As a journalist, artist, and newsroom manager, Gwen Muranaka’s experience has spanned more than 20 years and two continents. She oversees both editorial and production as senior editor of America’s oldest and largest bilingual Japanese community daily—The Rafu Shimpo—now in its 120th year.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA, she maintains that community newspapers are the front line of information and must continually evolve to reflect the diversity of its readers. She is being honored in October by the Greater Los Angeles Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists as a Distinguished Journalist.

Muranaka began as a reporter for Pacific Citizen and later channeled her creative side as a cartoonist for The Japan Times in Tokyo. She currently draws Dad’s Three Cats, which appears in The Hawaii Herald and The Rafu Shimpo.