francisco Standard, primarily focused on production of feature enterprise videos. In his time at The Standard, Jesse directed the flagship video series "When The Lights Come Up In The City '' and has been nominated for a 2021 LA Press Club Award. Before joining The Standard, Jesse produced videos for multiple award-winning explanatory journalism pieces for Fortune Magazine, and was featured on Fortune’s “Most Memorable Interviews This Decade.” A graduate of the San Francisco State film program, Jesse is an avid consumer of movies and television shows, a big fan of summer camps and excels at reaching things on the top shelf.
Joel Aguero
Joel Aguero is the Creative Director at The San Francisco Standard. Aguero first moved to the Bay Area in 2009 from Sacramento. Prior to joining The Standard, they worked across a variety of roles and industries including technology, design, engineering, political campaigns, field organizing and more. They bring a wide variety of skills, creativity and technical expertise. Aguero is passionate about helping San Franciscans feel more connected to their city. They are an alumnus of Stanford University, where they studied Product Design & Engineering.
LaToya Tooles
LaToya Tooles is a multiplatform journalist dedicated to democratizing information and diversifying stories. She has worked as a journalism educator at San Francisco State University and YR Media in Oakland, CA. LaToya has produced several audio projects with Transmitter, KQED, OZY Media, Stanford University and more. She holds a master’s degree in digital media from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor’s in print journalism from San Francisco State University. LaToya is the current president of the SF State Journalism Alumni Association.
Josh Koehn
Josh Koehn is a senior reporter for The San Francisco Standard. His previous work has uncovered numerous instances of government misconduct, leading to widespread policy changes and the removal or incarceration of several public officials. Before joining The Standard, Koehn worked as an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. His stories have been honored by the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the Online News Association. Most recently, Koehn served as a communications director in the California Legislature. He is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, and lives in San Francisco.
Camille Cohen
Camille Cohen is The Standard's Staff Photojournalist. She has received international critical acclaim for her images and stories, which draw inspiration from her experiences living in California, France and Thailand. Camille’s passion for San Francisco news and culture developed during her time studying at San Francisco State University’s School of Journalism, where she graduated with a concentration in photojournalism.
Peter-Astrid Kane
Peter-Astrid Kane is a Senior Editor at The San Francisco Standard. Previously, they were the Communications Director for San Francisco Pride and, before that, the Editor of SF Weekly. They live in the Mission, and you can call them Astrid. They can be reached at [email protected]
David Sjostedt
David is a staff writer at The Standard with a focus on homelessness and addiction. An SF State Gator alum, David was formerly editor–in–chief of the Golden Gate Xpress and a reporting intern at the SF Examiner. [email protected] Twitter: @davidfortheppl
Michael Barba
Michael Barba is a senior reporter focused on enterprise and investigations at The San Francisco Standard. Before joining the publication in November 2021, Barba spent more than six years as a beat reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, where he primarily covered cops, crime and politics. During his time at the Examiner, Barba reported on some of the biggest stories in San Francisco, including the police shootings of Mario Woods and Luis Gongora Pat, the Kate Steinle murder trial and the Mohammed Nuru corruption scandal. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University.
Sophie Bearman
Sophie Bearman is The San Francisco Standard's Director of Multimedia, leading the digital outlet's video and audio efforts. Before joining The Standard, Sophie worked as a video journalist for CNBC covering the intersection of business and politics and as a reporter for Jigsaw Productions. She is an alum of Harvard College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
Zamfira Costin-Andrei
Zamfira leads platform and infrastructure engineering at the SF Standard. Previously, he led the development team for the most-visited news website in Romania. Andrei has worked on a number of different projects throughout his career, including mobile delivery apps, advertising platforms, and more.
Maryann Jones Thompson
Maryann is research editor at The San Francisco Standard, adding data-driven insight to its editorial features. Her analyses have guided initiatives for publishing, venture capital, technology, sustainability, and nonprofit organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, IDG, Sand Hill Group and Corporate Eco Forum. A “Standard” veteran, she founded The Industry Standard’s “Metrics” section, one of the digital economy’s first examples of data journalism, as well as the award-winning ROAM travel magazine. Along with a good research rabbit hole, Maryann loves hanging out with family, traveling, the ocean and California.
Leo Cooperband
Leo is a Designer at The San Francisco Standard. Prior to joining The Standard, Leo helped develop branding and advertising material for clients such as Snapchat and Jack in the Box. He brings experience designing icons, websites, paid social, motion graphics, and more across multiple brands. Leo holds a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts and a Minor in Design from UC San Diego. He has a deep appreciation for the outdoors and enjoys the landscapes of the bay area through outdoor sports.
Heather Grossmann
Heather Grossmann is executive editor at The San Francisco Standard. She specializes in launching newsrooms and editorial revenue products for media organizations. Immediately prior to joining The Standard, Heather was executive editor of growth & strategy at The Real Deal and the publisher and editor of Boss Betty News, a publication focused on workplace gender equality. Heather is a Bay Area native who accidentally spent a very long time in New York City and is very happy to be back on the West Coast.
