Welcome to my new and improved blog. Thanks to Apple’s brilliant decision to get rid of Mobile Me, where Ralph Report was born and lived, I’ve had to move the blog to Word Press. It’s going to take a while to get all the old posts transferred, so please bear with me.
Quick background on me – I moved to Brooklyn, New York in late 2012, after spending nearly 12 years in Baltimore. I was lured to Charm City back in 2000 after accepting a TV news producer position at the NBC affiliate WBAL-TV.
Me & Al Roker – Before and After Pictures
6 years later, after winning a few awards, losing almost 200 lbs through diet and exercise, I got out of my comfort zone and left some life-long friends and my 15-year career in broadcast journalism to enter the world of public health and food policy. I spent the next 2 years working in Washington, DC as the Communications Director for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. The Commission, a joint project between the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Pew Charitable Trusts, studied the effects of intensive food animal production on public health, the environment, rural communities and animal welfare.
When the Commission ended I was fortunate enough to stay on at Hopkins and spent the next several years working at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. It was an amazing time, where I continued to learn from the brilliant people who make the Bloomberg School of Public Health a premier institution. I was charged with, among many other duties, directing behavior change communications research for the Johns Hopkins Healthy Monday Project and the national Monday Campaigns, which operates the famous Meatless Monday campaign. My job took me everywhere from the White House to the kitchen of the Baltimore Franciscan Center which prepares hundreds of meals a day for people struggling to make ends meet.
My newest chapter in my unique career has taken be full circle – so to speak. I’ve returned to my journalism roots as the director/editor of digital engagement and outreach for the Food & Environment Reporting Network a.k.a. FERN. The nonprofit is an independent, “… news organization that produces investigative reporting on food, agriculture, and environmental health.”
I hope this blog-move will inspire me to write more often. Please feel free to nudge me if it appears I’m slacking off.
Ralph Report 