Joel Engardio

Who is Joel Engardio?

Joel P. Engardio is a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. He is an award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker and civil liberties advocate. Engardio was the only candidate endorsed by the San Francisco Chronicle in his 2012 race for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He finished close to third in a nine-candidate field. Engardio was the first openly gay supervisor candidate to run in San Francisco’s conservative District 7, where half the voters in some precincts supported a 2008 ban on gay marriage. Engardio's PBS documentary Knocking won the jury award for Best Documentary at the USA Film Festival. At the American Civil Liberties Union, Engardio combined reporting and multimedia storytelling skills to pioneer more effective ways to mount lawsuits and communicate public education efforts. He was the ACLU’s first “story finder” and implemented a process that applied journalism methods to plaintiff-finding. Engardio found plaintiffs who had narratives that played well in both the court of law and public opinion. He also started a video department that produced shorts for online audiences, which prompted mainstream media to cover the same stories.