Meaghan Mitchell
Meaghan Mitchell's life mantra is based on the African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." As a native San Franciscan and journalist, Meaghan has successfully built residents' trust from the city's most marginalized communities by prioritizing news coverage in areas like the Bayview, Fillmore, SoMA and Tenderloin Districts. Meaghan's background is multifaceted and meets at the intersection of diversity, inclusion and community engagement. As a neighborhood editor, Meaghan has written hundreds of articles for Hoodline, has been featured on local outlets such as SFIST, Broke-Ass Stuart and the SF Bayview Newspaper.
Griffin Gaffney
Griffin is The San Francisco Standard's CEO. Prior to SF Standard, Griffin founded Stripe's sales function and led teams in Korea, Silicon Valley and sub-Saharan Africa for organizations ranging in size and mindset from multinational corporations to five-person startups and rural schools. Griffin holds a Social Science degree from Harvard and is an enthusiastic volunteer, musician and triathlete.
Christina Campodonico
Christina Campodonico writes about arts, community and culture. In her time at The Standard, she’s developed and launched the publication’s weekly and daily newsletters and won a National Arts & Entertainment Award. She first fell in love with local journalism covering Silicon Beach in her native SoCal and cut her teeth managing the neighborhood’s 50-year-old newspaper, The Argonaut. Her writing has been nominated for multiple Southern California Journalism Awards and has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeleno and KCET's Southland Sessions. She is a graduate of Princeton University and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Anna Tong
Anna Tong is the data editor at The San Francisco Standard. Prior to The Standard, she worked in product management at cryptocurrency and real estate startups and at Google. She also was a staff writer at the Sacramento Bee, and has written for Vogue Business, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News. Anna was born and raised in the Bay Area and has lived in San Francisco for a very long time! Anna can be reached at [email protected]
Kevin Truong
Kevin Truong is a staff writer with The San Francisco Standard with a focus on small business policy and the economic recovery. Prior to joining the publication he was a reporter and editor at the San Francisco Business Times where he covered commercial real estate, biotech and the innovation economy. His journalism has won recognition from the California News Publishers Association and the San Francisco Press Club. A proud graduate of UCLA , Kevin cut his teeth at the Daily Bruin student newspaper and news organizations like the Christian Science Monitor, NBC Los Angeles and Marketplace, before making his way north to The City by the Bay.
Sarah Wright
Sarah is a housing and transportation reporter at The San Francisco Standard. She has worked as a local journalist in Washington, D.C., and in Half Moon Bay, where she served as the Half Moon Bay Review's first deputy editor, covering the COVID-19 pandemic response and the biggest wildfire in a century in San Mateo County. Originally from Lake Tahoe, Sarah is an avid outdoorswoman and now lives in the Inner Richmond. Sarah can be reached at [email protected]
Jonathan Weber
Jonathan is editor in chief of The San Francisco Standard. He joined from Reuters News, where he most recently served as global technology editor based in Singapore and previously held the post of West Coast Bureau Chief. In 2010 he helped create the Bay Citizen, a non-profit news organization serving the San Francisco Bay Area, serving as editor in chief. Before that he was the founder and CEO of New West Publishing, a new media company serving the Rocky Mountain West, and the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard, the highly regarded newsweekly that chronicled the first Internet boom. He studied philosophy in college, and moved to California to work for the Los Angeles Times many years ago and never looked back.
Han Li
Han Li is a reporter for The San Francisco Standard covering the city's diverse Asian American community. Born and raised in China, Han is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. He graduated from Sun Yat-sen University in journalism and holds a master's degree in public administration from the University of Southern California. Previously, Han wrote for the World Journal, a national Chinese-language newspaper. He brings his bilingual reporting skills to The Standard. When not reporting, you can find Han checking out the Bay Area's regional Chinese cuisine and immersing himself in Chinese American history and politics.
Mike Ege
Palo Alto native Mike Ege has been following San Francisco politics for over 25 years, and brings that perspective to the Standard’s City Hall desk and newsletters. Previously Mike covered policy and politics at the Bay City Beacon, worked as a housing activist, moderated The Wall, a popular message board on city politics, and worked at the San Francisco Daily Journal on the commercial side for over a decade. His other passions include film and photography, and arguing about the quality of the city's cigar lounges and cheesesteaks.
Michaela Neville
Michaela Neville is the social media editor for The San Francisco Standard. Born and raised in Bernal Heights and West Portal, she has worked in a diverse range of fields including politics, fashion and academic tutoring. Michaela is a graduate of Colorado College where she studied English Literature and Creative Writing and edited her campus newsmagazine. She is also an alum of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and she still sings in her free time.
Mike Kuba
Mike Kuba is an Associate Video Producer at The San Francisco Standard. Previously, he worked as a freelance filmmaker in Washington D.C. and the Bay Area. He brings experience shooting, editing and producing short documentaries and videos for established media outlets such as 60 Second Docs, brands such as Airbnb and organizations such as the National Park Service. He has also shot and directed his own independent documentaries on issues related to homelessness and climate change.