Kari Hamanaka has joined the Business Journal and will cover apparel companies, media and marketing and professional service firms, among other duties.
Hamanaka most recently was a reporter at legal industry publication Los Angeles Daily Journal, where she wrote about law firms.
Before that, Hamanaka was a reporter at California Real Estate Journal, a weekly commercial real estate newspaper that closed in April. The paper was a sister publication of the Daily Journal.
At the California Real Estate Journal, Hamanaka covered Inland Empire development, trade at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports and environmental regulations.
Her reporting on the decline in trade at the ports during the recession, and its impact on the Inland Empire and South Bay industrial real estate markets, earned her a first-place award from the National Association of Real Estate Editors.
Hamanaka is a graduate of California State University, Fullerton, where she earned a bachelor’s in communications with a minor in political science in 2006.
While in college, she started a magazine called Paradigm, which focused on Southern California punk bands. For nearly two years, she ran the magazine from her parents’ home in Brea as the sole writer, photographer and page designer until she joined a weekly community newspaper in Beverly Hills.
Hamanaka still helps copy edit Razorcake, a Highland Park-based music and culture magazine.
She is a native of Orange County, having grown up in Brea. She now lives in Fullerton. In her spare time, Hamanaka likes to shop at record stores and catch an occasional boxing match.
