School
Fort Lewis College, University of Missouri-Columbia
Expertise
Family Meal Planning, Healthy Eating, Restaurants
- Valerie loves to bake and finished first place several times in the annual Pie Day competition held among former coworkers.
- She is the co-author of the Wilderness Ranger Cookbook, which offers recipes for eating well in the backcountry.
- Among her more memorable stories, she covered the opening of the first In-N-Out Burger in Texas and the Guinness World Record for the largest plate of nachos.
Experience
Valerie has been a lifelong writer and editor, having spent decades working in newspapers, starting with her hometown paper, The Durango Herald, in Colorado. She spent more than 18 years as a reporter and editor at The Dallas Morning News in Texas. She also worked for three and a half years as managing editor in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro office of Community Impact, which focuses on hyperlocal news of the communities it serves. With a career focused on local news, she's interviewed many restaurant owners about their passions.
Education
Valerie received a bachelor's degree in English/communications from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and went on to earn her master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
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