Helen Chang is a journalist, editor, writer, ghostwriter, and videojournalist, specializing in business, motivational and lifestyle topics.
The business editor of San Diego News Network, SDNN.com, she covers topics including: green and clean tech, venture capital, real estate, personal finance and economic trends. She also writes selected lifestyle features, such as ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro and “American Idol” singer Adam Lambert. (The first Lambert story got so many hits, it crashed the SDNN server.)
Chang’s byline has also appeared in MSNBC.com, Fodors.com, BusinessWeek, International Herald Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Business Journal, Elle and Plenty. She has also produced business programs for a Dow Jones TV channel, now CNBC.
Based in Singapore during the 1990s, she wrote stories on topics ranging from Nepal’s stock market, to Malaysia’s high-tech islands, to descendents of headhunters in Borneo’s jungles.
As a ghostwriter, Chang has collaboratively written books for several investor gurus, including Armando Montelongo, star of A&E’s “Flip This House,” and A.D. and J.D. Kessler, pioneers of “creative real estate.”
Chang also teaches writing classes for San Diego Writers Ink, and serves as a board member for the Asian American Journalists’ Association, San Diego chapter, spearheading multi-media journalism workshops.
She is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and master’s degree in journalism.
Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, she has called San Diego home since 2007. Upon her birth, Chang’s grandfather gave her a middle name that reflects the beauty of the Pacific — “Ocean Cloud” — which is “hai yun” in Chinese and “kai ao” in Hawaiian.
During off hours, Chang strums a pink ukulele and dances hula with the Gracious Ladies of Ahanui, Hui o’ Hawaii San Diego.