All clippings by our Fellows in Journalism and Health Impact (View by publisher)
All clippings by our Participants in Health Impact (View by publisher)
Class of 2024
- Rubina Ahmed
Rubina Ahmed is driven by a profound belief in the power of media to hold those in positions of authority accountable and amplify the voices of vulnerable populations. In India, Rubina pursued a career in journalism, focusing on developmental journalism. For eight years, she served as a senior correspondent and sub-editor for two national broadsheets — The Times of India and New Indian Express. Following her immigration to Toronto, Rubina continued her dedication to social causes by actively engaging with various organizations on the frontline. She worked with Homes First shelters, Nisa Homes and the Rexdale Women’s Centre and is currently with Houselink and Mainstay Community Housing. Social work and social services provided Rubina with a unique lens to observe the challenges faced by the most vulnerable members of society up close. Furthermore, Rubina holds a licence as a social worker and maintains good standing with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers.
Clips - Sarah Bartnicka
Sarah Bartnicka is a writer and consultant who lives in Toronto. She has spent almost a decade working across communications, media and public relations. In 2022, she joined The Peak and developed its flagship newsletter into a must-read summary of the day’s business and technology stories, reaching an audience of more than 130,000 subscribers. She co-hosts Free Lunch, an economics podcast, and spends time outside of her day job exploring the best of what cities around the world have to offer.
Clips - Caitlin Bawn
Caitlin Bawn has a long-term interest in cross-cultural storytelling around global health equity and human rights issues, particularly those impacting marginalized populations. She is working in the Global Health and Social Medicine department at King’s College London and recently completed her PhD at UCL in London researching the barriers around use of family planning and sexual health services in Botswana. Before her PhD, Caitlin was a fellow at the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting, exploring the re-emergence of TB and “Victorian” diseases among the U.K.’s homeless population, and a contributing writer for Words in the Bucket, an online magazine dedicated to promoting gender equality. She also has a master of science degree in international relations from Bristol University and a master’s degree in journalism (International Reporting) from Boston University.
Twitter/X: @caitlinbawn
Clips - Sammy Chown
Sammy Chown is a medical writer based in Montreal. Inspired by her interdisciplinary undergraduate education in kinesiology and religious studies, she obtained a master’s degree in public health and health systems from the University of Waterloo, specializing in epidemiology. Sammy began her professional career at a digital health company advising Fortune 500 companies on their employee health and well-being strategies. She has written articles and a textbook chapter covering topics such as digital health and trends in employee wellness. Sammy is driven to apply her quantitative lens as a health scientist to further advocate for the health of diverse populations. She has a keen interest in exploring mental health, disability and accessibility, and bioethics.
Clips - Natalie Commanda
Natalie is a pharmacy technician at a remote dispensing location in Pikwakanagan First Nation, 150km northwest of Ottawa. Natalie was instrumental in implementing the new model, reflecting her keenness for experimentation with the widest range of tools that serve Indigenous wellness in Canada. Natalie takes a holistic view which encompasses personal health, community health, nutrition and health of the environment. Natalie has completed in this year’s Masters Indigenous Games in recreational canoe. Natalie is a registered status member of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan.
Clips - Mureji Fatunde
Mureji Fatunde is a scientist and writer interested in companies, industries and consumers. She is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Before joining Rotman, she received a PhD in operations management and decision sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. In the past, she has worked on initiatives related to strengthening public health supply chains in West Africa. In her research, she studies how organizations make decisions to meet societal and consumer needs, particularly in informal settings and the public sector. Her writing explores science, business and economic topics through a human lens. Her writing has appeared in Bloomberg and WIRED. Website: www.mureji.com. Twitter/X: @MurejiFA
Clips - Stephanie Ferguson
Stephanie Ferguson is a clinician, educator and women’s health advocate from southwestern Ontario. She practises full-time as an obstetrician/gynecologist and has a special interest in the evolution of the field of obstetrics and how care is delivered to pregnant women. She is dedicated to providing evidence-based information about all aspects of women’s reproductive care, from pregnancy to menopause and beyond. Stephanie holds a position as assistant clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McMaster University in Hamilton, working as a mentor, teacher and researcher. During the Fellowship, she was a guest on season 4, episode 20, “Postpartum Care Models: Impact on Maternal Morbidity and Mortality” of the Pregnancy for Professionals podcast. Stephanie’s biggest fans are her two young daughters, who provide her with giggles and inspiration every single day.
Clips - Adnan Haider
Adnan is a product leader, engineer and reformed consultant. He is the senior vice-president of analytics at a financial technology firm in Toronto. Previously, Adnan was at IBM, spearheading the development of AI-based products for the energy and finance sectors. He has been globally itinerant — travelling from Canary Wharf to Bay Street, Fort McMurray to Jubail — to observe business people and their dysfunctions in their natural habitats. Adnan has a master’s degree from Duke University in Durham, N.C., where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He serves on the advisory board of the Rotman School of Management’s analytics program and on the board of directors of Start Proud, which empowers the professional development of 2SLGBTQA+ young professionals.
Clips - Ayeshah Haque
Ayeshah Haque is interested in taking her passion for community health to find innovative ways to make an impact. As a midwife, she was demystifying reproductive care and empowering people to make health decisions. The fellowship will extend this goal by helping her reach a wider audience. Roles in public health have made her curious about graphic medicine, patient-oriented research and data-driven health care as strategies to address health disparities. She has completed a Translational Research Program at the University of Toronto, a Midwifery Education Program at Toronto Metropolitan University and she has an honours bachelor of science degree in psychology and political science from the University of Toronto. In her downtime, Ayeshah is always up for chai and a good story.
