Who We Are

Pacific Standard is the award-winning magazine for readers interested in working toward forward-looking changes to private behavior and public policy.

About Us

By combining research that matters with ambitious narrative and investigative reporting, Pacific Standard tells stories across print and digital platforms about society’s biggest problems, both established and emerging, and the people attempting to solve them.

Our publications include a bimonthly print magazine and a dynamic website, PSmag.com. In partnership with our parent organization, the non-profit Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media, and Public Policy, Pacific Standard works with national organizations focused on the social and behavioral sciences, bringing public discussions to live audiences.

Join us by subscribing to our print magazine and free email newsletter, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Twitter.

Fellowships

Pacific Standard and the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media, and Public Policy offer a one-year paid editorial fellowship, running from January through December.

About the Miller-McCune Center

The Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media, and Public Policy is a non-profit organization that strives to not just inform, but also to promote meaningful dialogue by reporting, in clear and concise language, the latest and most relevant scientific research and innovations shaping the issues of the day. Today, using print and online resources, internships, and direct outreach to the scholarly community, the Center is planning for a broader future, including the expansion of its programming and collaborative initiatives. The Center’s goal is to tap into existing research to inform and promote forward-thinking actions in public policy, especially in the areas of economic, educational, environmental, and social justice.

Staff

Editorial Staff

Nicholas Jackson, Editor-in-Chief
Nicholas Jackson previously served as the digital editorial director at Outside. Before that, he was an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he launched the magazine’s health coverage online. He is also an officer of the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies, a multi-disciplinary learned society whose essential purpose is the encouragement and improvement of scholarly research and education in literary journalism. Named one of Folio magazine’s 15 under 30, spotlighting young professionals driving media’s next-generation innovation, in 2012, Jackson has also worked for Slate, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Texas Monthly, and other publications, both online and in print. He is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.

Taylor Le, Creative Director
Taylor Le was previously a freelance art director at Time Inc. in New York, where she designed special edition magazine covers and book covers for such titles as People, Fortune, Entertainment Weekly, and Time-Life. Before that, she was art director at Runner’s World and spent almost nine years as group art director at Source Interlink Media. During her tenure at Source Interlink, she helped re-brand and re-design several titles, was involved in the development of new titles, and created a photo department from the ground up.

Jennifer Sahn, Executive Editor
Jennifer Sahn was previously at Orion magazine, where she served as editor for 12 years and as managing editor before that. Stories she has edited have been awarded the Pushcart Prize, the O. Henry Prize, the John Burroughs Essay Award, and have been widely re-printed in the Best American Series anthologies, the Norton Reader, and via online aggregators such as Longreads. During her tenure as editor of Orion, the magazine was twice a winner of the Utne Independent Press Award for General Excellence and twice a finalist for a National Magazine Award. She has taught and lectured at such venues as the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Kentucky Womens Writers Conference, and the National Conference for Media Reform.

Ryan Jacobs, Deputy Editor
Ryan Jacobs previously served as a senior editor and as an associate editor at Pacific Standard, editing features and columns, writing essays, and leading the Quick Studies section of the site to a Folio magazine Eddie award in its first year. Before joining the magazine, he covered international affairs and crime for The Atlantic’s global channel, reporting on the largest diamond heist in French history, international carbon market scams, and the dark side of the truffle trade, among other subjects of intrigue. He has also worked for Mother Jones, Sierra, Bay Citizen, the Point Reyes Light, and the Chicago Reporter. He graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Michael Fitzgerald, Senior Editor
Michael Fitzgerald previously worked at the New Republic in Washington, D.C., and the Oxford American in Arkansas. He recently completed a Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs in Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Ted Scheinman, Senior Editor
Ted Scheinman previously served as a teaching fellow and instructor in journalism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Before that, he was a culture editor at the Washington City Paper. His reporting on prisons, politics, and pop culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Oxford American, Playboy, and Slate. He is also a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. His first collection of non-fiction will appear via Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2016.

Tom Jacobs, Senior Staff Writer
Tom Jacobs is a veteran journalist and former staff writer for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Santa Barbara News-Press. Through interviews, reviews, and essays, he has tracked and analyzed trends in the arts and sciences, with an emphasis on psychology, the role of culture, and the cultivation of creativity. A native of Chicago, Jacobs earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern University.

Francie Diep, Staff Writer
Francie Diep previously worked as a freelance science journalist, writing for Scientific American, Popular Science, Smithsonian, and elsewhere. She specializes in the intersection of culture and science and has covered everything from American Indian representation in natural history museums to the science behind celebrity beauty trends.

Madeleine Thomas, Staff Writer
Madeleine Thomas was previously a senior editorial fellow for Grist. She has also written for the Atlantic, the East Bay Express, and Reuters. She is a graduate of the University of California–Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Katie Kilkenny, Associate Editor
Katie Kilkenny was previously an editorial fellow with the Culture channel of The Atlantic. She has also written for Slate, Indiewire, and Hyperallergic.

