Jon Funabiki is a Professor of Journalism at San Francisco State University and Executive Director of Renaissance Journalism and Storytelling Center, which organizes local and national social justice media initiatives.

At the university, Funabiki also directs the Lab for Media and Community, and he recently concluded a five-year term as the founding Executive Director of the Dilena Takeyama Center for the Study of Japan and Japanese Culture.

Funabiki is the former Deputy Director of the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts & Culture Unit and was the founding Director of San Francisco State University’s Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism. As a journalist with The San Diego Union, he specialized in covering U.S.-Asia political and economic affairs.

A graduate of San Francisco State University, Funabiki was awarded the John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, the Jefferson Fellowship at the East-West Center of Honolulu, a National Endowment for the Humanities Professional Summer Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Gerbode Foundation Professional Development Fellowship.