The Team | The Craftsmanship Initiative

Founder & Executive Director
Todd Oppenheimer

Founder & Executive Director

Todd Oppenheimer

Todd has been writing about craftsmanship since 2008, when he profiled Bob Kramer, a master kitchen bladesmith, for The New Yorker (expanded here in our pages). His fascination with artisans, and their unusual approach to excellence, led him to found The Craftsmanship Initiative in 2015. Todd is an author and journalist with more than three decades of experience, and a long-time member of The Writers Grotto in San Francisco. Todd has also written for publications such as The Atlantic, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He has won a variety of reporting awards, including a National Magazine Award and an Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) Award. Todd is the author of “The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology.”

To learn why Todd started this venture, and his views on craftsmanship’s future, see this interview Tharawat Magazine did with Todd for its special issue on “Modernisation, Globalisation, and the Democratisation of Craftsmanship.”

Managing Editor

Laurie Weed

Laurie Weed joined The Craftsmanship Initiative in 2019 as Managing Editor of Craftsmanship Magazine. She brings more than two decades of editing experience to the table, as well as extensive project management, copyediting, digital production, social media, marketing, and publication management gleaned from a variety of industries — from publishing houses large and small to nonprofit, travel, and tech. Laurie is also a longtime freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Press Democrat, several of The Best Women’s Travel Writing books and other anthologies, along with a variety of magazines, websites, and guidebooks.

Senior Audio Editor

Pauline Bartolone

Pauline Bartolone’s true passion is long-form audio storytelling. For two decades, she has traveled up and down California and all around Latin America to tell stories with words and sounds. Before becoming an editor, she spent many years as a healthcare reporter for public radio and print media. Her voice has regularly been heard on NPR, and she’s written for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Daily Beast, CNN, and Scientific American. Pauline is excited to be producing stories about crafts and the people who make them. She is a lifelong crafter herself who enjoys clay arts, glass mosaics, bookbinding, and soap-making.

Editorial Advisors

National Correspondent, The Atlantic
James Fallows

Author & Television Producer
Rodes Fishburne

Philanthropist and former editor
Katherine Fulton

Editor at Large, The Atlantic
Cullen Murphy

National Correspondent, The Atlantic

James Fallows

James Fallows is a staff writer at The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter. He is the author (or co-editor) of numerous books on national and international issues, including “National Defense,” which won a National Book Award; ”Blind into Baghdad”; and “Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy”. His most recent book is “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America.” Written with his wife, Deborah Fallows, the book was a national bestseller and is the basis of a new HBO documentary.

Author & Television Producer

Rodes Fishburne

Rodes Fishburne is the author of the novel, “Going to See the Elephant”, and the co-creator and producer of two television shows: Blood and Oil, a year-long series for ABC starring Don Johnson and Delroy Lindo; and Paradise Lost, a series starring Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey, and Josh Hartnett.

Philanthropist and former editor

Katherine Fulton

Katherine Fulton is the former president of Monitor Institute, and has been a leading strategic advisor to foundations, high-net-worth donors, major nonprofits and rising social entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Before her career in philanthropy, Katherine was a journalist and editor, co-founding The Independent, an award-winning, alternative newspaper in the American South where she grew up. Katherine also has devoted a great deal of time to volunteer work, serving on more than a dozen boards. She currently co-chairs The Long Now Foundation and recently founded a philanthropic fund in her hometown of Sonoma to respond to the pandemic.

Editor at Large, The Atlantic

Cullen Murphy

Cullen Murphy is the editor at large of The Atlantic. For 25 years, he also wrote the comic strip Prince Valiant, which was drawn by his father, the illustrator John Cullen Murphy. He also has served as The Atlantic‘s managing editor, and as editor at large of Vanity Fair. Cullen is the author of numerous books, among them ”Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America”; ”Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage”; ”God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World”; ”Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe”; and ”Just Curious”, a collection of his essays previously published in Harper’s and The Atlantic.

Journalist and Author

Ethan Watters

Ethan Watters is a veteran magazine journalist and the author of several books: “Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria,” “Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of The American Psyche,” and “Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family?” In 2018, he broke a major story, jointly published by EPIC Magazine and The Texas Monthly, entitled “The Love Story that Upended the Texas Prison System.”

Web Development and Marketing

Web Development and Production Management
Cinza Web Design

Web Development and Production Management

Cinza Web Design

Vinicius Miazaki has been production manager of Craftsmanship Magazine almost since its beginning, in 2015. He has been handling website development for the entire operation (The Craftsmanship Initiative) since 2019. Vini is a graduate of San Francisco State University with a degree in computer science. To learn more about Vini, you can find him on Linkedin and on his website cinza.io.

Web Hosting

HelloAri Design

Ari Salomon, founder and principal at HelloAri Design, created and launched the original website for The Craftsmanship Initiative in January, 2015. The HelloAri Design team provides a variety of web design and hosting services. You can learn more about them at helloari.com.

Online Marketing

Social Ordeals

Social Ordeals, based in Los Angeles, provides a variety of social media posting and advertising services for Craftsmanship Magazine. You can learn more about their operation at socialordeals.com.