Bettina Boxall thinks that southern California is leaps and bounds ahead of northern California when it comes to regional self-sufficiency. As a Reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Boxall covers water issues and the environment. She began her journalism career as a photographer at a small Texas daily and reported for newspapers in Vermont and New Jersey before joining the LA Times in 1987. In 2009 she shared the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting with colleague Julie Cart for a five-part series that explored the causes and effects of escalating wildfire in the West.

Boxall earned her B.A. in journalism from University of Maine, Orono in 1974.