biography
Hi! I’m Marisa Taylor Karas, a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist and content writer who specializes in gender and health. I’m passionate about sharing women's stories and illuminating the aspects of public health that deeply affect women's lives. I also write about technology, particularly its effects on people and the world around us. Before 2020, I wrote under the byline Marisa Taylor.
Currently, I’m a regular freelance contributor to GoodRx Health. Previously, I was interim managing editor at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest backer of the arts, humanities and higher education, where I wrote, edited and commissioned content for the foundation’s website. I’ve also worked as an editor for the sustainable business section of The Guardian in New York, and before that, I spent three years as a staff reporter for Al Jazeera America, covering gender, health and LGBT rights.
I kicked off my journalism career on the tech beat, writing a gadget review column for The Wall Street Journal and covering live events as a video correspondent for WSJ.com. I filed daily dispatches for WSJ's "Digits" blog on the quirkiest elements of the tech world, from what it's like to do psychoanalytic free association with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to what turns up in a statistical analysis of graffiti.
I was also a researcher for "What They Know," the The Wall Street Journal's Gerald Loeb Award-winning investigative series about online privacy, and a fact-checker for Mother Jones magazine in San Francisco.
In a past life, I was a jazz pianist and studied Afro-Cuban music in Havana, Cuba.
I earned an M.S. in magazine writing at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where my master's thesis about domestic violence in LGBT relationships was awarded with honors, and a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University.
I adore Brooklyn, where I live with my husband and children, but I often dream of the golden-brown hills of Northern California, where I grew up. When I’m not reading, writing or nerding out over my favorite podcasts, you'll find me baking sinful desserts, running on the South Brooklyn waterfront and traveling as much as possible.