A bit about Jill, in her own words:

“I tweeted from protests on the U.C. Berkeley campus when I was in college. I spent a Thanksgiving night at a Walmart parking lot in Bakersfield for the Black Friday rush. I tracked down family members walking the rocky banks of the Kern River looking for a corrections officer that had disappeared in the rapids, and I checked on Legoland during the wildfires that ripped through San Diego County in 2014. I wrote about the boycott of a Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade. When an Asiana Airlines flight crashed at SFO, I spent the day camped out at San Francisco General Hospital — not yet named for Mark Zuckerberg.

“But none of that explains why I love the Golden State.

“Nominally, I’m a Giants fan, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been as content as I used to be on the bleachers at Sam Lynn Ballpark, sweat pouring down my back as I watched the (now-defunct) Bakersfield Blaze play against a backdrop of the setting sun.

“Food-wise, I’ve spent much of my adult life in failed pursuit of a salad that approaches the majesty and baffling affordability of the ones I could get at Cafe Intermezzo in Berkeley.

“Jonathan Gold was right about Bakersfield’s dining scene. But my favorite place in the world is King’s Hawaiian Bakery in Torrance, where my grandparents used to take us for breakfast whenever we’d visit. Ask to sit by the tropical fish tank.”

Jill’s turf on California Today will be broad. Expect to see her weighing in on issues large and small, in communities large and small across a state that fascinates our readers. With Jill at its helm, California Today will bring even more attention to important issues like climate change, immigration and technology, and to big stories, from natural disasters to politics. She will no doubt share a meal or two with Tejal Rao, The Times’s new California restaurant critic.