About Laura Gardner (Editor-in-Chief)

Laura grew up in Berkeley, California where she cultivated her interest in music, languages and current events. She started taking flute lessons at a young age, which eventually led to her participation in the Bay Area Wind Symphony, the Oakland Youth Orchestra, and various other chamber music groups, orchestras and bands during high school and college.

Taking summer and school internships in the music industry, her resume includes stints at Live 105 (KITS) Radio in San Francisco, London Records in New York City, and Z-98 (WXZR 98.7 FM) Radio in Groton, CT. While attending Connecticut College, she got involved in the campus radio station, WCNI, where she had a regular show for 2 years playing "world" music (a term she so despises). After graduating in 1997, she returned to the Bay Area and began working at U.C. Berkeley. Continuing her music involvement, she volunteered at the University radio station (KALX) in the publicity, cultural affairs and music departments. She also got involved with the Reggae Review magazine, writing reviews and conducting interviews. Not long after, she became the Staff Editor and Project Manager for the publication, positions in which she spent a little over a year.

She and Robin Kibby founded Jahworks.org in October 2000 as a publication which looked at the music in a contextual framework. Since its founding, she has contributed her journalistic works to various publications including The Beat, and has worked alongside the Peter Tosh Foundation, the Monterey Bay Reggae Fest, the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, San Francisco's Reggae in the Park, and Caribbean Summerfest in various capacities. She has also been working with two up-and-coming artists--Kingston-based singer Milton Blake, and New York-based dub poet Ras Turban.

Laura loves to travel, although admits not having ample time to do it. She’s been overseas to Japan in 1990 in addition to spending her junior year of college in Spain studying Spanish Literature and traveling throughout Western Europe. Jamaica has become her second home, where she prefers country living to city life, but goes into Kingston when she must!

Currently, she works at UC Berkeley and is a student in a Master's program in somatic psychology (the integration of mind and body from a psychological perspective). In her spare time she practices Ashtanga yoga, sees lots of live music, goes to the beach and the pool as much as possible (in the summer), still conducts interviews with international artists, sees her friends and family, eats lots of sushi and last but not least, works on this whole JahWorks.org thing.

She can be reached at editor@jahworks.org.