Fair. Trusted. Reporting in Rappahannock County and across Virginia’s Piedmont.

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Staff

Emily Oaks

Emily Oaks, executive director of Foothills Forum, has several decades of experience working for small and midsize newspapers, most recently as editor of the Culpeper Star-Exponent. A Utah native, Emily studied journalism and English at Brigham Young University, and began her career as a reporter and editor for The Daily Herald in Provo. She subsequently served as a columnist and feature writer for a newspaper in suburban Chicago before moving to Virginia, where she was an editor and staff reporter for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg. She became editor of the Culpeper Star-Exponent in 2018 and took the lead at Foothills in Spring, 2023.

Emily is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and Virginia Press Association.

Reach her at [email protected]

Josh Wilson

Josh joined the Foothills Forum as the Development Coordinator in January 2025, bringing over 15 years of nonprofit leadership and fundraising experience to our team.  Josh relocated to Rappahannock County in 2023 from the Adirondack Park in upstate NY, where he served for 8 years as the Executive Director of the Barkeater Trails Alliance, a regional nonprofit focused on the stewardship and construction of community and backcountry trails. Prior to that, Josh served as Executive Director of the New York Bicycling Coalition, a statewide advocacy organization working to advance pro-bicycling legislation, policy and funding at the state and federal level. He spends most of his free time outside, mountain and gravel biking, foraging, working on trails, exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains, and trying to satisfy his lifelong skiing habit. Josh is a new member of the Old Rag Master Naturalists, and is excited to be getting involved in local kestrel monitoring and other conservation projects in the county.  He lives full-time in Little Washington with his wife and their two dogs.

Ireland Hayes

Ireland joined Foothills Forum as a full-time reporter in 2023 after graduating from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication with a degree in journalism and minor in music. As a student, she gained valuable experience in reporter and editor positions at The Red & Black, an award-winning student newspaper, and contributed to Grady Newsource and the Athens Banner-Herald. She spent three years as an editorial assistant at Georgia Magazine, UGA’s quarterly alumni publication, and interned with The Bitter Southerner.
Growing up in a small town in Southeast Georgia, Ireland developed a deep appreciation for rural communities and the unique stories they have to tell. She completed undergraduate research on news deserts, ghost papers and the ways rural communities in Georgia are being forced to adapt to a lack of local news. This research further sparked her interest in a career contributing to the preservation of local and rural news.