Nena Baker

I wrote "The Body Toxic," winner of the 2009 Nautilus Award for journalism, after spending more than 20 years in the trenches of journalism. It’s my first book, and I'm at work on another. I got started in the business after graduating from Lewis & Clark College in 1981. GQ gave me my first job as an assistant copy editor. I moved on to TV Guide, where I wrote TV listings, and then to a jewelry trade magazine, where I won a company award for an exposé I did about the illegal disposal of toxic chemicals by retail jewelers. In the late 1980s, I found my stride as a daily journalist working as a reporter and editor on the national financial desk of United Press International. In 1991, I joined the staff of The Oregonian, where I persuaded my editors to send me to Asia and Europe so I could tell the story of how Nike, a venerated hometown company, operates in the global marketplace. I was the first U.S. reporter to write about deplorable conditions at the Indonesian factories making Nike shoes. The story won national and regional awards. Better yet, it helped improve worker conditions by putting pressure on Nike to reconsider its responsibility. In I joined The Arizona Republic, as an investigative reporter. I left the Republic in 2003 to concentrate on book writing. These days, I live in Portland where I work as a licensed private investigator.