Staff and board

Luanne has worked in local news for four decades as a reporter, editor, editorial page editor, and commentary editor at newspapers in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Tennessee.

She took an early retirement from The Roanoke Times in April 2021, after 16 years there, when she learned continued staff cutbacks meant little ability to do in-depth reporting. She then cofounded Cardinal News to create a sustainable news organization to tell the important stories of Southwest and Southside Virginia.

She transitioned to the business side of news, and has led Cardinal News to be recognized nationally, including being named startup of the year in 2023 by the Institute for Nonprofit news.

She has won dozens of journalism awards, including national honors, and several fellowships but is most proud of her awards from non-journalism organizations that recognize the significant role that independent reporting plays in healthy communities.

Tonya has worked in the accounting and finance related field for over three decades.  This includes 18 years at the Roanoke Times as assistant controller, controller and finance officer.  She has been with Cardinal News from the outset in 2021 as a part-time volunteer accountant.

Tonya is a Southwest Virginia native, born and raised in Bluefield (Tazewell County) who now resides in Salem.  She received both her Bachelor of Science in Accounting with an Information Systems Option and her Master of Business Administration from Virginia Tech.  She loves to find the story in the numbers and use data to drive decisions.

Tonya is also passionate about fact-based, nonpartisan journalism.  She firmly believes the communities comprising Cardinal-land need to have their stories told and their voices heard.

Jeff has been a storytelling coach and editor with Gannett’s Virginia papers for more than nine years. Jeff and the reporters he’s coached have won dozens of first place awards from the Virginia Press Association for in-depth and investigative reporting, data reporting and feature writing.

Jeff won the 2017 Freedom of Information Award from the Virginia Coalition for Open Government for an investigative story about Virginia pharmacies. The 2022 Gannett project Perilous Course, in which he coached 18 reporters, was honored by the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Jeff grew up in Rhode Island. He graduated from Cornell University. After traveling up and down the East Coast, he and his wife, Mary, settled in Virginia, where they’ve raised their children and lived for the last 19 years.

As director of development, Dutchie works to create and sustain revenue to fund Cardinal’s independent, nonprofit journalism. That includes revenue from readers who become supporting members. A Roanoke native, Dutchie worked for many years as a reporter, anchor, producer and on-air host at NPR member station WVTF/RADIO IQ. She’s also been a local television producer. She received a degree in Media Studies from Radford University, and also works as a personal trainer, fitness instructor and vocalist.

Sherry has worked in local media for several decades as a reporter, television director, and an account executive. Her video production company documented events and provided legal services in the region for 10 years. More recently, she was director of sales and marketing for Johannus US. In 2018, Sherry co-founded Regional Obituaries Inc., designed to serve families by providing low-cost obituaries for friends and loved ones. Sherry has won many awards for her marketing abilities and is ready to help you be successful in reaching folks in the community.

Before joining Cardinal News, Zachary played a pivotal role in Marketing and Communications at Radford University, where he crafted strategies that significantly elevated the university’s digital presence. He later took on content management at Groupon, where he led initiatives that broadened audience engagement and optimized online visibility. As a proud resident of Christiansburg, Zachary is deeply committed to his local community and is passionate about driving growth in the Southwest and Southside Virginia regions. At Cardinal News, he is dedicated to amplifying the voices of the communities we serve, ensuring that their stories are heard and their perspectives are represented.

Dwayne has more than four decades of experience in Virginia journalism, including 39 years with The Roanoke Times as a reporter, editor and, for seven years, editorial page editor. During that time he twice won the Virginia Press Association’s D. Latham Mims Award for Editorial Leadership, and was inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. He grew up on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley, graduated from James Madison University and is the author of “When Hell Froze Over,” a book about Virginia politics, as well as an internationally-produced playwright.

Megan has been a journalist in Southwest Virginia for more than 25 years. She started out writing about economic development, technology and retail business for The Roanoke Times, then became an editor at the newspaper, overseeing coverage of topics including business, local government and criminal justice. She also spent two years as editor of The Blue Ridge Business Journal. She holds a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and lives in Roanoke.

Elizabeth comes to Cardinal News from the USA Today Network, where she worked as the 2024 elections and politics reporting fellow in Virginia for the past 11 months. Before USA Today, she reported for the Wisconsin State Journal for three years, where she covered K-12 education during the COVID-19 pandemic amid the politicization of public schools, and at the La Crosse Tribune for one year, where she covered issues faced by rural communities and family farms in southwestern Wisconsin. She graduated with her master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 2018. She received her bachelor’s degree from Columbia College Chicago after transferring from Columbus State Community College. She is based in Richmond.

Matt spent nearly 19 years at The News & Advance in Lynchburg, most recently as its managing editor. He began as a reporter covering business, local government and courts, and later served as the digital editor for multiple Virginia newsrooms. A Richmond native, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in mass communications. He lives in Lynchburg.

Susan is an award-winning journalist who has covered Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee for nearly 40 years. An Alabama native, she graduated from Virginia Intermont College with a degree in communications/psychology and spent 38 years at the Bristol Herald Courier, first as a reporter who covered crime, both Bristol city governments, politics, education, health care and the environment.  She then spent 25 years as city editor, handling the coverage of local news.

