Jill Miller Zimon is an award-winning freelance writer, blogger and political commentator. Her election coverage appeared on Newsweek's The Ruckus and she has provided on-air political analysis for Cleveland public radio (WCPN) and television (WVIZ), CNN, BBC among other broadcast outlets. You can listen to or watch selections of her appearances here. Zimon started her blog, Writes Like She Talks in 2005. In Fall 2007, she joined the Plain Dealer/cleveland.com blog experiment, Wide Open. It was the first paid collaboration between a traditional newspaper and independent political bloggers in the country. This August, she was named to WE Magazine’s list of 101 Women Bloggers to Watch This Fall.  Zimon's other blogging work includes being a Contributing Editor for BlogHer.com's Election 2008 coverage and co-editing the Carnival of Ohio Blogs since 2007 on a voluntary basis. She was a board member of the Society of Professional Journalists Cleveland Pro Chapter in 2007 and presented at SPJ's national conference in 2005.  

Zimon is a frequent conference presenter and article interviewee on the topics of politics, blogging, new media, technology, leadership and the role of women in each of those areas. Examples inlcude: 

Keynote panelist: 2007 American Association of Political Consultants Academic Outreach Conference 

Covered: Cleveland Democratic Primary Debate in February 2008; Women, Action and the Media (WAM!2008) conference at MIT; the First Ladies Symposium on media coverage of presidential candidates' spouses

Presenter: Case Western Reserve University's Collaboration Technologies workshop; Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's 2008 Annual Ohio Business Women's Conference and Expo, BlogHer08; White House Project Ohio Go Run! training in Ohio (which she also attended as a trainee and served on its steering committee) 

Zimon grew up in Connecticut. She earned a joint bachelors degree in government and sociology from Georgetown University and a joint degree in law and social work from Case Western Reserve University. From 1984-1985, she lived in Israel as part of a volunteer program through which she taught English and lived on a kibbutz. She conducted or managed research in the Yale Development Office for three years, before moving to Ohio. After graduate school, and for eight years prior to launching her journalism career, Zimon used her law and social work licenses at a large children and family mental health agency. She has lived in the Cleveland suburbs for more than 20 years.