Lisa Gentes-Hunt, Patch Staff

Hometown East Providence, R.I.

A native Rhode Islander, Lisa M. Gentes-Hunt spent over a decade living and working in Boston, MA. She recently gave up her New England roots and moved to White Plains, New York.

For the past 3 years, she has been a Local Editor for Patch.com.

For the past 12 years, she has worked in the media industry, including writing and reporting for the Associated Press, the Boston Herald, MetroWest Daily News, The Patriot Ledger, The Dorchester Reporter, and several magazines.

She started her journalism career interning for WBZ-TV's I-Team and writing for WBZ 1030 AM news radio. She graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a bachelor's degree in communications and a minor in English.

She began freelance writing for The Pilot, the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, just prior to graduation. Hired that summer as a reporter, she had an intense initiation into the world of journalism.

On September 11, she covered the terrorist attacks from Logan Airport, along with a stranded Canadian camera crew. She went to Ground Zero twice, serving alongside volunteers at the canteen closest to the site and at the landfill in New Jersey. Interviewing locals, photographing the route, and riding in a Lafayette Street fire engine--she came back with unimaginable stories and a face mask and camera bag covered in dirt. Also as a reporter for The Pilot, she covered the clergy sex abuse scandal as it broke in January 2002--attending court hearings, combing through endless pages of files, and interviewing sex abuse victims and lawyers. Both were challenging moments in her career.

Most recently, she worked as a freelance assignment desk editor at WCVB Channel 5 News in Boston and as an eighth grade, after-school teacher in Boston Public Schools through her service with AmeriCorps and Citizen Schools.

She taught eighth grade in Roxbury and South Boston. She holds a master's degree in education from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.