Redding Sentinel Team
Photo by Susan Clark
Featured in Volume 4/Issue 4, May 15, 2025
Publisher
Susan Clark
203.938.3800
Susan Clark, Publisher, started the Redding Sentinel in 2022. She grew up in Redding and served on the Planning Commission in the 1990’s and on the Board of Finance from 2012 - 2018. She is a Director of Highstead Foundation.
Susan retired from The Economist Group in 2014 after a career leading marketing-driven businesses around the world. At The Economist Group, she was Chief Marketing Officer and prior to that, Managing Director, The Economist Digital and Managing Director, Continental Europe, Middle East and Africa. Based in London and then Geneva, Susan was responsible for the business results of The Economist, Economist Conferences and Intelligent Life as well as the company’s global treasury and risk management business Eurofinance, and European Voice, the group’s newspaper in Brussels. Susan has an MA and BA in East Asian Studies from Yale University.
When not looking after the Sentinel, she’s usually in her garden, reading, or walking her dogs.
Managing Editor
Jessie Wright
Jessie Wright joined the Sentinel as Managing Editor in November 2022 when the newspaper began weekly publication. A native of Minneapolis, Wright is a graduate of the University of Virginia and has an MBA in Arts Administration from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Before joining the Sentinel, she served as the Managing Director of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and spent four years fundraising major gifts for New York City Ballet. She was Managing Editor of her high school newspaper and a feature reporter for the Cavalier Daily at UVA.
Wright and her husband moved to Redding in 2020. They have a two-year old daughter, a four-year-old son, two loveable dogs, four skittish alpacas, and an ever-changing number of backyard chickens.
Creative Director
Debora DeCarlo Rosa
creative.director@reddingsentinel.org
Local graphic designer and logo specialist Debora DeCarlo Rosa was initially asked to create a masthead and visual brand for the Sentinel ahead of its launch in 2022. That initial project evolved into Rosa creating the overall concept and layout design for the Sentinel, which she continues to oversee for each issue.
The founder of DDC Graphics, a boutique graphic design firm, Rosa has been creating logos, marketing materials, and corporate brands for over 30 years. She has left her mark on Redding already in many ways – she designed the new seal for the Town of Redding and is also the creator of the Redding Garden Club’s logo, which many residents may recognize from the plaques situated in the Club’s planting sites around town. She and her husband, Vin, have lived in Redding for over 25 years, in a log cabin they built after purchasing land in 1998. Both grew up in Italian families and spend several months each year in the region of Umbria, Italy.
Assistant Graphic Designer
Connor Feeney
graphic.designer@reddingsentinel.org
Connor Feeney joined the Sentinel team shortly after its launch, just after he graduated from Western Connecticut State University with a degree in art with a graphic design focus. Graphic design was a natural area of interest for Feeney, who comes from a family of designers. During his studies at WCSU, he also discovered an affinity for painting and incorporating other artistic mediums into his design work. The Sentinel is Feeney’s first experience laying out a newspaper, and he enjoys the concrete nature and process of creating the weekly printed issues.
He is learning how to play bass guitar and loves spending time with his dog, Duke, a Great Pyrenees and Anatolian Shepherd mix who Feeney describes as “a big snuggler.”
Marketing Operations Manager
Nicole DuBois
marketing.ops@reddingsentinel.org
Nicole DuBois joined the Sentinel team in October 2023. She grew up in Trumbull, CT and double majored in English and French at Providence College in Providence, RI. Prior to her role at the Sentinel, Nicole worked at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT for over a decade, capping her tenure there as Executive Director of Enrollment Management where she oversaw marketing, communications and operations for undergraduate admissions. She previously held additional roles at the American Institute of Building Design, the American Institute for Foreign Study and Environmental Control, Inc.
Nicole and her husband moved to Redding in 2020 after falling in the love with the area and marrying at Huntington State Park. In addition to hiking and staying active, she is a voracious reader and enjoys spending time with friends and family.
Advertising Sales Representative
Atticus Upson
Born and raised in Redding, Atticus joined the Sentinel in early 2026 to help expand the newspaper’s roster of local advertisers. He has a long history in involvement in town activities and organizations, including playing on the soccer, tennis, and golf teams at Joel Barlow High School, participating in the Boys & Girls Club of Redding-Easton’s Keystone Club, and working on Warrups Farm.
After graduating from Pepperdine University with a degree in Biology, he worked for Fishers Island Conservancy monitoring animal species and at Trassig, a Bethel-based playground equipment manufacturer in customer service. He had been thinking about exploring jobs in sales when the opportunity to put his talents to use at his local newspaper came up. He enjoys the research aspect of finding new businesses to approach and getting out and meeting business owners in Redding and surrounding communities.