Clips - Michael Leedom
Michael Leedom is based in Baltimore and has worked as an emergency physician in several states, including Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Oregon. He is associated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and teaches residents and students in the fine art of bedside medicine. In addition to practising medicine and teaching, he has an interest in health-care reform and the effort to adopt a single payer system in the United States. He has also travelled widely, interviewing medical professionals overseas and volunteering in developing countries. He writes about health-care issues and the consequences of misinformation.
Clips - Ab Nacef
Ab Nacef is an experienced technologist with 23 years of global experience in the tech industry, including working for Microsoft, Skype and AMD. He holds a degree in computer engineering and a master’s degree in business administration. He has lived on three continents and speaks four languages. He is passionate about technology and journalism, with a profound desire to simplify and explain technology to the general public, regardless of their level of knowledge of the different technologies they use or are exposed to in their lives. He has a keen interest in reporting on the intersection of technology with privacy, the environment, democracy, and the concrete impact technology has on individuals, corporations and governments.
Clips - Sangeetha Nadarajah
Sangeetha Nadarajah is a U.S. board-certified family physician practising in Vancouver. She completed her residency training at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Quincy, Ill., and has a background in rural, hospitalist and emergency medicine. She has a special interest in regenerative medicine, women’s health, integrative aesthetics and myofascial pain. She is pursuing a culinary medicine certification and will be one of the first physicians in Canada with this designation. Sangeetha is deeply committed to advocating for marginalized communities and has extensive experience in treating underserved populations. She is passionate about evidence-based yoga research and her upcoming book explores the therapeutic benefits of yoga. Beyond her medical expertise, she is an accomplished classical Indian dancer and a certified Vinyasa and Yin Yoga teacher. Her holistic approach to health care incorporates lifestyle medicine, empowering her patients to achieve overall well-being.
Clips - Chukwudumebi Onyiuke
Chukwudumebi Onyiuke is a Nigerian physician who has lived in Canada since 2018. Her career interests are infectious diseases, laboratory medicine and Indigenous health. Her research with the Four Arrows Regional Health Authority prioritizes advocacy for the health needs of the four Anisininew Nations of Manitoba. She is fascinated by primeval concepts of wellness, outcomes of coexistence between different cultures and language groups, Solitaire, value-added products as a solution to pollution and wastage, and travelling. She is coming to learn more efficient ways of promoting health and policy initiatives that benefit Indigenous people.
Clips - Filipa Pajevic
Filipa Pajevic is an economic geographer, trained in urban studies. She holds a PhD from McGill University in Montreal and recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. She is a seasoned and internationally trained researcher, writer and instructor, fascinated by the relationship between labour markets and cities, specifically the impact of the changing world of work on city planning and policy. Her academic work was pioneering in exploring the impact of remote working on real estate and planning in Canada during COVID-19. As an instructor, she also taught research methods and mentored graduate students on ethics and research security. She is passionate about sharing knowledge and informing the public through well-researched, factual, emotionally and intellectually stimulating journalism. She has published research in academic journals, op-eds in outlets including The Guardian and CityLab, and occasionally dabbles in poetry and fiction.
Clips - Ashley Perl
Ashley is a science communications expert with experience working in academia and non-profit organizations. She enjoys the challenge of taking complex information and turning it into written, photo or video content that connects with wider audiences. Ashley has a multidisciplinary background with a master of science degree in sustainability from Stockholm University and an honours bachelor of arts in psychology with minors in biology and writing from Western University in London, Ont. Ashley’s work explores questions related to climate change, its impact on people and the natural world, as well as the latest environmental policy, science and debates. She is from Toronto, has worked in Japan, the Philippines and Sweden, and is currently based in Stockholm.
Twitter/X: @ashleyaperl
Clips - Lance Roller
Lance Roller is a population/public health manager at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., who boasts years of research experience with co-written publications in academic journals. Proficient in data management and analytics, he skillfully handles databases for investigator and industry-led projects, using Python, SQL and Tableau. Lance is committed to delivering positive health outcomes through his analytical expertise and tech savvy. Beyond work, he finds joy in sports, music, travel and continuous learning. A dedicated professional with a heart for public health and a zest for life outside the office, Lance is poised to make a significant impact in the field.
Clips - Rhythm Sachdeva
Rhythm Sachdeva is an early-career journalist who, in a span of 2.5 years, has worked with prominent newsrooms in Canada, including the Toronto Star, Canadian Press, CTV News and Narcity Media. Her stories have encompassed a wide range of topics, from abortion accessibility in Canada to the rise of financial advice on TikTok. She is also an adept photographer who has actively documented major global news events. After shedding light on challenges faced by international students in Canada, she has now redirected her focus to delve into the country’s broader immigration landscape, shedding light on issues such as climate change-induced global migration and imbalances in the needs and requirements of foreign labour.
Clips - Lynora Saxinger
Lynora Saxinger is an incurably curious infectious diseases physician and professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, with a prior focus on antibiotic stewardship and resistance and more recent work in evidence synthesis, knowledge translation and science communication to the public through traditional and social media. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, she had a significant role in COVID evidence synthesis for health system leaders and also engaged in traditional media (more than 2,500 interviews) and social media (predominantly Twitter), trying to help counter dangerous misinformation. She is commonly found to be either figuring something out or sorting out how to figure something out.
