Dear Dunworkin Members,

If you know of any members that may be ill or having other difficulties, please notify John Adams at John9048@Gmail.com.

Updated October 4, 2024

The club meets on the 2nd and 4th Fridays of the month at the Upper Montclair Presbyterian Church located at 53 Norwood Avenue, Upper Montclair. There is informal Socializing beginning at 10:30 followed by a presentation from an invited speaker at 11:00. The topics vary from meeting to meeting. Attendees pay for lunch prior to the presentation. Lunch and additional informal socializing begin at noon.

THE NEXT DUNWORKIN MEETING IS OCTOBER 11, 2024 THE SPEAKER IS JOE GRANGER

10/11/24 Joe Granger, Executive Director of MESH, or Montclair Emergency Services for Hope. The organization provides basic and essential services to Montclair’s homeless adults and families through partnerships with local churches and synagogues. Joe has only been ED since March of this year, but has made impactful changes, broadening the laundry services, implementing a job acquisition program, and increasing the Shop operations from 2-3 days per week to 6. His prior experience was with Hillsong Church in Montclair, as board member and volunteer, and before that 20 years of sales and business management with a number of enterprises.

He will familiarize us with their services, the number of people they serve, as well as discussing the nature of the challenges those people and families face. Most of us have had genuine success with rewarding careers, and often never had the chance to learn of others, often with equal potential skill sets, who have not been as fortunate. Life circumstances, sometimes random, can contribute to a gap which can be sizable.

10/25/24 TBA

11/08/24 Heather Garside: Technological events can shape geography and population changes.  This has been true for Paterson, NJ. Heather Garside, Curator of History for the Paterson Museum, will answer the question “Why Paterson?” in describing the changes which began in 1792.

The brainchild of several visionaries, including Alexander Hamilton, Paterson was developed to demonstrate America’s ability to develop its own industries and achieve economic independence. This presentation will discuss the struggles endured in the early years of development. The presentation will also highlight some of Paterson’s major industries and successes. 

Ms. Garside has held her current position since December 2019 and is responsible for all exhibitions and collections management.  She had been Director/Curator of the Passaic County Historical Society, where she oversaw all activities at the Lambert Castle museum for eight years.  She holds a BA in History from Union College, and an MA in Medieval Archaeology from the University of York, in the UK.

12/13/24 Holiday Lunch

01/26/24 Wiley Hausam, new Director of Arts and Cultural Programming with Peak Performances at Montclair State. He is a former protege of Hal Prince (of Evita fame) and George C. Wolfe at the Public Theater in New York. His topic will be about his life in theater and his role as a seasoned cultural arts programmer at NYU’s Skirball Center, the Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University, and more recently at the North Carolina School of the Arts.Over the course of his career Wiley has worked with such artists as Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Jon Batiste,  Dianne Reeves, Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, the Emerson String Quartet, Itzhak Perlman,  Laurie Anderson, the Kronos Quartet, etc.He will also give us a preview of the upcoming 2024 season at Montclair State. 

02/09/24 Dr. Khemani Gibson, graduate lecturer at Brooklyn College.  He received his doctorate in history from New York University and has held lecturer positions at NYU, Columbia, and currently Brooklyn College. He is a community organizer and historian from Orange, NJ who specializes in researching and teaching about the African Diaspora, Caribbean migration, and racial justice in New Jersey. He uses his training as a historian to illuminate the ways inequalities of the past continue to affect Black and brown communities and to help community organizers and leaders build a more just society.

Dr. Gibson’s lecture, “Unmaking the Panama Canal,” will explore the history of the Black West Indian workers who built the Panama Canal. With the opening of the canal on August 15, 1914, the United States not only produced a technological marvel that forever altered world geography, but it also launched the nation’s status as a rising world power. Eager to escape the constraints and stagnancy of late nineteenth and early twentieth century British colonialism, British West Indians viewed the Panama Canal as a land of opportunity to self-determine and create lives for themselves, their families, and communities. It is in this migration that we gain greater insight into the creation of not only the Panama Canal and how it foreshadowed the rise of the US over the coming century, but also of how Black identities are constantly formed and transformed in the search for full freedom.

