Julie Makinen
Julie Makinen is the CEO and publisher of Embarcadero Media Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind the Palo Alto Weekly, The Almanac, the Mountain View Voice, the Redwood City Pulse, the Pleasanton Weekly, the Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com. She joined the organization in October 2026.
Julie began her journalism career as an intern at the Palo Alto Weekly before going on to work at the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the International New York Times. She later served as top editor of The Desert Sun in Palm Springs and as editor-in-chief of The San Francisco Standard.
Julie graduated from Stanford University with a degree in human biology and has an M.A. in East Asian studies from UCLA. She was a 2017 JSK journalism fellow at Stanford and later worked as a senior case writer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
