Vroomies
JANIS HIRSCH
Living just above the smog line in Los Angeles, California, Janis Hirsch has left a permanent imprint on situation comedy. She’s a behind-the-scenes star, writing and producing the Emmy-nominated wit and wisdom that television viewers have quoted around the water cooler for years, including hits such as Will & Grace, Frasier, Murphy Brown, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and The Nanny. She’s also worked on a lot of forgettable series but is quick to note that you work just as hard on the crap and happily, you laugh just as hard. She’s also contributed special material for Bette Midler’s latest Las Vegas show. Between writing funny scripts, Janis pens the VroomGirls column, “No, YOU Shut Up and Drive!”– giving us a check-your-blind-spot look at life from her Toyota Prius.
AARON GOLD
Aaron Gold started his car-writing career as an intern and gofer for the British car magazine What Car?. He has written car reviews for several automotive publications, including J. D. Power and Associates and Woman Motorist. Currently, when he isn’t getting in touch with his feminine side and writing for VroomGirls.com, Aaron runs the Cars site for About.com and is a consulting producer on the History Channel TV series Top Gear. He also serves, alongside fellow contributor Joni Gray, on the Board of Directors of the prestigious Motor Press Guild (MPG.) Aaron lives in Los Angeles with his wife (Robin), sons (Robert and Andrew), Boxer (Bayla), tarantula (Fifi), gecko (Frankie Four Fingers), goldfish (Big Fish and Little Fish), and horses (Raz and Aiden). Aaron is currently being pursued by collection agents from Pet Smart.
JONI GRAY
Joni Gray knows cars. Her experience includes online automotive editor at The Los Angeles Times, and senior editorial roles at automotive websites Kelley Blue Book and AutoTrader. Before making the leap to the edit side, Joni was an advertising exec at three major car corporations – Mazda, Hyundai and Honda – giving her a unique perspective on what motivates car-buying consumers. Joni has written for Advertising Age, Automotive News, Westways and Edmunds.com. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Motor Press Guild (MPG) in Southern California. Joni is also an auto enthusiast, with a particular passion for electric cars. She owns an all-electric Nissan Leaf!
HOLLY REICH
No matter where she is — basketball game, cocktail party, Apple Store, health club — if she tells a man that she test drives cars for a living, it’s like turning a white light…on HER! She loves her job. Writing about cars has taken her to such far-flung places as Monaco to explore the south of France in a Jaguar, Mongolia to camp out Range Rover style in the Gobi desert, Italy to race Maserati’s around a track and Estonia to drive Bentleys on Muhu Island. When she’s not doing all that, she lives in NYC (behind her computer) reporting on a variety of topics for pubs including NY Daily News, Elite Traveler, Hamptons Magazine, several syndicates and live media including Fox News, The Speed Channel and Autolab radio.
MEG HEMPHILL
Why not focus on la dolce vita? That’s been Meg’s philosophy when it comes to both writing and life. She covers fashion, beauty, automotive, travel, health and food. After working on staff at InStyle Magazine in New York, she headed West to pursue a freelance career, which affords her time to experience all those passions that she writes about. She’s a Pacific Northwest native, who received her bachelor’s degree at the University of Washington and her master’s degree at the University of Oregon. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys traveling, reading, socializing, eating, exercising, drinking champagne and cooking.
MATT STONE
Matt Stone is a self-described car fool. It’s been his passion to make automotive journalism, road testing, history, motorsport, photography, and racing, wrecking, and restoring cars his personal and professional life. As a professional automotive journalist / photographer since 1990, Matt has written books and, until recently, was the executive editor of MotorTrend and editor of MotorTrend Classic magazines. He’s the collector car commentator on SPEED television, and chief class judge at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. His specialties are history, design, and interview features. Matt’s voice was often heard on the syndicated MotorTrend Radio Network. A California native, Matt hopes to own a Ferrari Daytona, a Ford GT, and a Shelby Cobra 289 – some day.
TORI TELLEM
Tori was the first female to hold an editorial position at 4-Wheel & Off-Road during the magazine’s then 20-year history, yet she secretly yearned to explore the automotive world beyond always being covered in mud and dirt as part of getting that job done. So, she has since been a contributor to The New York Times, Edmunds.com, Hot Rod, Motor Trend’s Truck Trend, Car Craft, and various other automotive outlets, which has even given her the opportunity to drive new and one-of-a-kind vehicles through Africa, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. No one could have predicted this cool career back in middle school; when a classmate had to write Tori’s biography, her life received a C-. Tori’s still traumatized.
JILL CIMINILLO
Formerly the online automotive editor for The Chicago Sun-Times and the print auto editor for Pioneer Press Newspapers, this 5th percentile (aka petite) female tells it like it is from the fun to the functional. Jill currently writes car reviews for The North Star National, a national syndicate based in Grand Rapids, manages an automotive blog for ChicagoNow called “Drive, She Said,” and has occasional guest appearances on WGN Radio. When she can subdue her lead foot, she also freelances for the fuel-efficient-focused website MPGomatic.com.
