Founder and Editor in Chief

Stephanie Meade has had a passion for global issues, languages, international travel and writing ever since she can remember. After studying comparative politics at Columbia University as an undergraduate, she lived in Ecuador for over a year as an English teacher. Upon her return, she worked at the United Nations in New York before obtaining her Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia to further her interest in international development. For over five years after, she worked as an economic consultant in the water sector, helping to build water systems across the developing world. Her work brought her to work and sometimes live in a lot of interesting places including Armenia, Georgia, Yemen, Uganda, Germany and Brazil. After having children and a foray into the hedge fund industry, she decided to create InCultureParent.

Stephanie speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese, some German, tiny bits of Armenian and Russian and is just starting on Arabic. She and her husband, who is from Morocco, are raising their two girls bilingual/bicultural in Arabic and English in the Bay Area. They started to introduce French and some Spanish as well. She can be reached at stephanie@incultureparent.com.

Books Editor

Meera Sriram has been reviewing and recommending diverse children’s literature for over five years now. She loves to pass on a title or an author to a friend (or a stranger, for that matter). Picture books particularly appeal to the inner child in her. She moved to the U.S at the turn of the millennium from India. After graduate studies and a brief stint as an electrical engineer, she decided to express herself in other creative ways, primarily through writing. She has co-authored two books for children, both published in India. Her writing interests include people and cultures, nature and life’s everyday moments. She also does story time for toddlers in her community. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two kids. Curling up to read a good book with her little boy and girl is something she looks forward to everyday. She constantly fantasizes about a world with no boundaries over hot chai to help stay warm in foggy Northern California.

Food Editor

Lauren Capitani was an early foodie. While her friends were busy watching Family Ties, she was tuned into Graham Kerr and Yan Can Cook, and served her friends and family dishes such as Beef Wellington and Baked Alaska while still a teen. After college, Lauren received Masters’ degrees in both journalism and business and worked in both subsequent fields. At 29, she decided to rewrite her life and became an assistant teacher. For the first time, her vocation became her avocation. She now has certification in both elementary and early childhood education and has taught at seven schools on both coasts (and in between). Lauren has lived summers in France, England, Spain, Japan and Thailand, and has visited more than a dozen other countries. When her own children start limiting their food choices, Lauren turned it into a teaching moment and created One World Whisk, a global cooking initiative for children. The project garnered more than 200 followers before its one-month charter was complete.

Associate Craft Editor

Amber Dorko Stopper is the founder of Krampuslauf Philadelphia (http://krampuslaufphiladelphia.com/) and of the traditional Korean drumming group Nunchi Nori (http://nunchinori.wordpress.com). She is a short story author, and a columnist for Korean Quarterly (http://www.koreanquarterly.org). She is a knitter, and the mother of one African-American daughter and one Korean son.

Associate Craft Editor

Jen El-Banna studied elementary education at The University of Wisconsin-Madison. There she met her husband, whom she married in 2002. After graduating, she taught kindergarten in Wisconsin and Louisiana before having her own children, Gabi in 2004 and Norah in 2006. Since then the family has been on the move, from New Orleans to Ohio then Kansas City. Besides raising her own daughters, Jen also taught Kindermusik for a brief time and preschool. In 2011, they took the big step of moving overseas, relocating to Poland with her husband’s job. Jen is currently helping her family adjust to a new culture and language, volunteering at her daughters’ international school and trying to acquire a new language herself (apologies to her language teacher).

Associate Craft Editor

Sara Headley lives in northern New Mexico (NM) where she enjoys copious amounts of green chile. She is a homeschooling mom of three young girls. Sara taught first grade in NM before becoming a stay-at-home mom. Sara loves crafting with (and without) her kids, though glitter still remains on the “naughty” list. Sewing, crochet, cooking, gardening and teaching are her passions…for now. Those might change later to something like philosophy, whitewater rafting and hat-making.

Staff Writer and Assistant Editor

San Franciscan Natasha Shevelyov is a freelance writer, editor and translator and largely credits her perspective and humor to the part-bohemian, part-classical White Russian environment she grew up in. Love of writing and research have been with her for as long as she can remember and led her to her ultimate passion—linguistics, semiotics and cultural theory. Her experiences teaching English and writing for a vast range of clientele perpetually lead her back to exploring the dynamics of culture and how we communicate. Her academic history includes a B.A. in Mass Communications and Liberal Arts from Oxford University, a Master’s in Russian Studies and Literary Theory and studies toward a green MBA.

Staff Writer and Assistant Editor

Crystal Hoshaw is a transplant from Los Angeles who has come to settle in the progressive and creative cultural mecca of San Francisco’s East Bay. Her work marries her lifelong passion for the written word with her love of spiritual wisdom and esotericism. She is currently pursuing a graduate education in philosophy and consciousness at California Institute of Integral Studies, and maintains a yoga practice in the Vedantic tradition of India. A seasoned international traveler, her most recent transoceanic jaunt involved living in a tent in Kalalau Valley, Hawaii, and she is quick to jump at any activity involving the out-of-doors, be it hiking, biking, or tree-climbing.

Technical Guru

Saill White has worked as a scientist, software engineer and interface designer since 1991. She has worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory both as a researcher in the Supernova Cosmology Group and as a software engineer for the Environmental Energy Technology Department. In the public sector, she served as an energy analyst and software designer for Berkeley Solar Group and for her own company Suncalc, and as Vice President of Product Development for Lina Software. She has a passion for creating beautiful software that works. She has a degree in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley. She is happy to be raising her daughter in the ocean of cultural riches that is the the San Francisco Bay Area.

Web Magic Maker

Saifullah Bin Mujib is so passionate about computers and the web, he counts coding as one of his hobbies, alongside music and traveling. He enjoys learning about people from other cultures. A native of Bangladesh, he currently lives in Sweden where he is pursuing graduate studies in Information Technology. He speaks Bangla, English and is currently learning Swedish.