Twitter/X: @AntibioticDoc
Clips - Preety Sharma
Preety Sharma is a public health and development professional from the Greater Toronto Area. She holds a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., and a master’s degree in business administration in health management from IIHMR University in Jaipur, India. She has more than 14 years of experience working in research, monitoring and evaluation with international NGOs and United Nations agencies in India and Canada. She is also involved in planning and teaching global health courses in leading academic institutions. Preety volunteers with Results Canada as a fellow. As part of her advocacy work in global health and education, she has published letters and op-ed articles in leading Canadian newspapers. Preety believes in the synergy of action ignited by human potential and their relentless spirit and determination to overcome barriers and change lives for better. Her journeys and work across grassroots India has enabled and inspired her to tell stories of local innovation, hope and impact. Preety is interested in the connections and intersection of public health across multiple disciplines such as environment and technology. Twitter/X: @write2pys
Clips - Madison Stringer
Madison Stringer lives a life of science, community and bobsled thrills. After completing a bachelor’s degree in biology, she complemented her scientific journey with a master’s degree in neuroscience, during which she worked on a protocol using electroencephalography to help children regulate their attention, offering hope for conditions such as ADHD. Beyond academia, she actively engages with the international organization HOPEworldwide, facilitating international volunteer initiatives. Her commitment to global betterment is matched by her time as a former French national bobsled team pilot. Through a blend of scientific expertise, philanthropy and athletic dedication, Madison aspires to bridge the gap between research and health care, disseminating crucial findings to empower health professionals and enhance public well-being.
Clips - Nahid Widaatalla
Nahid is a recent master of public health graduate who is working as a senior analyst at the University Health Network in Toronto, where she explores the use of virtual models of care to support the patient transition from hospital to home and community. She is passionate about the intersection of digital health and health equity, with a focus on Black communities and person-centred care. Nahid believes in humane and compassionate storytelling as a means of communicating the intricacies of the health-care system to the public and decision-makers.
Twitter/X: @nahidwid
Clips
Class of 2023
- Ehsanullah Amiri
Ehsanullah Amiri is a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He joined the WSJ in 2013 in Kabul, where he covered Afghanistan, from war and politics to lifestyle and elections. He covered the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 and was part of a team of WSJ reporters that was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting. Before joining the WSJ, he was a senior current affairs producer for Afghanistan’s largest news channel, TOLO NEWS TV. In that role, he led a group of anchors, setting agendas and inviting Afghan ministers, lawmakers and foreign diplomats onto the channel’s prime-time talk shows and debates. He is currently based in Toronto.
Clips - Sandor Demeter
Sandor Demeter is a physician with more than 30 years of experience in public health and diagnostic imaging. He is an associate professor at the University of Manitoba with research interests in health policy, technology assessment and economics and has graduate degrees in public health and health physics. Sandor is a member of the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health’s Expert Review Panel. He is interested in the provision of health-care services as shaped by the pillars of the Canada Health Act and the constant funding, and ideological, dance between federal and provincial decision makers. Twitter handle: @Codeblue99me. Blog site: https://www.codeblue.me/
Clips - Bhargavi Duvvuri
Bhargavi Duvvuri strongly believes that empathy is crucial for promoting health equity. She has a PhD in health sciences focusing on basic and translational research in autoimmune diseases. As a health research scientist, she is passionate about effectively communicating the complexities and relevance of scientific discoveries to the public and policymakers, identifying and reporting on emerging diseases and health-care trends, and reporting on health conditions from patients’ perspectives, accounting for patient sensibilities to be heard as a person first.
Clips - Heidi Hay
Heidi Hay is a health-care executive and writer working to understand today’s most critical issues in health through the lens of the people most impacted. As an adviser on health system modernization and a former vice-president with Ontario’s regional health authorities, Heidi seeks out the stories of change-makers and disrupters who are tackling disparities in their communities, and a new generation of health leaders bringing practical solutions to improve access and outcomes. She lives and works in Toronto.
Clips - Norma Hilton
Norma Hilton is a journalist interested in telling nuanced stories about underrepresented communities. After graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she’s covered domestic violence and murder suicides for the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. Previously, she covered the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas, specifically violence against women. In 2018 she received the Future News Worldwide award, which is given to the best young journalists in the world by the British Council. Based in Dhaka, Brisbane, Singapore and New York City, she has covered the #MeToo movement in Saudi Arabia, environmental degradation in conflict zones and press suppression in Australia.
Clips - Liana Hwang
Liana Hwang is a Canadian family physician who previously worked in Cambodia, Tanzania, Haiti and Timor-Leste. She currently divides her time among low-risk obstetrics, surgery and refugee health in Calgary and Canmore, Alta. She is the creator of Canadian Women Physicians Day, which is celebrated annually on March 11, and she is the president elect of Canadian Women in Medicine, a non-profit organization that supports and connects women physicians. In Grade 4, she started a school newspaper and she has always hoped that eventually her career path would allow her to immerse herself in the craft of writing and journalism. She has published articles in Alberta Doctors’ Digest, the bimonthly newsletter of the Alberta Medical Association; The Messenger, the newsletter of the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta; Optimized Prescribing with Seniors, a joint communication of the Alberta Medical Association and the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta; Canadian Family Physician and the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Clips - Shefali Malhotra
Shefali Malhotra is a health policy researcher with a keen interest in health digitization in the Global South. She is associated with the Centre for Health Equity, Law and Policy at the Indian Law Society, where she researches the politics and governance of digital health technologies in India. Previously, she worked with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi on issues surrounding health financing and health-care regulation in India. She holds a bachelor of law degree from the Symbiosis Law School in India and a master of science degree in political science from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Twitter handle: @sm_shefali.
Clips - Farah Marani
Farah is a Toronto-based family and community physician, with a background in Public Health. She is passionate about population health, knowledge translation, policy, equity, continuing education, and quality improvement. Clinically, Farah has particular interests in mental health, underserved populations, and equity.