02/23/24 Anjuli Ramos-Busot, State Director for the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, and both a long-standing environmental scientist and activist. Anjuli earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico before getting her M.S. in Environmental Chemistry and Air Pollution Science and Technology from Rutgers University. With previous experience at the NJ Department of Environmental Protection as both a climate change researcher and air quality specialist, Anjuli has in-depth knowledge of how the climate crisis impacts residents right here in New Jersey. In her time at the NJ Chapter, Anjuli has served for several years as the Air Quality Issues Coordinator, and as Chapter Director has led and mobilized hundreds of volunteers to stand for offshore wind and clean energy, fights to shut down the expansion of natural gas power plants, and marked the end of coal in New Jersey forever at the closure of the Logan and Chambers facilities.

03/08/24 Tracey Nguyễn Mang, arrived in America at the age of three as part of the Vietnamese refugee exodus. In 2018, inspired by her family’s refugee story, she founded Vietnamese Boat People (www.vietnameseboatpeople.org) to preserve stories from the community and to empower others in exploring their family histories and personal narratives. She is working now to transform traditional oral histories into accessible storytelling formats. Over the years, Vietnamese Boat People has received grant funding from a variety of prestigious institutions. Their podcast received recognition, including the 2020 Silver ‘Best Mission Driven’ award from the Asian Podcast Network.  Additionally, it was a finalist for the 2023 Community Heritage Heroes award from The Asian American Foundation. Their work has been featured in Forbes.org, NPR, and incorporated into university critical refugee studies. Presently, the work is being archived at New York University’s Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives and The Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. 

03/22/24 Cynthia Kitay, Director of Development for the Montclair Literary Festival, which runs this year from April 27 to May 4, 2024. Cynthia will provide a preview of the program and describe how it is all put together. Revenue from the festival benefits Succeed2gether, a not-for-profit organization providing free one-on-one tutoring to children from low-income families in Montclair and the surrounding area.

Ms. Kitay has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in sociology, as well as a law degree that led to a 20-year career as Senior Counsel in the Enforcement Division of the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to her legal career, Cynthia worked in the music business in band management and as a writer for a music trade paper.

04/12/24 Charles Bagli, has written about  the intersection of “politics AND real estate” in NYC for over 30 years, starting with the NY Observer, and then the NY Times. Drawing upon contact with all the NY power centers, his subjects include the battle to build a $2 billion stadium for the Jets on the West Side, rebuilding the World Trade Center, corruption in the construction industry and with tax assessors, sale of the Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Village, and rejuvenation of Times Square. These projects were covered by a host of publications in addition to the Times.

His topic for our meeting will cover the trial of Robert Durst, heir apparent to a vast NY real estate empire. He wrote a total of more than80 stories for the Times about the suspicions surrounding Robert Durst, heir to a vast real estate empire, over 23 years. Bagli describes Durst’s case as “a unique tale of power, money, and crime” covering a period of 23 years, and involved his living in Los Angeles, the site of the trial, for five months. Interest in the case has not diminished, and HBO will begin airing The Jinx (The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst) Part 2 April 21.

He moved reluctantly to Montclair, but it had been the home of his wife Ellie, and he has grown to appreciate the unique economic and ethnic character and has never moved from the home they purchased in 1988. As evidence of interests far beyond journalism, he has run the NYC marathon twice, coached a girls softball team for 12 years, and with his wife raised two daughters.

04/26/24 Spring Lunch

05/10/24 Rev. Greg Horn’s topic topic is “From Liberia to Kenya, to Brazil: A New Vision for a Church’s International Engagement.”

Rev. Gregory. Horn has been pastor and head of staff at the Presbyterian Church of Upper Montclair since early 2009. Greg is a graduate of Stanford University and Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, where he was recognized for his preaching and promise of future excellence in parish ministry.

Since 1991 he has led four Presbyterian congregations through periods of sustained renewal, vitality, and growth–including churches in Belleville, NJ; Englewood, NJ; Denver, Colorado; and Cranford, New Jersey. In the early-2000s, Greg served as Director of Operations for a New York City agency employing recently incarcerated felons and housed homeless persons living with HIV/AIDS. Since 2005, he has also served on staff at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City and lecturing at Union Theological Seminary on Reformed theology and worship. Before becoming a minister, Greg worked as a software designer at Microsoft, a case clerk at a corporate law firm, a housepainter, a “grunt” for a local utility, and other interesting jobs.

