Rachel Davis Cone is the communications director for the State of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection. She spends her days learning about her new hometown, Florida politics and America's Everglades. Rachel previously served as a senior staff member in the Mayor's Office of the City of Jacksonville, Fla., where she was a project manager and strategic communications counselor. She also crafted speeches, opinion pieces and other communications.

For seven years she worked as a general assignment and military reporter at The Florida Times-Union. She covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the decks of aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas and won a statewide award for coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  She also reported on national defense policy and its impact on local military installations in a post-911 environment, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in coastal Mississippi.

Rachel graduated in 2001 from Auburn University with a degree in journalism. In her college career, Rachel served as the executive editor of The Auburn Plainsman and as a member of the Auburn University Marching Band.

Originally from Monroeville, Ala., - literary capital of the state - she recently moved to Tallahassee, Fla., with her husband, a freelance photographer and web designer. They share common interests in entrepreneurship and their baby girl who arrived in July 2010.

For more information about her work, feel free to browse the site or contact her here.