Clips - Adam Pyle
Doctor, educator, father. Full-time academic emergency physician and leader. Interested in primary care, emergency medicine, critical care, sports medicine and knowledge translation. Experienced with medical practice on three continents. Currently teaching at both the University of Toronto and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. He enjoys sports and sports medicine of all kinds but has worked primarily with rugby teams in Canada and abroad. Toronto-born and raised. Looking to improve health, welfare and to provide information and clarity on a variety of medical topics. Twitter handle: @primary_fare.
Clips - Alfonso Silva-Santisteban
Alfonso Silva-Santisteban is a physician and epidemiologist who directs the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Sexuality, AIDS and Society at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru. His research focuses on HIV prevention, human rights of transgender people and, recently, on migration health. He has worked in several countries of Latin America consulting with United Nations agencies such as the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). He is also a photographer and collaborates with media in Peru and Argentina.
Clips
Class of 2022
FGJ Class of 2022 | CHI Class of 2022
- Fahim Abed
Fahim Abed was until recently a reporter for the New York Times based in Kabul, Afghanistan. Before joining the Times in 2016, he worked as a producer and reporter with Anadolu Agency, a Turkish state news agency; BBC World Service and various local outlets in Afghanistan. He is a graduate of Kabul University and a 2019 alumnus of The East West Center fellowship program. He received video journalism training in 2018 at the Times’ headquarters in New York City. Abed has 12 years’ experience in war reporting across Afghanistan. When he is not reporting, he loves to read books. fahimabed@gmail.com
Clips - Marianne Apostolides
Marianne Apostolides is the author of seven books, most recently the novel I Can’t Get You Out of My Mind. She’s a two-time recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship and winner of the 2017 K.M. Hunter Award for Literature. Her current research focuses on the interconnected fields of synthetic biology, 6G technology, AI and neuroscience.
Clips - Katharine Lake Berz
Katharine Lake Berz is an independent consultant and writer who lives in North Saanich, B.C., and Toronto. Katharine was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company for 10 years and has since advised a number of not-for-profit organizations. She recently helped establish a centre for launching new social enterprises and supported research and communications for a public policy institute. Katharine has served on the boards of directors of five community organizations, including one that helped settle 20 Syrian refugee families. Katharine holds a bachelor of commerce degree from Queen’s University in Kingston and a master of philosophy degree in international relations from Cambridge University. Follow Katharine on Twitter at: @lakeberz
Clips - Ari Fertig
Ari Fertig is executive director of the New England Jewish Labor Committee, connecting the Jewish community with the labour movement. Prior to his time at the NEJLC, Ari worked at the news analysis site The Conversation U.S. as manager of university editorial relations, handling relationships with more than 50 university member media teams. At The Conversation, he also helped distribute articles to outlets across the U.S., including the Washington Post, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Scientific American and many others. Before The Conversation, Ari worked in Massachusetts politics, with stints on electoral campaigns. He worked as a health reform campaign organizer, and later as information and marketing co-ordinator, with Health Care For All.
Clips - Anthony Fong
Anthony Fong is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of British Columbia and a general practitioner with experience in rural regions of Canada. He practised family medicine in the Canadian Arctic from 2011 to 2015. In 2020, he acted as a medical lead on a disaster relief mission during hurricanes Eta and Iota in Honduras — the third time he has been to Honduras as a medical volunteer. In his spare time, Anthony organizes dance events, is a multi-instrumentalist and loves improv comedy. He is currently based in Metro Vancouver.
Clips - Ghousuddin Frotan
Ghousuddin Frotan is a journalist who worked for Radio Liberty (Azadi Radio), AFP, BBC Radio Pashto service and the Wall Street Journal. Frotan founded Hindara Educational and Social Development Organization, which has implemented many projects concerning education, human rights, democracy, good governance and youth development in different provinces of Afghanistan. As part of a joint initiative of Hindara and the Canadian International Development Agency, in 2008 15 youth from Kandahar high schools completed a photojournalism program called Kandahar Through Afghan Eyes. In 2010, Frotan established the WESA Academy, the first English Medium School in Kandahar City; it currently has 1,218 students, 583 of them girls. Frotan led the team that developed the Afghanistan Edition of the standard Oxford curriculum for schools across Afghanistan. He also founded the children’s magazine Ako Bako, whose name is taken from a famous folkloric song that has been sung by children throughout Afghanistan’s history across all regions and languages.
Clips - Spencer Gillis
Spencer Gillis is a writer and consultant who explores how culture and sport intersect. He majored in management, with a specialization in sports management, at New York University. Spencer is the executive producer of Shut Up and Play, a podcast about how athletes shape and reflect social change and what the future holds for the world of sports as activism becomes impossible to suppress. He has worked for the New Jersey Devils, America’s Cup, Genève-Servette HC and 3G Sports Ltd., among other organizations. When he isn’t writing, Spencer likes to hunt for antique Canadiana, old industrial wares and vintage band T-shirts.
Clips - Monica Kidd
Monica Kidd has written seven books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. From 1998 to 2004 she worked as a reporter/editor for CBC Radio in St. John’s, Nfld.; there, she guest-hosted many local programs, including Radio Noon, Weekend Arts Magazine and The Fisheries Broadcast. She also worked as national science reporter and in her final year was assigned to Quirks & Quarks. She works as a family physician with research interests in evolutionary medicine and maternal and child health. She occasionally works in Antarctica as an expedition guide, lecturing on the natural and cultural history of the extreme South. She has three children.
Clips - Jeffrey Mo
Jeffrey Mo is an economist specialising in public policy issues. Originally from Alberta, he has spent the past decade in Europe, including more than six years at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. There, he produced the first international comparison of the fiscal impact of immigrants and led several reports for the Programme for International Student Assessment, comparing the achievement and wellbeing of 15-year-old students around the globe. He also worked on financial markets and marine plastics pollution. Jeff holds degrees in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Calgary, chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and econometrics and mathematical economics from the London School of Economics and speaks, to varying degrees of fluency, French, German, Swedish, Cantonese and Mandarin. He plans to write data-driven stories that clearly explain how economics, policy and science interact with local contexts to affect everyday lives, thereby combating disinformation and fostering social cohesion in today’s increasingly divided world.
