Team
Advisory Board Member
Ai Uchida is a news anchor with experience at outlets such as NHK World, Bloomberg and CNN Go. She’s covered every major news story out of Japan over the past decade, including the Great East Japan Earthquake, Abenomics, Emperor Akihito’s abdication and Carlos Ghosn’s escape from arrest. She has a passion for business—that was her beat when she started out in journalism. She also runs restaurant consulting company: Tokyo a la Carte. She grew up in Kanagawa, Japan, and Seattle, and studied at Vassar and Waseda University. She lives in Tokyo with her family and is a mother of three.
Advisory Board Member
Edgar Gonzalez Allegre is the author of books on fitness, tennis, soccer training and sports marketing and is Director of Communications for the Abierto Juvenil Mexicano, one of the nine most important junior tennis tournaments in the world. While the founder and chief content strategist for online sports media at www.flashtennis.com and www.flashtennis.com/revistaimpresa, he is also an inventor, entrepreneur and finalist in the World of Business Ideas (WOBI) reality show "El Emprendedor de México.’’
Advisory Board Member
Zan Dubin-Scott is president of ZDS Communications, a public relations and marketing agency serving corporations and nonprofits working to make the world a better place. Clients have included SolarCity, CarbonLite Recycling, the world’s largest bottle-to-bottle plastic recycler; and Music Mends Minds, helping seniors with neurodegenerative diseases find renewed joy through music. The agency places clients in media ranging from the New York Times to CNN to Foreign Policy. Previously, Dubin-Scott worked for 15 years as a reporter with The Los Angeles Times. She continues to publish her writing in leading newspapers.
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Wayne Journell is Associate Chair, Department of Teacher Education and Higher Education Coordinator, Secondary Teacher Education Program & Secondary Social Studies Program at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is editor of Theory & Research in Social Education and of the Research and Practice in Social Studies Book Series published by Teachers College Press. He is also the editor of ``Unpacking Fake News: An Educator's Guide to Navigating the Media with Students,'' and a past recipient of the Exemplary Research in Social Studies Award from the National Council for the Social Studies.
Advisory Board Member
Kantaro Komiya covers Japanese companies and politics for Reuters in Tokyo. Personal website: https://kantarokomiya.com/
Founder
Dave McCombs is the father of a middle-schooler and two recent university graduates. He has worked as a writer and editor at leading publications for more than three decades, including the past 22 years at Bloomberg News. He has taught Financial Journalism and Financial Media Literacy at Temple University Japan for more than a decade. As a student, he was a staff writer for the Santa Monica College Corsair and a writer, entertainment editor and editor-in-chief of the Graphic, Pepperdine University’s student newspaper.
Sports Journalism Director
Kenneth Marantz has been working on the sports desk of The Japan News in Tokyo as an editor and writer for more than three decades. He has covered three Summer Olympics and one Winter Olympics, as well as nine World Championships in athletics and a wide variety of other international and domestic sports. He is currently a freelance contributor for Asia for the website of United World Wrestling, the world governing body for the sport. He got his start in journalism on The Lance at Livingston (NJ) High School and The Torch at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.
Photojournalism Director
Damon Coulter is a Japan-based photojournalist, documentary photographer and teacher of photography. His work has appeared in dozens of major newspapers and magazines around the world including the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times. Magazines including Monocle, Cosmopolitan, the Economist and Discovery Channel have also published his images. He has also done commercial work for clients including Hughes PR (Australia); Bostock and Politt (UK); Sigma (Japan) and Mercure Hotels (France).