Max Ufberg, Associate Editor
Max Ufberg comes to Pacific Standard from Wired, where he was an editorial fellow covering technology and culture. Prior to that, he was freelancing in Philadelphia, reporting on everything from statewide tax credits to minor league basketball. His work has also appeared in Slate, Philadelphia Weekly, the Advance Digital properties, and many others.

Kate Wheeling, Associate Editor
Kate Wheeling joined Pacific Standard after internships at the American Geophysical Union and Yale Medicine, where she wrote about all things science from heliophysics to human cells. Kate has a bachelor’s degree in behavioral neuroscience and a master’s in science journalism. She has also written for Science and Discover magazine.

Editorial Fellows

Elena Gooray
Elena Gooray previously covered research on mental illness for the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. She has contributed to Philadelphia and JazzTimes magazines and has a master’s degree in cognition in science and society from the University of Edinburgh.

Julie Morse
Julie Morse previously worked as a freelance writer and reporter in Mexico City. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, Vice, the Morning News, and the Rumpus, among others.

On-Contract Editorial

Tim Heffernan, Copy Editor
Ewa Beaujon, Fact Checker
Lisa Gold, Fast Checker
Peter C. Baker, Contributing Editor
Toby Lester, Contributing Editor
Nathan Collins, Contributing Writer
Melissa Gira Grant, Contributing Writer
Dwyer Gunn, Contributing Writer
Jared Keller, Contributing Writer
Seth Masket, Contributing Writer
James McWilliams, Contributing Writer
Rick Paulas, Contributing Writer
Jim Russell, Contributing Writer
Jimmy Tobias, Contributing Writer
Michael White, Contributing Writer
Alissa Wilkinson, Contributing Writer

Editorial Advisory Committee

Colin Camerer
Mickey Edwards
Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Abe Peck
Harold Pollack
Robin Rosenberg
Paul Starr
Thomas Tighe
Shankar Vedantam

Publishing

Sara Miller McCune, Founder, Executive Chairman & Publisher
Sara Miller McCune is the publisher and chair of SAGE Publications, Inc., the California-based book and journal publishing house, as well as president of the McCune Foundation, based in Montecito, California. In 1965, she founded SAGE Publications in New York City and moved the company to California in mid-1966, serving as its president for 18 years prior to becoming SAGE’s chairman in 1984. SAGE Publications, one of the leading academic and educational publishers in the world, is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California, and has offices in Washington, D.C.; London; New Delhi and Kolkata, India; and Singapore.

Geane deLima, President
Geane DeLima has more than 25 years of experience in publishing, marketing, advertising, and non-profit management. She has worked closely with the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, the American Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology, Sociologists for Women in Society, the Society for Public Health Education, the Association of Black Psychologists, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

Robert Wallace, Publishing Director
Robert Wallace is an award-winning television producer and magazine editor, with more than 30 years experience in print and electronic media. He has been vice president of content development at ESPN, a senior producer and senior story editor for Diane Sawyer at Prime Time Live (where he won an Emmy for Outstanding Informational or Cultural Programming), editor of Rolling Stone (which won National Magazine Awards for Reporting, Photography, and Design during his tenure), editor in chief of St. Martin’s, and an editor at Newsweek, the Denver Post, and Talk. He serves as treasurer on the Board of Directors of PEN Center USA.

Ariele Andrakin, Program Director

Our Founder

Sara Miller McCune is the founder and executive chairman of the independent academic and professional publisher SAGE and president of the McCune Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Ventura, California, which aims to be an agent of productive change by supporting the growth of social capital in communities. Guided by an entrepreneurial spirit and an unwavering dedication to academia, the then-24-year-old Sara founded SAGE in 1965 in New York City. Her goal was to start a company that would allow scholars to disseminate quality research in their own voices and break new ground in emerging fields of study. She served as the company’s president for 18 years prior to becoming SAGE’s chairman in 1984. SAGE moved to California in mid-1966 and set up offices in London in 1971, in India in 1981, and Singapore in 2006, and acquired CQ Press, based in Washington, D.C., in 2008. Today, Ms. McCune also serves as a director of SAGE Publications Ltd and Corwin, a SAGE company and leading publisher for educational administrators and teachers. Ms. McCune remains actively involved in the company’s ongoing expansion and development.

In 2007, Ms. McCune founded the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media, and Public Policy in Santa Barbara, California, and today serves as its executive chairman. In 2008, she launched Miller-McCune magazine both in print and online, which was named one of Library Journal’s “10 Best Magazines” of 2008.

In 2012, the magazine, which brings the “science of society” to the public, was re-titled Pacific Standard. Since then, the magazine has been nominated for the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2013 (one of only five in its category) and was awarded the Sidney Hillman Award, honoring socially conscious journalism for its February 2014 article, “The Next Civil Rights Issue: Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet”; the Media for Liberty Award, honoring articles that explore the relationship between economic and political liberty, for its article “The Deluge” from May/June 2013; five Maggie awards from the Western Publishing Association, including Best Feature Article and Best Politics & Social Issues magazine in 2013; the American Psychoanalytic Association Award for Excellence in Journalism for the May/June 2013 article “What Does It Take for Traumatized Kids to Thrive?”; and a Folio Ozzie Award for Best Use of Illustration for the May/June 2012 issue “The Keyboard and the Damage Done,” to name a few of its many honors.

