Wendee Nicole is an award-winning San Diego writer who has written about nature, sustainability, and health since 1996. Her work has been published in Discover, Scientific American, Ensia, and many other publications. She’s been a contributing writer for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences publication Environmental Health Perspectives and formerly, Defenders of Wildlife’s magazine. In 2013, Wendee won the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) award for her story, Did Tap Water Kill Lou Gehrig? Later that year, she was awarded the $20,000 Mongabay Special Reporting Initiative Grant, which took her to Africa to see her favorite animal, the mountain gorilla, and report on how human livelihoods and conservation can coexist. Wendee instead fell in love with the Batwa people, who had been evicted from their homeland to save the gorillas. She and a couple of Ugandan friends formed Redemption Song Foundation to provide opportunities and social justice for the Batwa, running it on the ground from until 2017. She returned to the States after adopting her daughter, now studying international relations at Stanford University. Wendee is working on a book about the Tijuana River: A shitty story about the longest-lasting public health and environmental disaster in American history that you’ve never heard about.