Phil Bloom is a native Hoosier and lifelong resident of Indiana. He enjoyed two careers before retiring from both -- thirty-three years as a newspaper reporter and editor (the last eighteen as an award-winning outdoors editor at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette) and ten years as communications director for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Bloom is an active member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and served as the group’s president in 2008 and 2018. He is an Eagle Scout and an Indiana Certified Master Naturalist. He lives in Fort Wayne and is a volunteer board member of the Indiana Parks Alliance