Tad is an east Tennessee native who grew up drumming and writing, and he considers himself fortunate to still do both. He came to Roanoke in 1999 to work for The Roanoke Times, and his multiple beat assignments included about 16 years covering the Southwest Virginia music scene. Tad was the paper’s features editor from September 2021 to August 2023. The East Tennessee State University graduate has won awards for science writing, government reporting, courthouse coverage, critical writing, features stories and columns. For fun, he walks his dog, Buster, and reads too much news.

Emma is a recent graduate of Washington and Lee University, where she studied journalism and English and was co-editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Ring-tum Phi. Emma was the founding CEO of the Ring-tum Phi, Inc., a nonprofit corporation designed to secure a sustainable financial model and editorial independence for the student-run paper. She grew up in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, but has reported across the east coast with internships at Pittsburgh Magazine and VTDigger, Vermont’s statewide nonprofit news organization. Emma now joins Cardinal News through Report for America, a national service program that seeks to strengthen local news in communities that need it most.

Grace is a Virginia native who grew up in Fredericksburg and studied journalism at Washington & Lee University. She has been covering the City of Danville and Pittsylvania County for Cardinal since 2022. She devotes particular attention to the economic rebirth of the Danville-Pittsylvania area, also reporting on its history and culture.

Lisa covers K-12 and higher education. She joined Cardinal News in 2023 after nearly a decade covering personal finance and the economy for national online publications. Lisa got her start in journalism as a teenager in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and has written for a variety of news and culture publications. She also co-hosted a long-running weekly podcast about fashion and retail news and has served as a communications writer for entrepreneurship and workforce development nonprofits. Lisa has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree from Georgetown University, where her work focused on labor history and the post-NAFTA “made in America” movement.

Emily most recently was the only health care reporter in the state of Montana for more than two years, contributing to her hometown newspaper, The Billings Gazette. She garnered statewide recognition for her coverage, while also earning a reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation. This fellowship addressed issues of aging and the long-term care crisis in America.

Dean is a Jamaica-born reporter who grew up in North Carolina, where he covered communities throughout the state. Most recently he covered race and regional politics for the USA Today network. In Martinsville, he will spotlight an often-overlooked region of the state.

Samantha is a recent Penn State graduate with degrees in journalism and Spanish. She was an investigative reporter for The Daily Collegian at Penn State for four years and a freelance reporter with PennLive. She’s from outside Philadelphia. She was part of a team of reporters who covered the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio (which sits on the border of Pennsylvania), including the cleanup, the railroad’s response and the lingering health and social effects on the community. In the Roanoke Valley, she will provide on-the-ground coverage of our largest metro area.

Roxzanna is a Southwest Virginia native, born and raised in Wythe County on a cattle farm. She studied Wildlife Science at Virginia Tech where she conducted research and published findings with her fellow researchers in several scientific publications. For the past decade, she has lived in rural Downeast Maine, working in municipal government and proofreading for local newspapers. Currently, she lives in Nelson County with her husband and two children.

Erica has worked in editing roles in the Roanoke Valley for more than 25 years, with most of that time spent at The Roanoke Times. In her time on the night copy desk, she served over the years as a night editor, overseeing nightly editing and headline-writing for news sections. As community editor at the newspaper, she led a team of journalists who launched and grew three weekly publications and accompanying websites. Erica currently serves by day as a public relations specialist at Virginia Western Community College. She holds a bachelor’s in history, master’s in English writing and certificate in professional leadership from Hollins University.

Dr. Dayo Abah is an Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow to the Office of the Provost (2023-2025) at Washington and Lee University where she works in faculty development and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. At Washington and Lee University, she is a professor of Journalism and Mass Communications, faculty in the Law, Justice, and Society program, and an affiliate faculty in the Africana Program. She was recently the head of the department of Journalism and Mass Communications. She serves on the editorial board of Communication Law and Policy Journal. With a grant from the Institute of International Educational sponsored by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP), she worked as a consultant in the development of the first master’s degree program in communication at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Dr. Abah lives in Lexington, Virginia with her spouse and two children.

Chelyen is a native of Tazewell County and a former journalist in Southwest Virginia, Lynchburg, and Richmond. She is currently executive director of executive communications at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Caroline Glickman, a long-time resident of Lynchburg, is a former editor at The (Lynchburg) News and Advance and The Roanoke Times.

Debbie Meade is a retired President and Publisher of The Roanoke Times. Hired as a reporter in
1983, she rose through the ranks in the newsroom and on the business side of the company
and was named publisher in February 2007.

Under her leadership, The Roanoke Times twice received the Virginia Press Association’s
highest honor, the Journalistic Integrity and Community Service Award for its news coverage
and editorial voice. She retired in 2013 when the paper was sold to new owners.

A founding board member of Cardinal News, she also serves as chair of the Hollins University
Board of Trustees. She has been a trustee of the Taubman Museum of Art, board chair and
annual campaign chair of United Way of the Roanoke Valley, board vice chair of Roanoke’s
Planned Parenthood affiliate, board chair of Bethany Hall, a residential recovery program for
women, board vice chair of the Roanoke Higher Education Authority, and on the board of the
Roanoke Business Council.