Reflecting her long-standing interest in philanthropy, especially in promoting world justice, Ms. McCune and SAGE were founding supporters of The Justice Project. She is also the co-founder and president of the McCune Foundation, founded in 1990. In memory of George D. McCune, Sara’s husband, first business mentor, and eventual business partner until his death in 1990, the foundation sponsors a Graduate Dissertation Fellowship at the UCSB Department of Communication. In 2002, the McCune Foundation’s board of directors agreed to award grants to grassroots organizations in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties that build “social capital” with an emphasis on educational and other opportunities for the poor and underserved. This program remains a priority of the foundation, which has supported groups such as the Oaxacan farmworker community in Ventura County. Ms. McCune’s philanthropic efforts extend to the local medical community; in 2007, she arranged a donation of $2.5 million to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital through SAGE. She is also a past president of the Santa Barbara Foundation Roundtable.

Ms. McCune is a passionate supporter of the arts. She was on the board of the Santa Barbara Center for the Performing Arts from 1998 through 2009 and, for much of that period, served as chief financial officer, helping the center to restore and reopen its Granada Theatre. She served on the board of directors for the Community Arts Music Association of Santa Barbara until 2014.

In February of 2011, Ms. McCune and SAGE donated £1 million to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London to build an indoor Jacobean theatre which opened in January of 2014. A patron and trustee of Shakespeare Globe Centre-USA Inc., Ms. McCune supported the Broadway production of the London-based Richard III (nominated for one 2014 Tony Award) and Twelfth Night (nominated for seven 2014 Tony Awards, and winner of two).

SAGE and Ms. McCune have pledged support for an upcoming PBS documentary on the life and times of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Sara currently chairs fundraising for further support of the production.

Ms. McCune is an active supporter of academic and university initiatives. She was a long-serving member of the board of directors at the American Academy of Political and Social Science until June of 2014, and in January 2012, she joined the board of directors of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She has served as a trustee of the Fielding Graduate University headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, and was the university’s interim president in 1999–2000; in 2002, Fielding recognized her as a Lifetime Fellow.

Ms. McCune was a member of the University of California-Santa Barbara Foundation Board of Trustees for more than two decades. Currently, she co-chairs the Council for Arts & Lectures at the University of California, Santa Barbara which has a five-year campaign goal to raise $20 million, half going to current programming and half to its first endowment fund.

Ms. McCune served for two decades as a member of the Howard Samuels State Management and Policy Center (focused on state and local government) at the CUNY Graduate Center. She recently co-chaired the effort to endow a professorship at CUNY GC to honor her mentor and lifelong friend, Marilyn Jacobs Gittell.

In June 2005, Ms. McCune received from The Board of Directors of the Alumni Association from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a Life Membership, their highest award. In May 2012, she received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, Queens College. This honor recognized Sara’s distinguished service to education, her many decades of publishing and philanthropic achievements, as well as her entrepreneurial skills.

In the summer of 2014, Ms. McCune was also awarded an honorary fellowship from Cardiff University and an honorary doctor of letters from Bath University, both acknowledging her esteemed work and contribution to the field of social sciences and the global publishing industry, as well as her philanthropy.

Over the years, Ms. McCune has received a number of additional awards for her business, academic, and philanthropic achievements. In 1988, she received the American Evaluation Association’s Special Award for Distinguished Contributions to the field of evaluation in recognition of the influential role SAGE played in institutionalizing evaluation. In 1993, the Knowledge Utilization Society awarded her its Outstanding International Service Award.

In 1998, Ms. McCune was recognized as the 1998 Philanthropist of the Year for Santa Barbara County by the National Society of Fundraising Executives (currently the Association of Fundraising Professionals). In 2002, Ms. McCune received the Distinguished Community Service Award from the Anti-Defamation League and Santa Barbara B’nai B’rith Lodge. In 2003, she received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Arts and Entertainment for the Greater Los Angeles area from Ernst & Young as well as the Ernst & Young Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award for “extraordinary leadership.”

In 2004, Ms. McCune was honored with the Hope Award by the Channel Islands Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. In 2006, Ms. McCune received the News-Press Lifetime Achievement Award from the Santa Barbara News-Press based on the recommendation of previous winners of the award. In 2009, she was honored as the Entrepreneur of the Year by the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara, and Opera Santa Barbara. In 2012, Ms. McCune received the HOPE Foundation’s Courageous Leadership Award in recognition for her contributions to education, philanthropy, and business. In May of 2013, Ms. McCune was inducted into the Pacific Coast Business Times Hall of Fame and was the first woman to receive this honor.

Ms. McCune is the stepmother of four, the grandmother of four, and the great-grandmother of seven. Ms. McCune resides in Montecito, California.

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