Clips - Jill Moffatt
Jill Moffatt is an Olympian from the small town of Bethany, Ont., who is based on Vancouver Island. She has spent the last five years rowing for Team Canada at multiple world championships and, most recently, the Tokyo Olympics. While pursuing her athletic career, Jill completed a master’s degree in health information science at Western University in London, Ont. Her thesis looked at how women’s non-profit organizations use qualitative measures, such as storytelling, to impact health and social policy change. Jill is passionate about women’s health, the use and construction of evidence in health and social policy decisions, medicalization and the intersection of politics and health.
Clips - Jalal Nazari
Jalal Nazari, born in a remote area of Ghazni province, Afghanistan, has a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from Balkh University. He is a translator/interpreter and also works for the Kabul bureau of the Wall Street Journal as a reporter. He has been writing Persian poetry for seven years and has won prizes at literary festivals in Tehran and Kabul. He participated in the 2020 Sydney Festival as a poet and visual artist/calligrapher.
Clips - Daneese Rao
Daneese Rao is based in Toronto and holds master of arts and bachelor of arts degrees in history from McGill University in Montreal. Her area of interest is late 19th century and early 20th century North American social and political history, with a focus on the intersections of citizenship, race, gender and class. She is also interested in historical memory and history from below, which seeks to centre the experiences of those typically marginalized from the historical record. She is passionate about making history engaging and accessible for broad audiences and hopes to highlight the linkages between the past and contemporary issues through journalism. Follow Daneese on Twitter at: @daneese_
Clips - Zamir Saar
Zamir Saar is a Pashto linguist and literary analyst who taught in the Pashto department of language and literature at Balkh University in Afghanistan since 2012 and co-founded Balkh Literary Movement. He is also a long-time student and practitioner of journalism. He helped a Belgian journalist film a documentary called Blood Antiques, about the smuggling of antiquities from Afghanistan to European markets, and also worked in a local radio station. Saar has worked as a videographer for Pajhwok Afghan News and as a freelancer for the Wall Street Journal, Expressen, TV4 and other media organizations. He began working full time for the Wall Street Journal in Afghanistan this year.
Clips - Neela Thambirajah
Neela Thambirajah is a lawyer based in Toronto, Canada. She has spent her career at Big 4 accounting firms, gaining experience in tax and regulatory reporting, before spending the last few years focusing on the tax aspects of cross-border mergers and acquisitions. In her work, Neela advises private equity and strategic clients on investments across several industries, including oil and gas, infrastructure, and hospitality. Neela holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from Durham University, and a Master of Laws degree in taxation from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Clips - Anrike Visser
Anrike Visser is a former financial crime investigator at the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets, the financial services regulatory authority for the Netherlands. She specialized in behavioural change at financial institutions and investigating misconduct at banks, insurers and investment companies. Anrike now conducts research in Asia into tax avoidance, conflicts of interest in government tenders, fraud and corruption. In 2018, she founded Global Ground Media, a platform for investigative journalism of underreported issues in Asia. She also works as a media development consultant and trainer on digital security, media viability and investigative journalism. She has a master’s degree in social and cultural anthropology and a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
Clips - Mary-Kay Whittaker
Mary-Kay Whittaker is a health-care policy consultant and advocate. With more than 30 years’ experience, Mary-Kay has worked on health professional regulatory policy reforms and programmatic innovation in health professional education. A strategic and policy adviser to medical schools, the Council of Ontario Universities, Health Canada and others, her body of work includes negotiations leading to doubling the number of physicians trained annually in Ontario, quality improvement curriculum design, a comprehensive national review of physician resource planning, and development of new Indigenous medical residency programs. Mary-Kay loves to dive into a cold lake in May and hails from Parry Sound and Toronto.
Clips
Class of 2021
FGJ Class of 2021 | CHI Class of 2021
- Kaleigh Alkenbrack
Kaleigh Alkenbrack is a family physician based in the Niagara Peninsula, and who completed a Post-Graduate Clinical Fellowship in Mental Health and Psychotherapy from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and a Master of Arts in Gender Studies from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In clinical practice, Kaleigh provides publicly funded neuro-rehabilitative psychotherapy to individuals and families with a focus on the mood and cognition changes that can follow brain injury, stroke, and dementia. In her reporting, she is open to stories about the privatization of mental health care, mental health literacy, knowledge translation of neuroscience, trends in disability insurance and social policy, and how structural inequities impact health and wellness. She welcomes ideas and experiences at kaleigh.alkenbrack@protonmail.com.
Clips - Robin Blades
Robin Blades is a writer and researcher interested in understanding how brain dynamics produce subjective experience and lead to mental illness. She majored in Comparative Literature and Cognitive Science with a specialization in computing at UCLA. After graduation, she worked at a neurology clinic that treats patients with neurodegenerative diseases and psychopathologies. She received a Fulbright Research Award in 2019 to study the effect of stress in patients with neurocysticercosis: a brain infection that frequently leads to epilepsy. She is currently collaborating on multiple studies at UCSF testing clinical interventions for women with depression.
Clips - Joanna Cheek
Joanna Cheek is a Canadian psychiatrist who works to change the healthcare system instead of complaining about it, creating innovative programs to transform the way we deliver mental healthcare services. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor and award-winning teacher at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine. As a researcher, physician, meditation teacher, therapist, and educator of diverse styles of psychotherapy, she is an integrator who seeks to find a common language within a siloed field. She explores mental health as rooted in complex social factors, hoping to decrease the stigma that is so often misplaced on the individuals who suffer rather than the ailing society around them.
