Stories

Education

A Second Act in Afghanistan

MORE Magazine | January 2015
Why a 50-year-old physician and mother of four decided to make Afghanistan’s future-by building schools in one of the remotest spots on earth.

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Picking Up an Elusive College Dream

New York Times | August 2014
For Tenille Warren, the burden of growing up poor was too heavy for even the offer of a free ride to college to counter. But, about to turn 38, she is back on track at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

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Can New Building Toys for Girls Improve Math and Science Skills?

Wall Street Journal | April 2013
Amid concern among parents and educators about girls’ math and engineering skills, a growing number of companies say they have an answer: toys.

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Annie Get Your Screw Gun

San Francisco Magazine | March 2013
How a fully wired, build-it-youself dollhouse could foster the next generation of girl geeks.

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The New (Hopefully) Improved, Totally DIY School

San Francisco Magazine | March 2012
Hidden in an old mayonnaise factory in the Mission, Brightworks school is a colorful affront to pedagogical convention. The cavernous, free-form space, where kids slide-race across the floor in their socks or invert into frog pose during morning circle, is a jumble of plastic-spoon sculptures, a wind-tunnel laboratory, and, under the stairs, a side of student-cured prosciutto—leftovers from a lesson on anatomy and food production.

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Renaissance Man

New York Times | January 2012
After midnight, when most college students are cavorting or cramming, Jeremy Gleick is just settling into his “learning hour.” He occasionally curses when the hour looms so late, but he still does it.

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A Post From the Post-Private School City

San Francisco Magazine | December 2008
For months last year, “Kate” and her wildly popular SF K Files blog championed the high-stakes movement of idealistic middle-class professionals who are transforming many of San Francisco’s public elementary schools. Then she announced that she was sending her own daughter to an elite private school, and all hell broke loose.

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Schools Gone Wild

San Francisco Magazine | December 2007
Bay Area private schools used to be mellow compared to places like L.A. and New York. Not anymore. We go inside a new world of hyper-frenetic building campaigns, over-the-top curricula, and relentlessly well-meaning parents at the mercy of market forces no one seems able (or willing) to control.

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The Scandal, the Scapegoats and the Suicide

San Francisco Magazine | March 2007
In late 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle broke the explosive story of UC’s secret practices of rewarding its top officials extravagant bonuses and perks — at a time when the system was in financial crisis. Yet the two highest-ranking executives who ultimately paid a price were women whose sexuality had become part of the story. What really happened to ruin the meteoric career of provost M.R.C. Greenwood and drive chancellor Denice Denton to the roof of the tallest apartment building in San Francisco?

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Tech

Male Coders Who Drop Out of College Are Heroes in Silicon Valley — but What About the Women?

Marie Claire | January 2018

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Sheryl Sandberg Is Not in Control

San Francisco Magazine | May 2017
A new book, a new life, and a falling out with her followers

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Uber’s Worst Nightmare

San Francisco Magazine | May 2016
Shannon Liss-Riordan just put a $100 million dent in the sharing economy giant. She’s out for a lot more than that.

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The Inmates and the Entrepreneur

San Francisco Magazine | August 2013
Behind the walls of San Quentin, one Silicon Valley innovator is preparing convicted felons for a new kind of future — in tech.

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It Aint Easy Being Queen

San Francisco Magazine | September 2012
Sarah Lacy was supposed to rule the tech-media blogosphere. But there have been a few glitches along the way.

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Foreclosure, a Love Story

San Francisco Magazine | October 2011
In late 2008, when houses in Antioch were selling for 65 to 70 percent below the peak, Doug Brien and Colin Wiel started talking. Both were seasoned Bay Area real estate guys, but even amid the economic and subprime-mortgage meltdown, that figure caught their attention. The two clean-cut Berkeley grads, both in their 40s, had met through the Keiretsu Forum, an angel investor group Wiel had started up locally.

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The One Problem He Can’t Solve

San Francisco Magazine | February 2011
Attacking intractable problems is more than a habit for Steve Kirsch—it’s the only way he knows how to live. When the 54-year-old Los Altos Hills tech entrepreneur heard George W. Bush touting his education record in the 2000 election, he went straight to the Texas achievement database and ran the numbers himself. When they didn’t add up, he placed ads in half a dozen major newspapers saying so. When Bush won anyway, Kirsch became the largest funder of the legal challenge of the election results.

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On the Wings of Angels

San Francisco Magazine | November 2010
The lights dim, and the audience—every angel investor and VC partner of note in the Bay Area (i.e., the universe)—falls silent. For a second or two, it’s almost possible to believe that no one is tapping, clicking, texting, tweeting; everyone is just watching, listening, waiting to be wowed.

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The $3 Billion Cell Job

San Francisco Magazine | February 2008
A blistering July afternoon in Sun Valley, Idaho. All around, rich businessmen and vacationers hurried from one patch of shade to the next; even the ducks looked uncomfortable. But stem cell research pioneer Irv Weissman was oblivious to the heat, the bustle, the majestic mountain views, in fact, to everything but the story he was telling, a story that he hoped would change the course of science, if not—and really, this was no exaggeration—human history.

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Forever Fertile?

San Francisco Magazine | February 2008
Susanne Goldstein and her friends agree: The perfect date is divorced and already has a couple of kids’ soccer games occupying his Saturday mornings. That way, “he’s not obsessed with spreading his seed because he’s done it,” she says. This may seem like an odd statement coming from a 38-year-old single gal who wants kids of her own. But the dynamics of the San Francisco dating scene make it more understandable.

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Mental Health

Eco-Anxiety: The Real Tsunami of Climate Change

MindSiteNews | January 2022

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A Digital Mental Health Revolution—But for Whom?

