The two newest members of The Salt Lake Tribune’s board of directors come from the fields of politics, academia and business.

The members, Nina Barnes and Drew Maggelet, joined the board in early March. The board, which oversees the mission of the nonprofit Tribune, now has 12 members, led by board chair Tom Love.

“We are fortunate to welcome Nina and Drew to our board at such a pivotal time for local journalism,” said Lauren Gustus, The Tribune’s Executive Editor and CEO. “They are both incredibly enthusiastic about supporting our mission to ensure every Utahn has access to trusted news and information.”

A voice from southern Utah

Nina (pronounced “NYE-nuh”) Barnes lives in St. George, and recently completed 12 years on the Utah Board of Higher Education, which oversees the state’s public colleges and universities. She noted that during her tenure with the board, including a stint as vice-chair, she was involved in 12 presidential searches to find leaders for the state’s higher education institutions.

Previously, Barnes has served on the city council for Cedar City and the Southern Utah University board of trustees, and has run for a spot in the Utah Legislature. She currently teaches as an adjunct professor in political science at SUU.

A native of northern California, Barnes graduated from Brigham Young University and has lived in southern Utah for more than 30 years.

“Our No. 1 criteria when [my husband and I] picked our town, where we wanted to build our life, was a university town,” Barnes said. They first landed in Cedar City, and later moved to St. George.

Growing up in California with parents who were educators, Barnes said “a newspaper was always part of our life. … We were allowed one hour of TV a day, but my dad incentivized us if the second [hour] was news or news-worthy. So I grew up in a home where the biggest show every week was ‘60 Minutes.’”

Barnes said she’s maintained a regular print newspaper subscription, and when the St. George Spectrum cut back on its print editions, “we’ve had to reach much broader than our local [paper]” by taking The Salt Lake Tribune’s Sunday and midweek print editions.

In the last four years, Barnes said she befriended Gustus and “was lobbying, like I always do, for rural Utah and the need for better information. That is a huge barrier in rural Utah, to have access to good information.” At Gustus’ invitation, Barnes served on a community committee to look at southern Utah’s news needs — a process that led to the launch of the Southern Utah Tribune last year.

The Southern Utah Tribune has been well received in the area, Barnes said — and within her household.

“I have a millennial daughter who actually is thrilled to death, because she’s like, ‘Mom, I could actually sit and hold a paper. I feel like I’m you.’ That tactile [feeling] of actually holding something and reading it, and having it at the breakfast table, is really fun for her.”

Barnes noted that she’s a Republican, a Latter-day Saint, a rural resident and a woman — and she’s thrilled to bring all of those perspectives to The Tribune’s board. “It shows the wisdom of the Trib … [to] collect all different perspectives and understandings regionally and beyond to contribute to the conversation.”

A parent’s perspective

Drew Maggelet works in strategy and real estate for FJ Management, a Utah-based holding company working in several fields — notably running the Maverik convenience store chain, and operating one of the oil refineries north of Salt Lake City.

A lifelong Salt Laker (except for his college days at the University of Miami), Maggelet said he has a long history with The Tribune.

“My parents subscribed when I was very young,” Maggelet said. “I realized very quickly that they had a comics section there, so I would run out and grab the comics. Then I realized, ‘Wait a minute. There appears to be this weird comic in the back of the A section.’”

That “comic” was Pat Bagley’s daily editorial cartoon. It prompted Maggelet to read the rest of the paper, because, ‘I’m like, ‘Oh, I should figure out what’s going on here, to figure out the comic’s joke.’ … It was a big conduit to help me read about the world.”

Maggelet said his interests and his charitable work, particularly involving affordable housing and the plight of the Great Salt Lake, mesh well with some of The Tribune’s reporting areas. He also said he hopes he can bring his experience as a young parent — he’s the father of twin boys — to the board.

“As a person who doesn’t come from a journalism background, and who hasn’t been on too many boards,” Maggelet said, “I think it’ll be exciting to just dive in and take it all in from the fire hose.”

Correction • An earlier version of this article mistakenly said that FJ Management runs the Flying J chain. The company did, but no longer does.