Greg’s approach is in compelling worship, valuing diverse voices and relationships, and serving others while working for social justice. He is dedicated to the vision of an inclusive community orientation where everyone is welcomed.

Greg is married to Sarah Touborg-Horn, Vice President, and Editor at W.W. Norton Publishing in New York City. They are the parents of a college student, Will, and high schooler, Maggie. He can be reached at  greghorn@pcum.org.

07/12/24 Summer Lunch

09/13/24 Rick Wright leads Birds and Art tours in Europe and the Americas for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, ventbird.com. A widely published author and sought-after lecturer, Rick studied French, German, Philosophy, and Life Sciences at the University of Nebraska. After a detour to Harvard Law School, he took the Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University, then spent a dozen years as an academic, holding successive appointments as Assistant Professor of German at the University of Illinois, Reader in Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, and Associate Professor of German at Fordham University. His publications include two books on the Latin animal literature of the late Middle Ages, two field guides to bird identification, and the Peterson Reference Guide to American Sparrows. He is also the co-author, with Sanford Sorkin, of Watching Birds in Montclair and of Feeding Birds in Northern New Jersey. A member of the Montclair Bird Club’s executive board, Rick lives in Bloomfield with his wife, the medievalist Alison Beringer; their little girl, Avril; and the world’s jet-blackest lab, Quetzal. 

The topic will be: Birds Where We Want Them 

09/27/24 Anne Mernin, Executive Director of Toni’s Kitchen, will describe the history and range of activities devoted to assisting those with basic needs.

Toni’s Kitchen was started in 1982 by parishioners at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Montclair with the simple mission to “serve our neighbors in need.” Following the lead of a soup kitchen in nearby Paterson, people arriving for a hot meal were treated as guests and served restaurant style. The parishioners felt that this approach offered more dignity and respect than the traditional “stand in line” soup kitchen model. And thus, it continued and grew for the next 37 years. Adopting a community partner model, meals were served at St. Lukes and foodstuffs were quietly embedded in approximately 60 community organizations serving the hungry and homeless, largely in Montclair. Toni’s Kitchen provides approximately 240,000 meals annually.

Then came 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtually overnight those 60 organizations that had been the channel for food distribution to the community were shut down by the Governor’s order. The supply chain wasn’t merely broken, it ceased to exist. At the same time demand increased as jobs were lost, people were quarantined, people were dying. Undaunted, Toni’s Kitchen, and indeed the entire parish, led by John Mennell, pastor, and Anne Mernin, Executive Director, were determined to pick up the slack.

Come and hear how what started as a modest somewhat traditional soup kitchen, challenged to its core by the pandemic, has grown to serving more than two million meals (yes, 2,000,000) annually supported by a mere half-dozen employees and over 2,000 volunteers. As one donor expressed it, “This is a case study for the Harvard Business Review.”

Anne Mernin has committed herself, and Toni’s Kitchen, to overcome food insecurity in the communities it serves within the next 3-5 years. Come and hear how.

Anne came to Toni’s Kitchen as its executive director in 2010, following a rich history in management at Coopers & Lybrand, Société Générale and as co-founder and co-director of Montclair Bounce. Anne grew up in Montclair, graduated from Montclair High, University of Virginia, and NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, has three brilliant children and is an avid hiker.

10/11/24 Joe Granger, Executive Director of MESH, or Montclair Emergency Services for Hope. The organization provides basic and essential services to Montclair’s homeless adults and families through partnerships with local churches and synagogues. Joe has only been ED since March of this year, but has made impactful changes, broadening the laundry services, implementing a job acquisition program, and increasing the Shop operations from 2-3 days per week to 6. His prior experience was with Hillsong Church in Montclair, as board member and volunteer, and before that 20 years of sales and business management with a number of enterprises.

He will familiarize us with their services, the number of people they serve, as well as discussing the nature of the challenges those people and families face. Most of us have had genuine success with rewarding careers, and often never had the chance to learn of others, often with equal potential skill sets, who have not been as fortunate. Life circumstances, sometimes random, can contribute to a gap which can be sizable.