PETRINA GENTILE
Petrina Gentile is an award-winning automotive journalist – one of the few women who cover cars in Canada. She writes weekly reviews and celebrity test drives for The Globe and Mail newspaper and MSN Autos. She produces a national TV show called “Car/Business with Jeremy Cato and Michael Vaughan” on CTV and BNN. She appears regularly on CTV’s Canada AM, CTV News Channel, BNN, and CBC reporting on the automotive beat. She has written several non-fiction books for kids including Big Trucks, Big Wheels and Dirt Movers.
TAMARA WARREN
Tamara Warren was living in Detroit as a music writer in 2002, when she dug into to her Motor City roots and sought out an internship at AutoWeek. Though her dad was an engineer and marketing guy at Chrysler, she had never actually read a car magazine. A wild test drive in a Corvette Z06 changed all that, and she moved into the fast lane. Tamara has written for over 100 magazines, newspapers and blogs including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Automobile, The Detroit Free Press, Life and Times, Vibe and Delta Sky. In addition to her work as an automotive and music journalist, she’s written about art, sports, wine, social issues and everything else under the sun. She co-founded Gotryke.com, a blog about the relationship between people and cars in 2008 and pens the blog Street Savvy for Forbes (blogs.forbes.com/tamarawarren). She expects to earn her MFA in Creative Writing at the New School in Spring 2012. Tamara lives in Brooklyn with her favorite car enthusiasts Lee Quinones and their three-year old son who has an affinity for cars made before 1988.
KRISTEN-HALL GEISLER
Kristen Hall-Geisler has been writing about cars, from the latest in electrics to the rarest vintage vehicles, since 2004. Her automotive articles have appeared in The New York Times, Details, HowStuffWorks.com, Sports Car Market, Oregon Business, and more. She can’t change her own oil, but she can tell you more than you’ve ever wanted to know about the molecular structure of synthetic motor oil, thanks to her obsessive reporting and on-the-job research. Kristen lives in Oregon with her husband, dog, and punk-rock cat. Fulfilling her part in the Pacific Northwest stereotype, she drives a Subaru Baja, which she calls “the nouveau Brat,” often with the dog in the back seat and a trailhead in their near future.
LAURA BURSTEIN
Laura Burstein is an automotive journalist based in Los Angeles. She’s a sportscar and racing enthusiast with a passion for fashion and design. Before cars, Laura covered consumer technology on TV, radio and the Web. She is currently President of the Motor Press Guild, the largest automotive media organization in North America.
JESSICA BLAIR HOWELL
Jessica Blair’s writing career began at a young age. Since penning — and soliciting subscriptions to — a weekly family newsletter (think: who’s on dishwasher duty) at the age of eight, she’s been enamored with the craft. After earning a degree in journalism, she spent time as a travel and automotive writer before launching the eco chic travel blog, Green Globetrotter. Today, she divvies her time between writing, perfecting blue-ribbon banana breads, tearing pages from Lucky and Elle Décor in an ongoing quest to reach style nirvana, and traveling.
LIZ KIM
Liz Kim loves to complain. Always has. She complained about her first job out of grad school as an editor at Edmunds.com. There she found that she was paid to complain about cars, which is really what automotive journalism boils down to, as long as the litany was studded with opinions about what rocks about the vehicle and knitted with precise facts. More than a decade has passed, with bellyaching about cars on various websites such as Autobytel, About, J.D. Power and Associates, NBC/Universal and Vehix, as well as a long stint in the advertising world for, you guessed it, cars, although she found out right quick that complaining about cars in their commercials is frowned upon. Liz lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles with her husband and two little ladies, which lets her complain about tight back seats and coupes.
LIESEL KOPP, Photo Wizard
Liesel has been messing around with images in Photoshop for more years than she cares to count. She also really enjoys acting in horror films, eating cheese, and playing with her furry feline pals.
KIMBERLY PHIPPS, Photo Editor
Kim has been obsessed with art and photography for a long time, since there was this stuff called film that you put in cameras. Her most memorable car was a hot pink Ford Escort from her University of Texas at Austin days. It was known as the Tab Can. You don’t have to be an art director to match your pedicure polish to your car’s exterior, but it helps. She lives in Los Angeles, where she loves to watch French films, roast her own coffee beans, and find obscure Chinese noodle houses.
HEATHER DAI, VroomGirls Intern
Heather is a newbie car driver with only a few years of experience behind the wheel as well as a newbie in public relations. Currently learning the tricks of the trade, she is a sophomore at The University of Texas at Austin. With her need to always keep vrooming, she stays busy by being a Texas Spirit, a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority and on the publicity committee of Texas Revue. She drives a 2011 maroon Scion tC with a surprisingly spacious backseat for a two-door car, perfect for her friends to pile-in.
