Served as editor of the nationally circulated Diversity Employers Magazine, an expansion and rebranding of the 40-year-old Black Collegian. Spearheaded the company's repositioning from an African American, undergraduate-targeted college magazine to a more inclusive publications reaching more diverse professional audiences until company's close in 2011.
As an executive with the online arm of parent company, IMDiversity, I assumed editorship of the pioneering magazine, The Black Collegian Magazine, for a number of issues following the dispersal of our New Orleans-based company during Hurricane Katrina. Planned features, wrote articles and editorials, worked with client advertisers, made assignments, and more.
Rapidly promoted from contributing editor to Editor-in-Chief of the IMDiversity website network (1998 to 2011), and ultimately held roles including VP of Marketing and Outreach, and VP of Publishing for the parent company.
Beginning as a freelance contributing editor and working my way up to wearing many other hats for the parent company, I was proud to remain the "mayor" of the Asian-American Village Online web community from 1998 to the publisher's demise in 2011. In the Web's "Wild West" days, we discovered, nurtured and promoted so many of the community's most vibrant, leading and emerging voices.
As Director of Marketing and IT, also brought experienced editorial eye to the planning and production of catalogs, newsletters and editorial and other marketing pieces for Country Travel Discoveries. The travel company had its roots in the Reiman Publications magazine empire, and partnered with numerous trade and special interest publishing organizations, from Saturday Evening Post and Kalmbach to Annie's Publishing and the International Regional Magazines Association.
A former academic, I have provided editorial services to a number of educational texts. Among them, I was proud to work with the late Dr. Amy Ling as a contributing editor to the collection, Yellow Light -- a pioneering scholarly collection marrying two of my longtime interests, fine arts and ethnic studies.
Hire to create and define new staff role managing all print and digital outreach publications for internal, alumni, scientific, and community audiences. These included the chief, outward-facing scientific research-oriented publication, Physics at Michigan, providing me with a thrilling opportunity to work with world-class scientists presenting cutting-edge research, as well as oversee content providers, editing, design, layout, desktop publishing, press-check, distribution, more.
In addition to re-launching the University of Michigan's main Physics research publication, I had the pleasure to produce two newsletters for scientific and non-scientist audiences, interviewing Nobel Laureates, following bleeding-edge research, and working with exciting rare imagery!
Also a book author, I have an affinity and deep empathy for authors working on deadline to produce the best possible work, and have had the good fortune to work directly with brilliant creative, commercial and academic writers as editorial consultant, reader, blurber, and coach/friend. Most recently, I had an opportunity to get a proper "schooling" helping bring the story of this pioneering early French filmmaker to light.
Editorial Work
As an experienced editor, Stewart Ikeda has nurtured scores of wonderful writers, photographers, designers and artists in dozens of publications--print and digital, literary and commercial, small and large.
Among others, he served as editor for the nationally circulated Diversity Employers and The Black Collegian magazines, served as editor of Physics publications at the University of Michigan, served as Editor-in-Chief of the IMDiversity.com website network from 1998 to 2001, and provided contract editing to numerous collegiate, secondary educational, scholarly publications and online and commercial projects.