Naomi Ishisaka

Freelance Journalist

Naomi Ishisaka is Seattle-based journalist, designer and photographer who specializes in covering communities of color and other underrepresented stories and communities. Ishisaka is a Seattle native and worked at several Puget Sound newspapers, including The Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The News Tribune and the Bremerton Sun. She served for eight years as the Editor in Chief of ColorsNW Magazine, a monthly magazine focusing on communities of color in the Northwest.

As editor, ColorsNW received over 50 awards in the Society of Professional Journalists Western Washington competition and Ishisaka received five first place awards for her editorial writing and feature writing. In 2008, she was an Institute for Justice and Journalism Fellow studying immigration and border issues in Mexico and Arizona and was a Spring 2005 fellow of the German Marshall Fund and traveled throughout Europe.

Ishisaka is a graduate of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and has a B.A. in ethnic studies and journalism. Ishisaka’s journalism education includes editing training at the Dow Jones Copy Editing Program, the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism’s Immigration program, the Minority Editorial Writers Seminar and she is a graduate of the Asian American Journalist Association’s Executive Leadership Program.

Proposal: Explore the systematic roots of obesity in communities of color and associated health conditions i.e., diabetes, heart disease.