Spotlight Editors: Don Finefrock, David Villano
Contributing Editors: Patrick Farrell, Chuck Strouse
Publisher: Mel Meinhardt
Associate Publisher: Elena Carpenter
Miami News Trust Board of Directors: Elena Carpenter, Patrick Farrell, Don Finefrock, Mel Meinhardt, David Villano
Elena V. Carpenter (Board Director) is a marketer, writer, and editor. Former publisher and managing editor of the Coconut Grove Times, Brickell Post, South Miami Times and Miami Monthly Magazine, a city regional focused on politics, community and environmental issues from a hyper-local to a countywide perspective. Her career has involved contributions in over 20 Board of Director positions including Bayfront Park Management Trust, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Arts Festival, Business Improvement Committee, Chamber of Commerce, Dade Heritage Trust, and most recently as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of Florida Memorial University. Currently Elena serves as a consultant in strategic corporate restructuring, brand expansion and market positioning, as well as a writer and editor.
Patrick Farrell (Board Director) is a Miami native and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who worked for 32 years at the Miami Herald, where he covered issues in South Florida and the United States, as well as Cuba, Haiti, Turkey and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. His images from a brutal hurricane season in Haiti in 2009 won the Pulitzer for Breaking News Photography; he also was part of the Herald staff that won the 1993 Pulitzer for Public Service for coverage of Hurricane Andrew and was on a team whose work on a multi-media immigration project received the 2016 Edward R. Murrow Award. He currently is a lecturer for the School of Communication at the University of Miami, his alma mater. He and his wife, Jodi Mailander Farrell, have lived since 1997 in Coconut Grove, where they raised their two daughters.
Don Finefrock (Board Director) is a journalist and nonprofit manager who has lived in Coconut Grove for more than 30 years. Don moved to Miami in 1987 to become a business writer for United Press International. He later spent 10 years as a reporter at the Miami Herald covering business, government and politics, including two years as a lead reporter on the newspaper’s Hurricane Andrew team, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for public service. After leaving the Herald, Don spent three years investigating public corruption at the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics before joining the National Park Foundation to lead its South Florida affiliate. Don served as executive director of the South Florida National Parks Trust for 15 years before retiring. A graduate of Denison University and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Don is a swimmer, a gardener, and a paddler who has twice completed the 99-mile Wilderness Waterway Trail in Everglades National Park.
Mel Meinhardt (Board Director) is a retired executive who now applies his experience in business and strategy to serve neighbors. Mel began his career in public service as an officer aboard submarines in the Arctic and later as a strategist and technology manager for the CIA. He held senior strategy roles at major corporations (Westinghouse, Tyco) before leading investments for New York-based asset management firms. Mel is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the Wharton School of Business. He served as a national trustee of the USNA Alumni Association and officer in several civic-building organizations. Mel currently serves as board chairman of Friends of the Commodore Trail, a nonprofit organization working to enhance the Commodore Trail in Coconut Grove and Coral Gables.
David Villano (Board Director) has been a Miami-based writer and journalist for nearly four decades, contributing, on a wide range of subjects, to more than 50 local and national publications including The Miami Herald, The Sun Sentinel, Miami New Times, Florida Trend, Newsweek, Pacific Standard, Utne Reader, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He has received awards from the Florida Press Club, Florida Press Association, Florida Magazine Association, Florida Bar Association, the Alliance of Area Business Publishers, and the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also a youth soccer coach and is co-founder of the civic engagement group Grove 2030. He is a graduate of Ransom Everglades School, the University of Miami (B.A. in Religion) and the University of Florida (M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication). He has been a Coconut Grove resident for more than 50 years.