10/25/24 TBA

11/08/24 Heather Garside: Technological events can shape geography and population changes.  This has been true for Paterson, NJ. Heather Garside, Curator of History for the Paterson Museum, will answer the question “Why Paterson?” in describing the changes which began in 1792.

The brainchild of several visionaries, including Alexander Hamilton, Paterson was developed to demonstrate America’s ability to develop its own industries and achieve economic independence. This presentation will discuss the struggles endured in the early years of development. The presentation will also highlight some of Paterson’s major industries and successes. 

Ms. Garside has held her current position since December 2019 and is responsible for all exhibitions and collections management.  She had been Director/Curator of the Passaic County Historical Society, where she oversaw all activities at the Lambert Castle museum for eight years.  She holds a BA in History from Union College, and an MA in Medieval Archaeology from the University of York, in the UK.

12/13/24 Holiday Lunch

2023 Schedule

1/13/23 VIDEO CONFERENCE Carla Baranauckas, Editor-in-chief of the Montclair Local.  She is a journalist with experience at The New York Times, HuffPost,  NorthJersey.com, NextAvenue.org, TheStreet.com, 24/7 Wall St., AOL, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Grand Forks Herald, the Edwardsville Intelligencer, the Texarkana Gazette and the Pampa News. She has a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she also taught for 15 years. She also is Local News Partnerships Coordinator in the School of Communications and Media, at Montclair State University.

She will address the importance of local journalism to communities and the way they can support it, but is even more interested in responding to questions which can probe her 40 years of experience in all aspects of journalism.  She was born in Niagara Falls, NY, moved for 3 years to Memphis, but from there moved to Edina, MN, which she considers her hometown. She loves dogs, and acts on that emotion by owning a mixed breed (24% Great Pyrenees) named Emmy Beans.

1/27/23 VIDEO CONFERENCE Montclair resident Tim Crist. Tim retired from Prudential in 2016 after a 37-year career, mostly with its quantitative equity investment subsidiary. He is currently president of the Newark History Society, a trustee of the Newark Public Library, and co-chair of the Outreach and Social Justice team at Union Congregational Church in Montclair. A graduate of Yale, he earned his PhD in history at Cambridge University and his MBA in Finance at NYU. He has been a resident of Montclair since 1995.

He draws upon a deep base of knowledge, starting with a History degree from Yale, and an PhD in History from Cambridge, and will review with us the activities which commissioned the Spirit of Sacrifice in Montclair’s World War I Memorials. He will discuss the initiatives at the end of the war to honor those who served, and the 72 who died, and the commissioning by Union Congregational Church of Tiffany stained glass windows to illustrate the purpose and spirit behind the WWI Memorials.

2/10/23 Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson will make an encore appearance to provide his reflections on homeland security and our democracy.

He is a 2021 recipient of The American Lawyer’s Lifetime Achievement Award, as “an American statesman who has devoted his career to the public interest.” In public life he served as Secretary of Homeland Security (2013-2017), General Counsel of the Department of Defense (2009-2012), General Counsel of the Department of the Air Force (1998-2001) and as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (1989-1991). In private law practice he has been an experienced litigator and trial lawyer, and a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers. In 2017 Mr. Johnson returned to his original law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind Wharton and Garrison and has become cohead of the firm’s Cybersecurity & Data Protection practice, and advises high-tech companies, private equity firms and government contractor of the legal aspects of cybersecurity, national security, data privacy, government relations, crisis management, high stakes litigation and regulatory matters. He is currently a member of the board of directors of Lockheed Martin and U.S. Steel and is a trustee of Columbia University. In private life Secretary Johnson is a regular commentator on national issues on NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, PBS, FOX, FOX Business, Bloomberg TV, and numerous other outlets and he has published op-eds in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Lawfare, and Bloomberg Law.

2/24/23 Dr. Sarah Minegar, an academic historian, rare manuscript archivist, and museum innovator with over 15 years of classroom and collections-based experience.  She received an MA in Social History and a PhD in Modern History and Literature from Drew University’s Caspersen School of Graduate Studies.

She is with the Morristown National Historical Park, popularly known as Washington’s Headquarters.  Her work includes all parts of archiving and exhibiting, and she is one of three people representing the division of cultural resources, including accessibility and community learning.

