Meet the Richmondside team

Richmondside’s founding newsroom team includes a veteran editor with deep East Bay roots, a reporter who was raised in Richmond, and a South Bay native whose launching the publication’s education beat. That’s all to say we are striving to ensure our newsroom reflects the community we are serving and understands what it’s like to live here.

Kari Hulac is leading Richmondside as its editor-in-chief. Hulac joined Cityside, the nonprofit news organization that publishes Richmondside, in April of 2024. A Bay Area resident for most of her life, and an East Bay reporter and editor for 13 years, Hulac is deeply committed to providing Richmond with a free source of nonprofit, independent, community-centered news.

“While I realize we are just getting started, the stories we’re writing have 100% confirmed for me that Cityside absolutely chose the right location for its third newsroom,” Hulac said. “While editing an article describing a homeless mom kicked out of a shelter because her mentally ill son turned 18, I felt sadness turn to hope, knowing that there’s a new program that trains formerly unhoused people to help her and hundreds more. I felt gratified that because Richmondside is here, stories like these will no longer go untold. People like her will be seen.”

Hulac has worn many hats in a journalism career spanning more than 20 years. She held several editorial leadership positions at the Bay Area News Group between 1997 and 2010, including as the editor of The (Hayward) Daily Review and features editor of The Oakland Tribune. She was a senior editor based in the East Bay at local online news network Patch, and a fill-in breaking news editor at Bay City News.

You can reach Hulac at kari@richmondside.org.

Richmondside’s first staff reporter has deep local roots

Joel Umanzor, Richmondside’s first fulltime staff reporter, previously worked at the San Francisco Standard, where he covered breaking news and reported on topics ranging from public safety to policing to culture. Before that, he was a Hearst Breaking News Fellow reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle.

As the city reporter at Richmondside, Umanzor is covering a range of topics, but focuses primarily on providing residents with timely news and useful information about their city government and how its decisions impact them.

Umanzor is well-versed in many of the issues Richmond residents are most concerned about. He grew up in Richmond, still lives locally, and has two children in the West Contra Costa Unified School District, where he also worked as a bilingual Spanish tutor and translator. As a journalist, he covered Richmond City Council for the youth-led community news publication, Contra Costa Pulse. After transferring from the journalism department at Contra Costa College, he earned his journalism degree at San Francisco State University.

“Cityside has established itself as a reputable, go-to source of local journalism for Berkeley and Oakland,” said Umanzor. “As someone who grew up in the Richmond area, I have seen how the city has changed in the past 20 years, and I’m looking forward to playing a part in producing trustworthy news in the city I consider home and to serving a community that has not always trusted local media.”

You can reach Umanzor at joel@richmondside.org.

Education reporter Jana Kadah joins team in May 2025

New to the Richmondside team is Jana Kadah, a South Bay native with experience covering large government institutions.

Kadah was most recently the city hall reporter at San Jose Spotlight where she earned several first-place awards for her local government, business/economy and public service reporting from the California News Publishers Association. Before that she was a reporter for Bay City News, where she wrote multiple stories a day about issues ranging from homelessness to the environment and education. 

Her three-part series for Local News Matters detailing salary disputes within Santa Clara County’s Campbell Union High School District highlighted how teachers were leaving the district at alarming rates and earned a John Swett Award from the California Teachers Association.

Kadah will take a holistic approach to education reporting, from examining West Contra Costa Unified School District policy to covering what’s happening in Richmond classrooms. Her coverage will seek to help Richmond community members better understand the root causes of systemic challenges impacting local public schools, while centering the perspectives of students, families, teachers and administrators. Kadah will also occasionally cover the county Office of Education, Contra Costa College and youth issues, including the work being done by youth-focused nonprofit organizations, and other general assignment stories.

Rounding out the team are a number of freelance writers and photojournalists, whose contributions are crucial in helping us cover all of the important stories of west Contra Costa County.

If you’d like to get in touch with the newsroom to share information about what’s happening in Richmond, or you have story ideas, please use our tips form.

This story was updated in May of 2025 to reflect the addition of new team members.