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My editorial career began with work abroad, when I moved to the Far East after finishing my undergraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley. I lived for a year in Taiwan and wrote for a local business publication; I was also a stringer for the Far Eastern Economic Review, and covered stories of interest to this Hong Kong-based publication. After a year in Asia, I moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. An important producer of corn, wheat and soybeans, Argentina is a major supplier in the global food market, and I wrote about crop production and food exports for the wire service Knight-Ridder Financial. After a year in Argentina, I moved back to the U.S. when Knight-Ridder offered me a staff position covering commodity futures trading at the Chicago Board of Trade. Shortly afterward, I began contributing stories on the markets to the Financial Times of London.
After a dozen years at the exchange, I branched out into corporate editorial projects, and accepted assignments from area hospitals. Much of this work required describing hospital services available to the public in psychiatry, dermatology, ophthalmology and other specialties. Because of my interest in conservation, I began writing for Chicago-area environmental publications, including Chicago Parks and Compass, the monthly newspaper of the Chicago Audubon Society. I followed trends in habitat protection, city politics, recycling, land-use issues and, of course, birding.
I gained several years of experience covering trade shows at McCormick Place, the exhibition hall that hosts the big expositions devoted to housewares, consumer electronics and other product lines. Taiwan sends many exhibitors to these shows, and my editor in Taiwan sought information about American companies sourcing in Taiwan and the level of demand for the country's goods.
I also undertook a number of projects in the arts. I interviewed directors and actors for Stagebill, and became a book reviewer for the Chicago Reader. Drawing on my years of experience at the Board of Trade, I composed a novel about futures trading, The Fibonacci Deception, and published it electronically; the book can be read on a Kindle Reader.