She will demonstrate the ways artifacts tell stories and will share her experience teaching artifact labs at Morristown NHP. Using reproductions and slides from the Morristown collection, she will guide Dunworkin’ Club members and guests through a hands-on document analysis exercise. Her written work includes a book entitled “Inward, Outward, Upward” which is an antiracism workbook, and she proudly serves on the board of the Creative Reaction Lab. She and her partner reside in Summit, NJ.

3/10/23 Susan Kerner and Steve McCarthy will show clips of a movie entitled “Eva’s Promise” a recent entry at the Montclair Film Festival. Trapped in Auschwitz, Eva Schloss promised her brother that if she survived, she would search for his artworks, which he hid before they were both taken away.  Filmmakers Kerner and McCarthy, both from the College of the Arts at Montclair State will also discuss how they first met Eva and produced the film.

Susan Kerner is a retired theatrical director with over 75 productions including And Then They Came For Me at Montclair State,  Crossroads Theater, Meadow Brook Theater and several theaters around the country.  Steve McCarthy is an Emmy award winning  filmmaker, formerly associated with 60 Minutes and Dateline. The filmmakers are just back from screenings in London and Amsterdam; the film sold out three performances at the Montclair Film Festival.

3/24/23 Evan Cutler, Television Producer, twenty year Montclair resident Evan Cutler will discuss his experiences as a successful television producer.

He is a long standing producer of well received television programs some of which are related to police and crime fighting. His current attention revolves around OnPatrol: Live, a program which follows police in their on duty pursuits in various cities around the country airing at 9PM to midnight on Friday and Saturday nights on the REELZ network. In the past he has been the producer of such well known tv shows as The Daily Show, Anderson Cooper 360, McEnroe, The Joy Behar Show, and Live PD. Mr. Cutler is also an avid bird enthusiast who is instrumental in operating the Montclair Hawk Watch.

4/14/23 Mike Farrelly, Montclair Town historian will address Dunworkin for the fourth or fifth time.  He coauthored, with Beth Shepard, a book entitled “Legendary Locals of Montclair” which touched on residents who have contributed to the Arts, Sports, Medicine, Legislation, and Religion.  This time he will focus on a family described in the book “Cheaper by the Dozen”, the Gilbreths.

That book spotlights the father, Frank Gilbreth, an efficiency expert and engaging personality, and before a packed auditorium in Montclair Library about 5 years ago,  he gave a newer presentation featuring Lillian Gilbreth, the mother and remarkably talented co-head of the family, and just a bit late for Women’s History Month.

4/28/23 SPRING LUNCHEON

05/12/23 Eva Jedruch, a native of Poland, whose life was upturned by the invasion of that country by Russia and Germany.  She was only 18 months old when both her father and her mother were removed from her household, and she never saw her father again.  Raised by an aunt and uncle, and reunited with her mother when she was about eight, her own extraordinary path led to a master’s degree in chemical engineering, in Buenos Aires, and a doctorate in Medieval Studies at Drew University here in NJ.

She is the author of Crossing the Bridges, published in Polish in 2013 and English in 2021. What Putin is doing to the Ukrainians is a mirror image of what Stalin did to the Poles 83 years ago, across these very same lands, which at that time were part of Poland. It is a familiar story of a familiar modus operandi: Thousands of Ukrainian citizens are being rounded up, packed onto trains and deported to Russia, to the euphemistically called “filter camps.” Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been executed. Eva will present her family’s story prior to and after 1939 and compare it with the events in Ukraine today. 

7/14/23 SUMMER LUNCHEON

09/08/23 Paris McLean, is in his second year with Montclair Kimberly Academy as Assistant Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Anti-Oppression. A New Jersey native from Bordentown, he is a graduate of Princeton Day School, earned a BA from LaSalle University, a master’s degree in education from Columbia University Klingenstein Center, and additional coursework from NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools). He returned to Princeton Day as a teacher, head basketball coach and was involved as a curriculum coordinator and diversity team chair. His leadership skills are also put to work at state and international conferences focusing on academics and diversity, and most recently, as one of four moderators at a leadership institute in Canada, the CAIS, or Canadian Association of Independent Schools.

He is at a central part of the secondary school educational process and will share with us what is happening at MKA and perhaps many other secondary schools, including the extent to which a recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action might have an impact.

