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Our Staff

Nick Budnick is our editor-in-chief and a reporter. He’s spent nearly 30 years covering topics that include state government and Oregon’s health care system. He covered the state Legislature for the Bend Bulletin as lawmakers crafted Oregon’s signature Medicaid reforms. Starting in 2011, as an investigative health care reporter for The Oregonian, he covered implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, including the Cover Oregon tech debacle. Later, at the Portland Tribune, he was awarded a Health Care Performance Fellowship by the Association of Health Care Journalists to report on the Oregon Health Plan. Budnick’s work has been recognized by Investigative Reporters and Editors, Best of the West, the Bruce Baer Award and a national Sunshine Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

He can be reached at [email protected] or at @NickBudnick on Twitter.

 

Jake Thomas is our legislative reporter. He’s spent over a dozen years at newspapers and magazines covering nearly every beat, including the Oregon and Washington legislatures. Along the way, he covered Oregon’s historic Labor Day fires, the fight over an oil terminal at the Port of Vancouver and others. He’s picked up multiple awards and has been recognized in Nieman Reports. His work has appeared in national magazines and nearly every major newspaper in Oregon and Washington. Most recently he was a reporter at Newsweek.

He can be reached at [email protected] or @jakethomas2009 on Twitter.

 

Kim Crosby (she/her) is our director of operations. She comes to The Lund Report with over a decade of experience in nonprofit fundraising, events and process management at organizations such as Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), and the American Red Cross. Crosby’s approach to nonprofit management is rooted in social justice and community building. She holds a BA in French from Arizona State University and completed her graduate translation studies at Université Catholique de Lille. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, she currently resides in Portland. 

She can be reached at [email protected].

 

Christian Gillespie (he/him) is our development manager. He comes to The Lund Report with over five years of experience in the nonprofit development field, with skills in fundraising, event planning and donor engagement. Mostly recently he worked for Society for Science, a science-based educational nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., and prior to that for the Fulbright Association. He holds a B.A. degree in English from Loyola University Chicago. Having lived and taught abroad in Japan for three years, Christian is adept at crafting communications and developing relationships with an attention to inclusivity and diversity across cultures. A recent transplant from Los Angeles, Christian currently lives in the Portland metro area. When not working, he can be found hiking with his Bernedoodle Eno or baking some type of dessert.

He can be reached at [email protected].

 

Our Contributors

Christian Wihtol is our senior contributor. He has been a journalist for more than four decades, working at daily newspapers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Oregon before retiring from full-time work in 2018. He spent 1990-2018 working as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene, where he served variously as the newsroom's senior editor, associate editor writing editorials, government and public policy team editor and business editor. He holds a master's in business administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and a bachelor's degree in English from Oxford University. He lives in Eugene.

He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].