Rob Waters

Rob Waters is a journalist and travel writer living in Berkeley, Calif., who writes about health, science, criminal justice issues, and world culture. He has covered biotechnology for Bloomberg News, was a senior editor at WebMD, and editor-in-chief of the Tenderloin Times, a four-language San Francisco community newspaper. His articles have appeared in BusinessWeek, San Francisco magazine, Salon.com, Sierra, Columbia Journalism Review, and the Los Angeles Times. Rob is a contributing writer for STAT, a new Internet-based health and science publication started by the Boston Globe, and a member of the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto. For Rob, this visit to Cuba with a friend who was born and raised there gave him the unique chance to meet and learn about the lives of ordinary—but extraordinarily creative—Cubans, like Juan Francisco Valdez Linarez, better known as Bebo (at left, in the photo above).