Jayne Haugen Olson, Editorial Director
Jayne joined
Mpls.St.Paul as lifestyle editor in 2000 and was instrumental in leading the vision of the magazine’s retail, lifestyle, and trend features. She launched what is now the Shop + Style section and led content teams for
Mpls.St.Paul Shops,
Mpls.St.Paul Home, and
Mpls.St.Paul Weddings. In 2009, Jayne was named editor-in-chief of
Sky magazine, the onboard lifestyle magazine for Delta Air Lines reaching 5.3 million readers monthly around the globe. In March, she was promoted to vice president of editorial and serves as editorial director for
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.
Heidi Rashke, Executive Editor
Heidi Raschke moved around a lot as a kid (she’s the daughter of pro wrestler Baron Von Raschke), but the Twin Cities is the only place she calls home. After attending the University of Minnesota and working on the copy desk at the
Minnesota Daily, she’s managed to put down roots and spend her entire career as an editor and writer in the Twin Cities. Most recently, she was senior editor of features and niche publications at the
Pioneer Press, where she ran the newsroom’s Life sections, launched a website for busy moms, created popular cooking e-mail newsletters, edited a homes magazine, and started an arts and entertainment podcast. Before that, she covered local and national arts and culture for
Request Magazine, Microsoft’s online city guide, the
Twin Cities Reader, and
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. She lives in St. Paul with her musician husband and their two daughters.
Tad Simons, Senior Editor, Arts + Entertainment
Arts and entertainment editor Tad Simons is an award-winning journalist whose writing on the local arts scene has appeared in the
Twin Cities Reader, City Pages, St. Paul
Pioneer Press, American Theatre magazine, BackStage, Variety and the
Washington Post. Over his 25 year career, Tad has covered theater, books, music, visual arts, dance, film, and performance art (including politics). Tad’s articles and essays on these and other subjects have won more than 30 local and national awards for editorial excellence.
Allison Kaplan, Senior Editor, Shopping + Style
Ali Shops. All the time. An authority on retail and fashion, Ali’s writing has appeared in numerous publications including
Lucky, ShopEtc.,
Delta Sky Magazine, Twin Cities Business, and the
St. Paul Pioneer Press, where she was the shopping and style columnist for a decade prior to joining
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. Ali hosts
Shop Girls on myTalk107.1 every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is a frequent guest on other radio and television programs. Her Ali Shops blog at mspmag.com is a popular resource for shopping scoops and tips. A Minneapolis native and graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism, Ali owes her very existence to shopping—her parents met while working at Dayton's. She grew up immersed in the retail world, commentating her first fashion show with her mom at age 6.
Stephanie March, Senior Editor, Food + Dining
Stephanie keeps herself deliciously up-to-date on all things food- and dining-related while editing and writing
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s Eat + Drink section. She can also be heard Saturdays on her myTalk107.1 radio show,
Weekly Dish, where she talks about the Twin Cities food scene.
Jennifer Blaise Kramer, Senior Editor, Home
Jennifer was raised among sawdust with a family immersed in construction and development and she’s been writing about home and design ever since. A native Californian, Jennifer received a master's degree in journalism from Boston University, fell in love with a New Englander, and then moved to Minneapolis—twice. In addition to working as a senior editor for
Mpls.St.Paul, she’s written for national and regional publications including
Boston,
Sky, and
Coastal Living. She lives in Linden Hills with her husband, two kids, and black lab. You can usually find them all covered in paint, knee deep in some home project or escaping the mess at her happy place: Hunt + Gather.
Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, Senior Editor
Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl was born in New York City, little aware of her destiny—to eat out a lot in Minnesota. She has been writing about restaurants and wine since 1997, first as the restaurant critic for
City Pages, then for
Minnesota Monthly and
Real Food, and now for
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. Her food writing has appeared in
Gourmet,
Saveur,
Bon Appetit, and many other publications, (her work has appeared in six editions of the Best Food Writing in America anthology, if anyone's counting,) and her last book was
Drink This: Wine Made Simple. She has been nominated ten times for James Beard Awards, the Oscars of the food world, and has won five times. She lives in south Minneapolis with her husband and two young children, a life she says is very close to perfect, because it is rich in both Sauternes and string cheese.
Melinda Nelson, Senior Editor
Melinda is the editor of
Mpls. St.Paul Home and a regular contributor to
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. Prior to joining MSP, Melinda was the editor of
Sun Country Airlines magazine and a longtime writer/marketing consultant in the design, technology, healthcare, and financial services industries.
Emily Sefton Howald, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine Associate Managing Editor and Mpls.St.Paul Weddings Editor
Emily Howald Sefton moved to the Twin Cities after a five-year stint in Chicago, where she perfected the art of creating order amid chaos (also known as magazine deadlines). As a writer and a managing editor for
Chicago Social, Emily cultivated the appropriate experience to wordsmith her way to
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. Prior to earning a paycheck, she earned her M.S. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and her B.B.A. from the University of Notre Dame. When she’s not busy exploring the nearest shopping venues or the latest workout trend, Emily indulges her appreciation for footwear, fashion, and football. You might catch her raving about the Green Bay Packers (Note: She is not, nor will she ever be, a Vikings fan) or teetering in uncomfortably high heels.