STAFF & LEADERSHIP

Bruce Mohl oversees the production of CommonWealth Beacon content and edits reports, along with carrying out his own reporting with a particular focus on transportation, energy, and climate issues.

He previously worked at the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper.

Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

View articles by Bruce Mohl.

Michael Jonas works with Bruce in overseeing CommonWealth Beacon coverage and editing the work of reporters. His own reporting has a particular focus on politics, education, and criminal justice reform.

Michael has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His story on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. His CommonWealth work has also won awards from Capitol Beat for state government coverage and from the New England Newspaper & Press Association for work in several areas.

Prior to coming to CommonWealth, for 15 years Michael wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Globe. Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In the late 1980s he was a co-producer for “The AIDS Quarterly,” a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for a weekly news magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.

View articles by Michael Jonas.

Jennifer Smith writes for CommonWealth Beacon and co-hosts its weekly podcast, The Codcast. Her areas of focus include housing, social issues, courts and the law, and politics and elections.

A California native who also lived in Utah, Jennifer has covered Massachusetts since 2011 for a variety of publications. She worked breaking news in the Boston Globe’s metro section and provided courtroom coverage of the Boston Marathon bomber trial for the international wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) while completing her undergraduate journalism degree at Northeastern University in Boston. For four years, Jennifer was a staff writer and later news editor for the Dorchester Reporter, covering her home neighborhood and the city of Boston with a particular focus on politics and development.

Her work and commentary have appeared in WBUR, GBH News, Harvard Public Health Magazine, and Politico’s Massachusetts Playbook. She has co-hosted MassINC’s Massachusetts politics and policy podcast The Horse Race since 2018, interviewing newsmakers, journalists, and elected officials across the state.

View articles by Jennifer Smith.

Gintautas Dumcius has spent nearly 20 years reporting on Boston and state politics, as well as neighborhood development and the courts.

Before joining CommonWealth Beacon, Gin most recently served as the Dorchester Reporter’s managing editor, and before that, as digital editor at the Boston Business Journal.

A Quincy native who now lives with his family in Weymouth, Gin has also worked at the State House News Service, where he co-founded the MASSterList morning newsletter and reported on Maura Healey’s 2014 campaign for attorney general. At MassLive, he covered the UMass acquisition of Mount Ida College, General Electric’s decision to relocate its headquarters to Boston, and the PawSox move to Worcester.

View articles by Gin Dumcius.

Bhaamati Borkhetaria is a reporter at CommonWealth Beacon. Originally from New Jersey, she moved to Boston for a software engineering job at Amazon Web Services. Passionate about writing, news, politics, and public policy, she made a career shift into journalism.

Bhaamati first became interested in journalism while completing her degree in English literature and computer science from Princeton University. There, she was a staff writer at two student publications. She wrote opinion columns for The Daily Princetonian and feature stories for Business Today. She also spent a summer at Forbes India where she wrote web stories and magazine articles based on interviews with corporate executives, entrepreneurs, and celebrities.

View articles by Bhaamati Borkhetaria.

Joe Kriesberg is the CEO of MassINC, which publishes CommonWealth Beacon. In this role, he is responsible for business and strategic planning, fundraising, financial management, governance, and overall stewardship of the organization. Prior to coming to MassINC in 2023, Joe served as president and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC). He first joined MACDC in 1993 as vice president and served in that capacity until he became president in July 2002. During his time there, he launched several innovative new programs, including the Community Investment Tax Credit, the Mel King Institute for Community Building, the GOALs Initiative, the MACDC convention and the Community Development Innovation Forum. 

Joe brings decades of non-profit management experience and extensive experience working with the media and news organizations to his new role. He has raised millions of dollars for mission-driven organizations and programs and has been published in numerous publications, including the Boston Globe, the Boston Business Journal, Banker & Tradesman, and ,of course, CommonWealth magazine. 

Prior to working for MACDC, Joe worked on energy and environmental issues for nonprofit organizations in Washington, DC, and Boston. Joe has a B.A. from Binghamton University and a J.D. degree from Northeastern University. 

In his role as MassINC’s director of development, Ryan Garcia leads the fundraising and advancement efforts across the organization. He looks forward to furthering MassINC’s sustainability efforts to support best-in-class nonpartisan research, reporting, analysis, and civic engagement.

Prior to joining MassINC, Ryan served as the director of philanthropy at Noble Schools, a charter management organization in Chicago that serves 12,000+ students across 17 different high schools. Throughout his time with Noble, he led efforts to advance programs across the network and helped increase revenue from foundations, corporate partners, and individuals in support of educational equity, advocacy, and social justice issues.

Ryan is from Chicago, and recently earned his master’s degree in social sector leadership and nonprofit management from the University of Chicago. He’s an avid Chicago sports fan and enjoys spending his time outdoors whenever possible.

In her role as director of audience engagement, Yael Mazor-Garfinkle helps CommonWealth Beacon better serve our readership and build loyal audiences. Over the past 15 years, Yael has worked for a wide array of nonprofit, political, and corporate organizations. Most recently, she worked as a freelance marketing and communications consultant and as a digital strategist for Democracy Forward, Decode Democracy, and the 2020 ballot initiative to enact ranked-choice voting in Massachusetts.

A Massachusetts native, Yael earned her undergraduate degree from Brandeis University and an M.A. in integrated marketing communication from Emerson College.