Lauren Williamson, Patch Staff

Lauren serves as associate regional editor for several Patch.com sites in the suburbs as well as in five North Side Chicago neighborhoods. She came to Patch from InsideCounsel, a legal magazine where she worked as managing editor. She was awarded Folio Magazine's 2011 Bronze Eddie Award for business reporting for her story "Mind the Gap: Generation Y Enters the Workplace." She has a master's in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Post-graduation, she completed a three-month investigative reporting fellowship through the Carnegie-Knight News21 Initiative. She spent the summer reporting on the environmental, political and economic implications of a controversial industrial dairy farm under construction in northwest Illinois. Prior to graduate school, she worked as assistant director of undergraduate admission at Northwestern. She has a bachelor's degree in performance studies from Northwestern's School of Communication. Her freelance reporting and writing has appeared in Time Out Chicago, A.V. Club Chicago, Men's Health, Skin Inc. (a spa industry magazine) and the Chicago Sun-Times.