Sarah Rahal – President
Sarah Rahal is the City Hall and an investigative reporter for The Detroit News. While at The News, she has reported on statewide issues including the COVID-19 pandemic, a nationwide caregiver shortage, immigration and the rise of the cannabis industry. She joined AAJA in 2016 and was selected as a VOICES student for the national convention and covered the 2016 presidential townhall in Las Vegas. Sarah graduated from Wayne State University in 2017 where she was an honors student in the Journalism Institute for Media Diversity. She has had bylines in Hour Detroit, Metro Times, BLAC Detroit and Metro Parent.
Sarah is the proud first-generation child of two Lebanese immigrants. When she’s not reporting, she and her husband Ashraf produce Wonder Falafel in Eastern Market to carry on a family legacy.
She and Ashraf are avid theater geeks and when they’re not watching a new film in theaters, they’re cuddling their cat, Yoshi.
Follow her on X: @SarahRahal_
Email: srahal@detroitnews.com
Roop Raj –
Vice President
Roop Raj is weekday evening anchor at FOX 2 News every weeknight. His career started at age 14 when he produced and hosted a television program in Troy. In his first two years at Michigan State University, Raj was on the air at the CBS & ABC stations in Lansing. In 1998, he was hired to report and anchor the news in Flint, Michigan. Roop also was a weatherman at WEYI.
He spent seven years at NBC in New Orleans. After 24 hurricanes including Katrina, he moved to Detroit in 2009 where an economic storm was brewing.
FOX 2 led the way during the 2020 elections, bringing you more exclusives than any other station in town. Raj differentiated himself in the market by nailing down three exclusive, one on one interviews with then candidate Joe Biden. He also secured three, one on one exclusives with former President Trump. His final interview landed him in the Rose Garden with a one on one with Trump for 15 minutes at the White House.
He live with my wife, Julie, and he’s a dog dad to his boxer Louise. Raj loves to cook and bbq. For years on when he reported on the morning show he was criticized for not wearing winter caps. He still won’t. On the weekends, he says he lives in a baseball cap as he hacks around parks throughout the area with Julie.
See more at:
https://www.fox2detroit.com/person/r/roop-raj
& follow him on X: @RoopRajfox2
Laurén Abdel-Razzaq – Secretary
Laurén Abdel-Razzaq is an assistant managing editor working with reporters who cover real estate, health care, the City of Detroit, cannabis and nonprofits. She joined Crain’s in 2021 after nearly a decade at The Detroit News, where she started out as a reporter and worked her way to social media manager and ultimately digital director, overseeing the breaking news desk.
Laurén enjoys working with young journalists and is the internship coordinator for Crain’s Detroit.
From her roots, Laurén is the proud daughter of Jordanian father and a San Marinese mother who fueled her love for storytelling while growing up in Sterling Heights.
She is a two-time graduate of Wayne State University and spends her free time reading too late into the night and cuddling with her two cats.
Follow her on X: @laurenarazzaq
Email: lauren.razzaq@crain.com
Zosette Guir Governing Board Rep.
Zosette Guir is a second-generation Filipina American and the manager of content operations and production for "One Detroit" and "American Black Journal" at Detroit Public TV. She works with producers across the station’s local news and public affairs and arts and culture programs and also currently leads the station’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Advisory Committee, composed of community stakeholders within southeast Michigan.
She has worked on award-winning productions, honored with awards by the Society of Professional Journalists/Detroit and Michigan Association of Broadcasters. In 2020, she was a fellow for the CPB’s Editorial Integrity and Leadership Initiative, which provides training to public media newsroom leaders through Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Follow her on X: @zosetteg
Email: zguir@dptv.org
Bill Kubota –Treasurer
Bill Kubota is director, producer, director of photography, writer, editor. He is a partner of KDN Films and serves as senior producer at Detroit Public Television.
At DPTV, he directs local and national projects including “The Registry” for PBS and aired on PBS stations in May 2020. The Registry revealed the untold stories of Japanese Americans fighting for the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II. He co-wrote and directed “The Ethanol Effect,” which premiered on PBS stations in 2016.
In 2007, he directed the national primetime documentary for PBS titled “Most Honorable Son” about a Japanese American who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.
He co-produced and served as director of photography of the DuPont-Columbia award winning documentary series “Beyond the Light Switch” in 2011 airing on PBS stations nationwide.
Bill has spent a few decades covering news and sports stories for television networks and years before that was a news photographer, reporter and newscast producer at television stations in Michigan.
Kubota is currently working on short films looking at issues concerning housing, immigration, poverty and mass incarceration in the city of Detroit.
Follow him on X: @BKubota56
Carmichael Cruz- Spokesman
Carmichael Cruz is the Digital Marketing Manager at Detroit’s NBC station WDIV Local 4.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, he moved to Detroit to experience four seasons for the first time.
He graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in Communication and earned his MBA from the Rady School of Management at UCSD. An avid traveler, Carmichael lived in Shanghai for six months to study advertising and international journalism with NYU.
He began his career in television as an intern at The CW in San Diego and worked his way up to Marketing Producer at CBS.
Carmichael writes The Go Guide, a weekly newsletter highlighting local events around Detroit. You’ll probably find him at Fisher Theatre, the Detroit Opera House or at Little Caesars Arena for a concert. Fun fact: he has visited every Disney park in the world… twice.
Subscribe here!
Email: ccruz@wdiv.com