Reporter
Anne Young Albanese
203.984.1490
Anne Young Albanese has lived in Redding for nearly 25 years. She has two children who attended the Redding and Region 9 schools K-12. She has served on the RES PTA board, volunteered with Mark Twain Library, RES, and JRMS. She has coached Odyssey of the Mind teams and led Girl Scouts troops. Her experiences and connections with town organizations have provided her with insight into how these are run and provided her with contacts who know she can be trusted to cover the organizations fairly and truthfully.
She earned her master’s degree in communications from Iona College in New Rochelle, NY. She has written for a variety of organizations, including New York City and Nikon, with her work being published in numerous publications, including Playboy, the Westchester Fairfield Business Journal, the Norwalk Hour, and a variety of travel and women’s magazines.
Reporter
Pamela Brown
After a time serving as an Adjunct Professor in English at Western Connecticut State University, Pamela Brown picked up her own pen and began what is now a two-decades-long career as a freelance writer. She began contributing to the Danbury News-Times in 2000, and now writes for several newspapers, magazines, and publishing companies across New England, in addition to consulting on marketing and communications with clients through her practice, PMB Writing & Consulting.
Her passion for writing also finds its way into Brown’s off-work hours, including working on the re-publication of a romance novel she wrote several years ago called Faithful Love and her avid devotion to jigsaw puzzling. Brown is also an enthusiastic tennis player and fan, even naming her mini-golden doodle “Rafa” (after Rafael Nadal) and her newest pup, Andy (a name she and her daughter Alexis now realize could be a reference to Andy Murray, another tennis great).
Reporter
Donna Christopher
203.241.4395
Christopher became a full-time journalist in 2002. One of the projects that launched her into the field was freelancing for the Redding Pilot newspaper back in the early 2000s. She then went on to work as a staff writer and news assistant for the Danbury News-Times, a reporter for Verdict Search, a content producer for Daily Voice, and a reporter for New Canaan Advertiser, before becoming a freelancer in 2020.
A long-time resident of Fairfield County, Christopher was raised in Brooklyn and Queens, moving to Connecticut 35 years ago to raise her own family. In addition to her own career as a journalist, she serves as an adviser to the student newspaper club at Norwalk Community College, leading the transition of their publication online at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. She is also the judge of the high school category for the Connecticut Press Club’s annual journalism contest.
Reporter
Justin Reynolds
After growing up in Ridgefield and moving back home after college, Reynolds lived in Georgetown, Weston, and Westport before he and his wife bought their first home in Redding just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. He worked for years as a local journalist for Hersam Acorn newspapers and Patch, where he launched the Weston-Redding-Easton Patch site in 2010. Throughout his news career, he has interviewed the likes of Joe Lieberman, Mariano Rivera, and Chris Frantz, the drummer for the Talking Heads. Reynolds then left the news world, joining a B2B tech agency before starting his own copywriting business in 2015. He’d been writing content for startups and technology firms for nearly a decade before adding the Sentinel to his line-up.
His interviews with local entrepreneurs and reporting on the unique business community here in Redding are featured in the Sentinel’s weekly Business Spotlight and have had the added benefit of forging new connections for him and his family.
Reporter
Rob Sample
Originally from Daytona Beach, Florida, Rob Sample has since spent several decades in New England. After working in publishing in Manhattan after graduating college with a Communications major and Journalism minor, Sample then went on to work for several large and small corporations, including Grumman and Northrop Grumman on Long Island.
His business writing in those roles was accompanied by years of freelance journalism assignments with several of the Hersam Acorn and Hearst publications in Fairfield County, including the Redding Pilot back in 2014 and 2015. He raised his family in Monroe, Connecticut and now lives in Ulster County, New York.
Sample appreciates the natural beauty of the area and is especially fond of the Walkway Over the Hudson, an old railway bridge near Poughkeepsie that has been converted to a walking path. He also spent years riding a 40-year-old ten-speed bike on the trails in Monroe and on several bike vacations.
Reporter
Rocco Valluzzo
Rocco Valluzzo is a third generation “Connecticut-lifer,” bringing decades of his own experience living in the area to his more than 30-year career covering local news in Fairfield County. He worked for Hersam Acorn Newspapers for many years as part of the Redding Pilot, Weston Forum, and Easton Courier staffs, before the publications were shut down in 2018. Valluzzo was happy to have the opportunity to cover Redding again when the Sentinel launched in 2022.
He is an avid boater, bringing his 17-foot outrider out to Candlewood Lake as often as he can in the summer and making a hobby of working on it throughout the year. He also performs as a semi-professional musician in the band “Sweet Redemption” playing bass guitar with four other bandmates he has become friends with over the years.
Join the Redding Sentinel team
The Sentinel welcomes contributors, freelancers and volunteers.
Please e-mail us at publisher@reddingsentinel.org to learn more and get involved.
Photo by Dana Taylor
Featured in Volume 2/Issue 12, July 27, 2023