Jennifer van der Kleut (formerly Jennifer McBride) has been writing for Bay Area publications since 2004, when she graduated from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State University. She was a full-time writer for Silicon Valley Community Newsgroup from 2004 to 2006, writing for newspapers such as the Los Gatos Weekly and Saratoga News, among others. She wrote the weekly history column "Los Gatos: Now and Then" for the Los Gatos Daily News throughout 2007, and was a contributing editor at South Bay Accent Magazine from 2008 to 2009. She has also lent her voice to many other publications such as the Los Gatos Weekender and the online Brizzly Guide.
Jennifer was one of the very first freelance writers to contribute to many of the Bay Area's Patch sites when they first launched in the fall of 2010. After contributing for more than a year and a half, Jennifer was hired on as an official Patch employee in May of 2012. She is very excited to be a full-fledged member of the Patch family. In California, Jennifer served as the interim editor for Milpitas Patch in the South Bay, an associate editor for San Mateo and Foster City on the Peninsula, and then the local editor for RedwoodCity-Woodside Patch, before transferring to the east coast in February of 2013. Jennifer is now the local editor for Herndon Patch and FairfaxCity Patch. She loves being a part of these two communities and getting to know northern Virginia. Jennifer lives in Burke with her husband, Alex and her two sons, Connor, born in Sept. 2007, and Oliver, or "Ollie," born in May 2010.