Skip to main content

Carren Jao

A woman sitting down with a floral skirt

Born and raised in the Philippines, Carren is a storyteller at heart, working to uplift diverse voices. She is a skilled digital storyteller with more than a decade of experience working on engaging content that lives on multiple platforms. Her arts and culture stories have won recognition from the LA Press Club and the Asian American Journalists Association.

As arts and culture editor for KCET, a public television station and online destination in Southern California, she leads editorial strategy and content development for arts, culture, food, travel and history content. Working with collaborators across 11 Southern California counties, she tells award-winning stories that matter.

Previously, Carren has worked as a full-time freelance journalist. Her work has been published around the world, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Wired UK, Surface, Dwell and many others.

A woman sitting down with a floral skirt
Support Provided By
 One of many windows with views into the Orange County Museum of Art designed by Morphosis Architects.
Founded in 1962 as Balboa Pavilion Gallery, the Orange County Museum of Art now finds itself starting a new chapter with a new building and five inaugural exhibitions on deck. Here's the lowdown on the celebratory events.
A young man with a lot of cameras hung around his neck.
Bruce Talamon has trained his lenses on some of the music industry’s brightest stars, but it all began at Wattstax.
A faded colored photo of a stage propped up in the air with steel and metal rods. Performers in white funk/'70s clothing and gold jewelry stand on stage and perform. A man in white bell bottoms, a fringe jacket and silver chains holds up a silver trumpet. A man with a white afro and a white vest stands with a saxophone. A man stands in the middle wearing a white jacket with long fringe hanging off the sleeves and an intricate gold chain around his neck. He is singing into a microphone. Two men stand near him, also in white, flashy outfits playing the guitar and bass respectively.
Fifty years ago, music label Stax Records organized Wattstax, a benefit concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that commemorated the seventh anniversary of the 1965 Los Angeles Uprising.
An overhead shot of Phung Huynh's circular sculptural piece "Sobrevivir." A woman stands in the middle of the piece and looks down at the etchings on the sculpture. Another woman stands to the side and looks at the artwork from a seating area.
A new art installation by artist Phung Huynh at Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center recalls the tragedy over the forced sterilizations of more than 200 women from the 1960s to '70s.
An exterior shot of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum
After just five years, the Cheech officially opens to the public. Here's what to expect.
 Narsiso Martinez's "Selfie with the Homies" shows three four farmworkers in a photograph together. It is created with ink, gouache and charcoal on a produce box.
Narsiso Martinez's mixed media installations juxtapose portraits of farmworkers and agricultural landscapes against cardboard produce boxes. Drawing from his own experience as a farmworker, his work amplifies the people who fill produce sections and restaurant kitchens around the country.
A lenticular artwork image with details including lowrider cars, wheels, flowers, palm trees and more.
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture will soon be open to the public June 18. Ahead of its opening, it just installed a massive two-story lenticular artwork by artist-brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre, filled with Easter eggs on Latinx culture, as well as an urgent message on nature and technology. See photos of the artwork.
Microfossils excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits are examined under a small spotlight. A detail brush sifts through the pile of microfossils, which look like coarse pebbles.
At natural history museums, it's the big dinosaur bones or sabertoothed cats that get all the attention, but it's microfossils should have greater scrutiny. Here are ten tiny fossils that deserve a second look.
A flattened pink doughnut box against a black background. On the doughnut box is a portrait of a woman in a dark brown ink layered over a faint rendering of still images of a child a doughnut shop in a lavender ink.
Cambodian American artist Phung Huynh pays homage to the second-generation "donut kid" experience in her latest solo exhibition, "Donut (W)hole."
Tanya Aguiñiga & dublab, "Celebration Spectrum" (Grand Park)
After a two-year hiatus, Frieze Los Angeles is back. Tickets are already sold out, but even if the admission prices are beyond your price range, there is a free option: the BIPOC Exchange curated by Tanya Aguiñiga. Here's what to expect.
Pan dulces laid out in a pan
Pan dulce occupies a special place in many an Angeleno's heart. ¿Cómo han sido las conchas, orejas y sus muchos hermanos horneados parte de sus vidas?
La Monarca Bakery & Cafe on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood is clothed in darkness.
Panaderías are long-running fixtures in many Los Angeles neighborhoods, offering freshly-baked comfort every day. While there are many that can be found throughout the city, here are a few locations that have caught our eye.
Active loading indicator