Our Role
ecoRI Inc. is a unique initiative devoted to educating the public about local environmental and social justice issues and how they interconnect. The nonprofit accomplishes its mission in separate but linked ways: investigative reporting, community journalism, educational programs, public outreach, green consulting, and compostable food-scrap collection.
ecoRI News is the journalistic arm of ecoRI Inc. and is dedicated to the advancement of environmental and social justice issues that impact Rhode Island. It is devoted to protecting the Ocean State’s ecosystems, natural resources and public health through independent journalism.
ecoRI Public Works was introduced to the ecoRI Inc. brand in 2010 as a way to educate people about the importance of diverting nutrient-rich food scrap from the state’s ever-shrinking Central Landfill. Public Works offers consulting services to those looking to “green up” an event, gives educational presentations at schools, works with the state Department of Environmental Management to make road races less wasteful, and runs public outreach campaigns designed around environmental and social justice issues.
Funding
ecoRI Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with the IRS and a recognized nonprofit with the state of Rhode Island. We depend on the support of individuals, foundations and businesses that recognize the importance of environmental/social justice news delivered from an independent perspective.
STAFF
Frank Carini
Executive Director
Contact him at frank@ecoRI.org or by calling 401-678-0206
Frank has two decades of journalism experience, and has spent time as both a reporter and an editor. He has managed news reporters, photographers, copy editors and sports writers. He has won several newspaper association awards for column writing, reporting, headline writing and page layout. He has worked at a variety of publications, from a large, metropolitan daily to a small daily newspaper to several weekly papers. As the sports editor for The Cincinnati Post, he managed a department that had an annual budget of $1 million-plus and employed 15 full-time employees. The Providence resident also spent three-plus years as the city editor for The Newport Daily News, before leaving the mainstream media to launch ecoRI Inc. in September 2009.
Joanna Detz
Director of Development
Contact her at jo@ecoRI.org or by calling 617-785-7369
Joanna is a graphic designer with an interest in social-justice journalism that stems back to the first time she read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” a book that also, incidentally, set her on the path to a beef-free lifestyle. After a brief foray into journalism, which included a stint at CNN’s Washington bureau during the 1996 presidential election, she became jaded to the mainstream media and turned, instead, to a career in graphic design, from which vantage, she remains jaded to mainstream media. A print designer for more than 10 years now, she still has mixed feelings about Helvetica and is always looking for ways to curb paper use in her profession by choosing recycled paper. She lives and breathes in Providence, on a street called Hope.
Tim Faulkner
Executive Editor
Contact him at tim@ecoRI.org or by calling 401-330-6276
Tim worked as a community newspaper reporter in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts for five years. For three years, he was a staff writer for the Taunton Daily Gazette, most recently covering the police and courts beat. He spent 10 years in the financial services sector before returning to graduate school, where he earned a degree in writing and publishing. He grew up in Barrington, where he lives with his wife and two young daughters. Tim is ecoRI's go-to staffer regarding renewable-energy issues.
Kevin Proft
Programs Manager
Contact him at kevin@ecori.org
Kevin began his career teaching history to inner-city, high-school students in Oakland, Calif. He has spent time living and traveling in Australia and New Zealand, where he was taken with the countries’ landscapes and reefs, but was disconcerted by how often these natural wonders are in danger of being overwhelmed by manmade incursions. He later lived and worked in San Francisco and couldn’t help having the environmentally friendly spirit of the city rub off on him. Now, he calls Providence home. Kevin is keenly interested in environmental issues, and wants to be a part of the solution to the problems of climate change and the loss of natural habitats that have resulted from human-propelled stressors happening around the globe. He enjoys being active in the community and hiking in the great outdoors.
INTERNS
Sophie Duncan
Sophie is a freshman at Brown University. She grew up in Phoenix, where she enjoyed exploring the desert. Her family’s annual camping and backpacking trips inspired her commitment to sustainability. In addition to her commitment to the outdoors, she is interested in all aspects of food. At school she enjoys studying both the environment and the classics.
CONTRIBUTORS
Kyle Hence/writer
Kyle is an aspiring renaissance man with a grab bag of skills derived from experiences as a sailor, photographer, documentary filmmaker and citizen watchdog. He ran Newport’s adaptive sailing program Shake-A-Leg for several years. His 2006 documentary “9/11: Press for Truth” was distributed globally. A short stint at Rawstory.com gave him a taste of independent media and investigative journalism. Following his 2011 fellowship with the Social Venture Partners of Rhode Island, Kyle organized the Food & Farming Community Forum to promote local food and sustainability. He calls Aquidneck Island home. Contact him at kyle@ecori.org.
Carolina Arentsen/cartoonist
Carolina has always questioned what she sees and always seems to ask, “Why does it have to be like that?” Since she was a kid … trash on the ground, for example, she always thought of ways she could change it. She was born in Santiago, Chile, and came to the United States when she was 2, arriving in Baltimore. Her family then moved to Villanova, Pa., and Carolina started taking art classes at The Pennsylvania Academy of Art, in Philadelphia. She started the art club at her high school and studied illustration at RISD. She started Hint Studio and makes handmade jewelry.