Clips - Maeve Gamble
Maeve Gamble is a rheumatologist in southwestern Ontario. During her training, she did an elective with ABC News Medical Unit in New York City – where she developed an interest in medical journalism and gained a sense of responsibility to distribute accurate medical information to the medical community and public. She has been a guest on the Morning Show and has contributed to various medical platforms. Maeve completed additional training in rheumatic diseases in pregnancy. She counsels women on their disease in pregnancy and co-manages them alongside their other specialists throughout their pregnancies. She is an advocate for women’s health and has in interest in how chronic disease impacts women of childbearing age.
Clips - Rubeeta Gill
Rubeeta Gill is a paediatrician who is fascinated by the sociocultural lens through which we view children and medicine. She is curious about what child-rearing practices across cultures and history can teach us about nurturing a child physically, emotionally and spiritually. Currently subspecializing in Developmental Paediatrics at McMaster University, Rubeeta also hopes to create space for childhood disability, generating perspectives that move beyond acknowledgement to celebrate children with unique abilities. From presenting at an International Fairy tale Conference in Budapest as a medical student to incorporating paintings in clinical ward rounds as a resident physician at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, Rubeeta has long advocated for the use of health humanities within medical education. Can art make us better physicians? How do we raise resilient and happy children? Here to report on topics ranging from doctoring to parenting, Rubeeta hopes to find compelling stories that challenge what we hold true about medicine, art and theories of child development.
Clips - Ben Huang
Ben Huang is a resident physician specializing in Emergency Medicine at the University of British Columbia who is fascinated by the growing opportunities for multimedia to tell the human stories of clinical medicine, as well as the potential for free online access medical education (FOAMed) to empower patients and practitioners. Ben is interested in stories on the world of emergency and pre-hospital medicine, the hidden curriculum of medical education, and knowledge translation for improving health literacy. Outside the hospital, Ben likes to cultivate his creative hobbies of music production and engineering, photography, and videography.
Clips - Natalie Jesionka
Natalie Jesionka has spent the last decade teaching, researching and speaking about global human trafficking, human rights, and social good. She has served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA and penned the column “Travel Mirror” for The Daily Muse, focusing on best practices in volunteering and international development. Natalie is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and served as a Fulbright Scholar in Thailand researching stateless Hill Tribe communities and examining the origins of human trafficking. In 2019, she founded Global Elective, a platform for college students that explores the future of ethical travel and social impact.
Clips - Bryony Lau
Bryony Lau was born and raised in Alberta. For the past decade, she lived in Southeast Asia and researched conflict and human rights abuses. Most recently she led advocacy and communications for Médecins Sans Frontières in Myanmar. Earlier in her career, she was senior analyst for the International Crisis Group; she has published widely on the Philippines. During the fellowship, Bryony will report on Southeast Asia as well as immigration and race in western Canada. Trained in history and politics, she has degrees from the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar. An aspiring polyglot, she speaks French well, Bahasa Indonesia proficiently, Burmese haltingly and Mandarin Chinese poorly.
Clips - Paleah Moher
Paleah Moher is a toxicologist specializing in the impact environmental pollutants have on human health. Hailing from the Canadian Arctic, she has a particular interest in the perceptions and concerns Indigenous Peoples have on environmental contamination and land use. She has completed extensive field work throughout the globe to study occupational exposures of small-scale gold miners in West Africa, the traditional medicines used by the Inuit in Nunavut, and mercury contamination of seafoods in Central America. Paleah holds a BSc in Biochemistry, a PhD in Environmental and Chemical Toxicology (UOttawa), and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship on Gender, Work, and Health (UVic). Outside of research, she enjoys photography, trying to keep up with her young rascals, and exploring the beautiful west coast.
Clips - Ashley Stumvoll
Ashley Stumvoll is a writer and tropical ecologist based in the subtropical city of Durham, NC. She has spent much of her career conducting ecological fieldwork in the rainforests of countries like Madagascar and Malaysia. After earning her Masters in Tropical Forest Ecology from Imperial College London, Ashley realized that her passion lay in writing about the environment rather than conducting boots-on-the-ground research. Her interests are mainly in biodiversity and habitat loss—issues that are intertwined with supply chains, inequality and policy. In becoming a Fellow in Global Journalism, Ashley hopes to interact with the other Fellows to explore new ideas and unravel the complexities of those interdisciplinary stories. Her goal as a journalist is to bring colour and human elements to global environmental issues that might otherwise seem too big or too far away. When she isn’t writing, Ashley can be found walking her foster dog, attempting to tame her tomato garden, and searching for the perfect bagel recipe.
Clips - Amie Tsang
Amie Tsang is an Occupational Therapist whose career is dedicated to working in partnership with presently and historically marginalized populations, centring narratives of personal resilience in systemic oppression. She has frontline experience in the homeless sector and is most recently the Health Equity Facilitator at CMHA-Toronto. Amie seeks to apply a critical, anti-oppressive lens to her work, whilst always acknowledging there is more to learn and unlearn. She holds Adjunct Lecturer status in the Department of OS&OT at the University of Toronto and serves on the board of directors at HomesFirst Society. She is this year’s recipient of the Maytree Scholarship to support coverage of poverty in the context of Canadian human rights.
Clips - James Walsh
James Walsh is a business executive with more than 10 years advising senior executives in the global energy industry on strategy, finance, M&A, public policy and global affairs. Having grown up on Prince Edward Island, he gained a designation as a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA, CMA) in addition to an MBA from Queen’s University. He has lived and worked overseeing projects across Canada, the US, and Europe. As a journalist, James wants to deepen the public discussion about the energy sector in a global context, particularly as it relates to economic, political, and regulatory issues.
