Amy Haimerl is the editor-in-residence at Michigan State University, where she teaches reporting and writing, creativity and entrepreneurship, and media disruption and engagement platforms. Additionally, Amy is the author of “Detroit Hustle: A Memoir of Love Life and Home” and a freelance journalist covering business and economics for The New York Times and Fortune.

Before teaching, Amy spent her career in a variety of newsrooms across the country, from small startup organizations to large newsgathering operations. Her first job out of college was as editor-in-chief of the Colorado Springs Business Journal, where she discovered a passion for covering small businesses and community journalism. She also led award-winning news coverage at Westword, the alternative newspaper in Denver, Colorado; was the morning news producer and personal finance editor for CNNMoney in New York during the Great Recession; and covered the city of Detroit’s historic municipal bankruptcy for Crain’s Detroit Business. She has also led tech coverage during the dot-com boom; run an 8-million circulation magazine for military families; and worked as a celebrity interviewer.

But her most cherished accomplishment was helping Donna Ladd and Todd Stauffer write the business plan for the Jackson Free Press—and then name it. Amy was sitting in Donna’s office in Jackson reading books about Mississippi history when she came across the story of the Mississippi Free Press, the civil-rights newspaper started by Medgar Evers and a multiracial group during the Civil Rights Movement. In that moment, the Jackson Free Press was officially born. Amy couldn’t be prouder to come full circle and now be an adviser for the new Mississippi Free Press. She lives in Detroit, Michigan, with her husband, Karl, and three critters: June Carter Cat, The Overlord  and Hank (the Tank) Williams.