Charles Chaves/writer
Charles has been teaching an ethics course at the University of Rhode Island since 2009 that focuses on sustainability and renewable energy issues. He received his Ph.D. in 2009 at Salve Regina University in humanities, concentrating in the ethics of energy usage and its multiple implications for humanity and the environment. As part of his doctoral investigations, Charles did sustainability and energy fieldwork research in Colorado, California, and British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. He believes it is imperative to reflect on the natural resources and sustainability needs of future generations.
Kara DiCamillo/local food recipes
Kara is the organizer of Green Drinks Newport and a member of the city’s Energy & Environment Commission. Kara volunteers at the Norman Bird Sanctuary, and has volunteered as a panelist for Rhode Island Farmways, speaking to farmers from around the state about how they can better market and promote their businesses. Beyond the moat that surrounds her island home, Kara has backpacked Mount Washington in New Hampshire too many times to count, is a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, a graduate of the Colorado Outward Bound School and, in real life, she is a public relations director at 6 Square Design & Communications.
Wendy Fachon/writer
Wendy loves hugging children and trees. As her own children leave and head off to college, she is filling that void by leading after-school clubs of Pawtucket elementary students on walking field trips to Slater Park. She also leads families on discovery walks around the East Greenwich area. In addition to the walks, she teaches nature journal writing and sketching at Biomes Marine Biology Center, where she serves on the board of directors. Wendy shares unusual insights and observations that connect our ecology with economic solutions. Understanding that today's children are tomorrow's leaders, she seeks to reconnect them to their natural environment. She also has created the concept of the “storywalker,” published a series of audio stories and created a website that is an online network of story trails.
Leslie Friday/writer
Leslie is an anthropologist who turned to journalism after a two-year stint serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guinea, West Africa, where she taught English, HIV/AIDS education, and learned what it’s like to live in a giant fishbowl. She has worked for several weekly newspapers in Greater Boston, covering government, police, education and human interest stories, and for an English weekly called The Tico Times in San Jose, Costa Rica, where she covered business and real estate. She currently writes for a private university in Boston about a range of topics, including the environment, sustainability, food and climate change. When she’s not chained to a computer, she’s busy chasing two tiny princesses around her kitchen in Gloucester, Mass.
Greg Gerritt/writer
The founder of the think tank ProsperityForRI.org, Greg has been involved in efforts to create a sustainable economy since the 1970s, when he began building solar buildings and creating organic homesteads. He currently is involved in urban agriculture efforts and the administration of the coalition of environmental organizations in Rhode Island. The Providence resident has been a leading advocate for making sure ecology is actually a component of efforts to create a sustainable state economy, and a critic of the idea of sustainable growth on this finite planet.
Rudi Hempe/writer
The Narragansett resident is the master gardener projects coordinator for the University of Rhode Island. In 2011, Rudi became the first URI master gardener to accumulate 10,000 volunteer hours in the program.
Rose Marques/writer
Rose is a retired journalist, having served that profession for almost 20 years in various media channels, including local Massachusetts newspapers, national magazines and numerous websites. Eventually, this native Rhode Islander found she had climbed to the top of the corporate ladder only to realize it was leaning against the wrong wall. In 2007, she achieved her certification as a landscape designer from the Landscape Institute of Harvard University and launched her landscape design business, LandMarques, in 2008. Within her second career, a deep passion emerged for historic landscapes — for their careful protection and appropriate recreation. However, she soon found herself on the verge of infidelity as she discovered her devotion to environmental stewardship of all our precious lands. After some soul-searching, she married landscape design, historic landscape protection and environmental consciousness within her business’s mission, and now is living happily ever after, nurturing the land and writing about it.
Sarah Schumann/writer
Sarah is a fisherwoman, writer and environmental activist. Her homemade fishing boat, the Nushagak, is named after a river in Alaska where she has spent the past three summers working at a salmon cannery. She has lived in Portsmouth, Warren and North and South Kingstown, and now calls Westerly home. After studying Marine Affairs at URI, she roamed the Americas talking with fishermen, and went on to earn a master's degree in environmental policy at the University of Oxford. Her favorite place in Rhode Island for a walk is the Great Swamp, and for a swim, the Kickemuit River.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
David Stookey
President
Executive director of Savvy Families
Rebekah Greenwald Speck
Vice President
Executive director of the RiverzEdge Arts Project
Chip Young
Secretary
Senior fellow at the University of Rhode Island Coastal Institute
Kim Anderson
President of Ava Anderson Non-Toxic
Chuck Allott
Executive director of the Aquidneck Land Trust
ecoRI in the News
Listen to Tim Faulkner's interview with Sea Change Radio.
ecoRI News executive director Frank Carini was a guest on NBC 10's weekly "News Conference" program in July 2012. He spoke with veteran NBC journalist Jim Taricani about environmental and social justice issues pertaining to Rhode Island.