MindSiteNews | November 2021

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Why are Palo Alto’s Kids Killing Themselves?

San Francisco Magazine (via SFGate) | May 2015
A panicked town struggles with a wave of suicides.

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Culture & Other Topics

How to Raise a Female CEO

Washington Post | November 2019
Hint, forget coding camp. 

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The Letters Changing My Daughter’s Life

Washington Post | July 2019

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Is there Love (and Sex) at 84? Yup.

New York Times | February 2019

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What’s it like to be the victim of a fertility disaster?

New York Magazine – The Cut | March 2018

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Can a running club help fight homelessness?

Outside Magaine | February 2018
This is my first race with Back on My Feet, an organization that uses running as a catalyst for homeless rehabilitation.

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The Young Woman and the Sea

San Francisco Magazine | May 2017
Extreme athlete Lia Ditton is getting ready to row a boat from Japan to San Francisco. Alone. Is she crazy, or what?

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The Mental Health Hack

California Sunday Magazine | February 2017
Can A Start-Up Cure Eating Disorders?

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Ode to My Early Morning Crew

ESPN.com | January 2017
A tribute to a decade-old group of running friends

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Measure Your Body Fat in the Office Parking Lot

Wall Street Journal | December 2015
Mobile body-composition analysis units with X-ray scans and hydrostatic ‘dunk tanks’ are the latest in data-driven fitness.

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Every Jane Needs One: The battle to take the Pill Over the Counter

California Sunday Magazine | December 2015

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What are you Running (and Running and Running) from?

San Francisco Magazine | January 2015
Plumbing the psychology of excessive exercise.

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Uber is the New Family Chauffeur

Wall Street Journal | December 2014
Teens gain independence; parents track the rides

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Children Put ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ on a First Name Basis

Wall Street Journal | October 2014
For attention, power or as a test; parents address the shift

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Good Sh*T: Employment is the New Black

Ozy.com | June 2014
Road 22 has high expectations for its employees. Yeah, it’s a new urban hipster T-shirt brand, but it does things differently. For one, it employs female ex-cons.

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Raising Children with an Attitude of Gratitude

Wall Street Journal | December 2013
Research finds gratitude works like a muscle.

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Does it Count as Family Dinner if it’s Over in Eight Minutes?

Wall Street Journal | September 2013
Dinner hour? Try dinner 20 minutes.

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Who’s the Boss?

Marie Claire | October 2012
A short profile of Leslie Blodgett, CEO of Bare Escentuals

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When San Francisco Kids Outfoodie their Parents

7×7 Magazine | February 2012
Two years ago, I sent my 10-year-old son Kapp to the Philadelphia suburbs for a week with my brother and his family. Being from the land of the Liberty Bell and the Philly cheesesteak, Kapp’s cousins couldn’t wait for him to tuck into a greasy hunk of beef and cheese dripping with fried onions.

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Father, Daughter Honor Holocaust in Own Ways

San Francisco Chronicle | May 2010
Fathers and daughters usually bond over things like Harry Potter and rain-soaked camping weekends. Joe and Julia Belanoff, however, have connected over something infinitely more profound: the Holocaust. Both in their own way, doing what they do best, have worked to ensure that this dark hour in human history is faced, and never forgotten.

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Mother of All Recessions

San Francisco Magazine | November 2009
As the Bay Area’s stay-at-home moms crash to reality, Diana Kapp wrestles with a provocative question: Can the financial meltdown do us all an enormous favor by forcing career women off the mommy track and back into the workforce?

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Gavin Newsom

ELLE | May 2009
It is truly a new era in California politics, which Newsom likes to say has become a 24-7 reality show, and the chatty 41-yearold San Francisco mayor’s role is definitely more riveting than most—as a millionaire wine-industry businessman who has had a soap-operatic, sometimes jaw-droppingly chaotic personal life and a politician who’s prominently playing a quixotic, sometimes boomeranging role as the caped national crusader for same-sex marriage rights.

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Stuck on You

ELLE Magazine | May 2008
Imagine being unable to leave a boring, sexless, loveless marriage. On May 1, 2006, 10 jurors silently filed out of a White Plains, New York, courtroom into a small, poorly lit conference room down the hall. After about an hour, the chamber door opened and the all-male group shuffled back in. A 37-year-old blond in classic dress pants and a crisp white blouse, her hair pulled tight into a low ponytail, leaned in to her attorney and whispered, “Is a quick decision a good sign or a bad one?”

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Generation Single

San Francisco Magazine | February 2008
They’re frustrated. They’re confused. They’re ready to give up. But then again, it’s not easy inventing a whole new way to be single. A rollicking rant from the trenches of the Bay Area dating wars.

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Getting off the Stick

ELLE | July, 2004

 

Ice, Ice Baby

ELLE | April, 2004

 

Yearning for Yurts

San Francisco Chronicle | December 2001
As an artist and creative type, Debra doesn’t want to be stuck working inside four walls. She believes her circular office helps her think outside the box.

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Travel

An Alaska Vacation That Breaks All the Rules

Wall Street Journal | June 2017
A family of five heads to a lodge deep in Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where the wilderness excursions are meant to be truly wild

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Behind the Scenes of Warren Miller’s Ticket to Ride

Snoworld Magazine | 2014
Greenland’s untouched peaks and nearly endless winter should be a skier’s paradise. But nowhere is climate change more pronounced — and WME athletes already see the effects.

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Climbing Mount Whitney With Kids

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Ski the Top of the World

Wall Street Journal | April 2013
Greenland has snow-covered glaciers in glorious abundance, without the lift lines—or, in fact, any lifts at all.

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