Before beginning her career in the labor movement, Sara Steffens was an award-winning daily newspaper reporter focused on covering homelessness and poverty. Steffens helped lead an effort to organize her newsroom in 2008, but was laid-off two weeks after the successful vote. She went on to help found the freelance journalist unit at her home local, Pacific Media Workers Guild, and to create a popular series of journalism trainings and outreach programs. These days, Steffens trains fellow union members in social media, and works on organizing, mobilizing and online outreach projects in California and around the nation. She is the acting secretary-treasurer of The Newspaper Guild-CWA.