Clips - Eva Zhu
Eva Zhu is a multimedia journalist hailing from Vancouver who is interested in pursuing investigative journalism. She recently completed a Master of Journalism and Communication from Western University in London, Ontario. Eva is dedicated to telling stories she believes people should know about. She has written features on anti-Asian racism, COVID-19 and misogyny in the e-sports industry, among other issues. She also has professional music journalism experience and is currently writing for Exclaim! Media and Hard Noise Magazine. Eva loves making podcasts and telling the stories of unique individuals. When she’s not writing, she loves skateboarding and making digital art.
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Class of 2020
FGJ Class of 2020 | CHI Class of 2020
- Karen Black
Karen has a life‐long interest in how our understanding of history shapes the way we view the present. She is dedicated to understanding how history gets presented and consumed and how this shapes our sense of justice and approaches to public policy. She is optimistic that a diversity of voices can enrich and contest traditional narratives of history. She pressed for the inclusion of underrepresented voices during her time as head of the City of Toronto’s Museums and Heritage Services department and cofounded Doors Open to make the city’s history more accessible. She has a B.A. in history and a Masters of Business Administration from University of Toronto and has served on the boards of a variety of museum and mental health organizations. She is excited about sharing her love of history and why it matters through journalism.
Clips - Natasha Comeau
Natasha is a recent Master of Global Affairs graduate from the Munk School at the University of Toronto where she focused her studies on development and global health. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and International Development, with a minor in Gender Studies, from McGill University. Natasha is passionate about human rights, gender equity, and global healthcare and has worked for a number of non‐profits, including AIDS‐Free World, United Way, Amnesty International, Boys and Girls Clubs, and Apathy Is Boring. Natasha has published articles related to global health with a specialized interest in maternal and reproductive health care access internationally.
Clips - Tebasum Durrani
Tebasum is a lawyer who has built her career working with marginalized communities in Toronto, initially as an employment lawyer at Flemingdon Community Legal Services and most recently at the Human Rights Legal Support Centre. She has additional background in health policy and has worked at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health in Toronto. She has worked in the fields of immigration law, health law, landlord and tenant law – as well as on a range of employment law and policy, including minimum wage rights and protection for employees who are victims of sexual harassment and assault. Having built her practice at the intersection of law and poverty, Tebasum is keen to cover how changes in law and in social programs affect the poor. She received her JD at Osgoode Hall Law School and a Bachelors of Journalism and Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa. Tebasum will hold this year’s Maytree Scholarship, designated for a Fellow who is covering poverty as a rights issue.
Clips - Marina Eckersley
Marina has spent most of her career in the Canadian music industry working in music publishing, including most recently at Toronto‐based Anthem Entertainment. She began her career in the industry at Trebas Institute studying audio engineering, but a fateful internship at Nightingale Music coincided with Marina trying to navigate her own rights as an artist, and her hidden interest in intellectual property was realized. Marina has also completed the Artist Management program at Canada’s Music Incubator, and consults with independent artists and managers on music rights administration. Her mission is to empower creators to make informed decisions about their music rights.
Clips - Patrick Foucault
Patrick is a physician in Iqaluit, the capital of the Territory of Nunavut in Canada’s eastern Arctic and has served as Medical Education Lead for the Government of Nunavut. He received his MD, following a Masters degree in sociology and an undergraduate degree in anthropology from the University of Ottawa. Patrick aims to create links between the rest of Canada and the Canadian Arctic, and to testify to the relationships that exist today between the world and the Canadian North. He has a strong interest in the cultural issues faced by Inuit and their relationship with today’s globalized world – including the way such issues arise in the context of health and in the presence of stressors like Climate Change and cultural assimilation.
Clips - Tara Heidger
Tara is a United States Army Iraq War veteran and recent graduate of Columbia University in the City of New York where she completed a dual Masters of International Affairs and International Urban Planning. Her recent work has focused on factors attributing to human displacement in both Syria and East Africa specifically when it comes to land tenure and housing during and after conflict. Tara is a 2017 Pat Tillman Scholar and remains involved in the United States veteran community. She currently resides in New York City with her husband and three young daughters.
Clips - Lakshmi Magon
Lakshmi seeks to find the space where science and communication can interact. From her early years she has focused on learning the technical details of science and how to best communicate these details to the public. She holds a Biotechnology honours degree from The University of Edinburgh’s School of Biological Sciences and has spent time at The University of Westminster and The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences contributing to research in a range of fields. As a freelance science communicator Lakshmi has worked to communicate one to one – via her own TEDx talk, social media platforms and as part of a podcast – as well as with large groups of people during her work as a collaborative science communicator with institutions such as Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology and The Royal Institution. Throughout these experiences Lakshmi has remained passionate about finding the story behind science and sharing it with as many interested people as possible.
Clips - Katherine Monahan
Katherine is an economist specializing in Canadian and international environmental and energy policy. She spent 10 years with Environment and Climate Change Canada as a policy analyst and author of government publications outlining future scenarios related to environmental impacts and climate change. Katherine was one of the lead Canadian negotiators for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change under the United Nations. She currently contributes to the public’s understanding of environmental issues through her research and writing as part of the Smart Prosperity Institute. Katherine enjoys travel, and lives in the forest of Wakefield, Quebec.