9/22/23 Marian Calabro is the author of 22 nonfiction history books. She has spoken about the Donner Party on The Travel Channel and National Public Radio, and at many museums and libraries. Marian has been a popular writing teacher at the Montclair Public Library’s Adult School since 2005. Also, an essayist, poet, and playwright, Marian is a graduate of Rutgers College and a resident of Hasbrouck Heights, NJ. Her websites are www.mariancalabro.com and www.donnerpartyhistory.com.

The Real Story of the Donner Party: The pioneers known as the Donner Party made history in 1846-1847 when they emigrated from the Midwest to California. We remember them for cannibalism, but there is much more to their story. Marian Calabro, author of the award-winning Perilous Journey of the Donner Party, reveals new aspects of this timeless tale of survival, with insights into the vital roles played by immigrants, women, teenagers, and native Americans. “In Calabro’s hands, truth is indeed as spellbinding as fiction.”—Boston Globe.

10/13/2023 Kimberly Latortue and Geoff Rockhill, are Friends of the Howe House. They will inform us about the historic home of James Howe, a formerly enslaved man. The Howe House is located on Claremont Avenue in Montclair and tells the story of freedom and slavery and the importance of home ownership.

Kimberly Latortue, a long-time Montclair resident and local realtor who takes pride in supporting her community. As a mother of three she has served on various PTA’s and as a liaison for the Montclair Fund for Educational Excellence. Additional endeavors include NAACP, Montclair Mutual Aid, Montclair Early Music, and Friends of the Howe House where she is the board President. Kimberly has a passion for social justice and providing opportunities to underserved populations.

Geoff Rockhill a proud resident of Montclair and father of four. He is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair, and a  Religious Education Teacher. He is the current treasurer of Friends of the Howe House and works as a Corporate Real Estate Executive. His goal is to create the world he wants to live in while helping others.

The topics are History of Howe House and Howe Family, the forming of Friends of the Howe House, and the next steps for the Howe House.

10/27/23  The speaker for the Oct. 27 meeting is a member of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.  The organization was formed in 1999 to promote social justice and is one of the major organizations serving that cause.  The speaker, Mr. Yannick Wood, was an assistant district attorney with the Queens County District Attorney for over five years. While leading prosecutions of simple offenses to violent felonies, he advocated for diversion programs, substance abuse and mental health treatment programs, and alternatives to incarceration. He has also been a voice for diversity and inclusion within the law enforcement community. Prior to working in the District Attorney’s office, he served as a fellow with Transform Johannesburg (now Neighbours), which is a community-based non-profit organization that focused on alleviating poverty, eliminating xenophobia, and promoting police accountability in inner-city Johannesburg, South Africa.

Yannick holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.  His topic is tackling racial disparities in New Jersey.  This conversation will be an expose of the stark racial disparities in New Jersey (among the worst in the country) and a survey of the NJISJ campaigns to eliminate them.

11/10/23 Liz George is the publisher of the Montclair Local. She will discuss the challenges and possible solutions to keeping citizens informed of important issues at the local level.

Liz George moved to Montclair in 2003 with her husband and two children and became the co-owner of Baristanet, one of the first hyperlocal digital news organizations in the country and the inspiration for numerous other local digital startups. Liz became Baristanet’s sole publisher in 2012 and is credited with growing the audience while writing and editing stories about subjects as varied as government, development, real estate, restaurants, and culture. Liz has been a freelance writer and author, a special sections editor at the New York Daily News and is also a licensed clinical social worker. She has written about hyperlocal journalism for Nieman Reports and Press Think. She earned both her bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in social work from New York University. She became a proud dog mom in 2019.

The mission of the Montclair Local is to make our hometown stronger through independent, in-depth, factual reporting on the issues and events that affect you; your tax dollars, your schools, your elected officials, the institutions, and businesses that serve you, the restaurants and cultural events that enrich your life. We cover the people who make Montclair the engaged and vibrant community we call home.

12/1/23 HOLIDAY LUNCH

Photo credit: 85th Meeting, Robert A. Cumins

LINK TO 2022 SPEAKERS AND EVENTS IS BELOW

Prior Year’s Speakers and Events