Clips - Clara Pasieka
Clara has straddled the media and political fields. She holds a Master of Public Policy, Public Administration & Law from York University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Theatre from the University of Toronto. An award‐winning filmmaker, writer, producer and actor with a thirteen year career, one of her films about a Rwandan refugee and an Ontario teacher garnered interviews from some of Canada’s top media outlets discussing multiculturalism and mental health. She has also created multiple mini‐series for children. An alumnus of the non partisan Ontario Legislature Internship Program (OLIP) at Queen’s Park, she has engaged in parliamentary visits across Canada and the U.K., as well as, speechwriting, stakeholder engagement, media relations and legislative affairs roles for members on both sides of the aisle. Currently on a quest to visit and write about every riding in Ontario, she aims to keep her finger on the pulse of each riding and on the pulse of legislatures across the country.
Clips - Rebecca Renkas
Rebecca Renkas has been working and volunteering in the women’s health sphere for the past 13 years. She started as a counselor at the Women’s Health Clinic in Winnipeg and went on to work as a research assistant in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Manitoba while completing her Bachelor of Science, majoring in Biology. She graduated with her MD from the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences in 2012. While completing her residency in Family Medicine, she served as Co-President of the Professional Association of Residents and Interns of Manitoba and as a Board Member of Doctors Manitoba. She is certified by the North American Menopause Society and has devoted a large part of her practice to menopause medicine since 2016. Rebecca is interested in how women of all ages navigate health care and how psychosocial, economic and political factors influence outcomes.
Clips - Alan Taniguchi
Alan Taniguchi is a physician in Southern Ontario, with a background in family medicine, care of the elderly, and palliative care. He is a strong advocate for public health and social justice models of palliative care and believes the way forward in providing quality end-of-life care is through community engagement. Alan is an award-winning medical educator, passionate about helping health care providers embrace effective, compassionate approaches to palliative and end-of-life care. He leads The 100% Certainty Project, a community reading initiative inspiring dialogue about death, dying, loss, and bereavement. He loves Hogwarts, chocolate, and shavasana (but not necessarily in that order). www.talkaboutdeath.ca.
Clips - Hannah Thomasy
Hannah received her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Washington, where she studied traumatic brain injury and sleep behavior. She currently works as a freelance science writer and lives in Kingston, Ontario. Her work has appeared in Hakai, Ensia, and Eos magazines. She is fascinated by all things biology, from the bizarre and largely invisible world of microbes to island ecosystems outfitted with cutting‐edge conservation technology equipment.
Clips - Michelle Ward
Michelle is an academic pediatrician who has spent 15 years working at the intersection of health care, social services, and the law. As a physician leader who has helped shape the specialized field of Child Maltreatment Pediatrics in Canada, her work has taken her from the hospital bedside, to lecture halls, to boardrooms, and in to court rooms. Michelle is currently the Division Head of Child and Youth Protection at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, and the President of the Child and Youth Maltreatment Section of the Canadian Paediatric Society. After finishing a B.ScH in biology and psychology at Queen’s University, Michelle completed her medical training at McMaster University. She is board certified in Pediatrics (Canada and USA) and Child Abuse Pediatrics (USA). She has authored over 20 scientific publications including 2 book chapters, is a sought after advisor and speaker in medical and legal communities, and teaches at the Faculty of Medicine in the areas of communication skills, advocacy, and child maltreatment pediatrics. Michelle is recognized for her ability to connect with children, youth, parents, marginalized individuals, and professionals of all types, often in high conflict situations. She believes in science, common sense, compassion, and the importance of our youngest citizens to a successful society. Through the Fellowship, she plans to pair solid science with compelling stories to bring the most important issues for children, youth, and families to the public and to policy‐makers.
Clips - Akilah Wise
Akilah Wise is a public health researcher and writer living in Atlanta, GA. Her work has focused on the structural determinants of unintended pregnancy, incarceration and HIV risk among heterosexual men and women, and place‐based factors related to HIV risk among people who inject drugs in the United States. She earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan and has held Postdoctoral Fellowships at Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her work has appeared in Women’s Health Issues, the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, Public Health Reports, as well as The Nation, Rewire, and other places.
Clips - Josephine Wong
Josephine graduated from her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of British Columbia as a Wesbrook Scholar. She later completed her Juris Doctor degree at the University of Toronto. She now practices law in Vancouver, primarily in civil litigation. Before joining private practice, she worked in the field of international development and international humanitarian law in various cities in Africa and Europe, including at the United Nations Development Programme and the International Criminal Court. Through journalism, Josephine hopes to broaden the discussion around issues relating to access to justice.
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Class of 2019
- Veronica Allan
Veronica completed her Ph.D. in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, Canada. Working in the field of sport psychology, her research focuses on athlete development and coaching in youth and disability sport contexts. Through her work, she aims to promote sport as a platform for social justice, and apply an evidence-informed lens to sport-related trends and issues. As a competitive distance runner and a recent Ph.D. graduate, she is excited to share a love for sport that is deeply entrenched in her personal and professional life through future work as a freelance writer and research consultant.
Clips - Parul Bansal
Parul is the founder of Anda Residency, an artist residency taking place in transient, unused spaces in Toronto; focused on creating art around the urban dialogue and a means for creative placemaking. Throughout her career, Parul has practiced in many niches of real estate providing her with a holistic lens of the field. As a result, Parul consults on development projects using human centric design to create go-to-market and architectural strategies. This includes co-housing developments to create new archetypes of housing where human connection and community are at the forefront. Parul is a licensed real estate advisor, received a B.Sc. in Life Science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and is now pursuing a certificate in Art and Design Studio Skills at OCAD University in Toronto.
Clips - Christine Bear
Christine is a biomedical researcher and educator. She is a Senior Scientist at SickKids Hospital and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Driven by a need to understand the consequences of genetic disorders, she is developing and participating in teams that include geneticists, stem cell biologists and clinicians. She is excited by the promise of technological advances to address the urgent medical needs that we face now and will encounter in the future. Through journalism she will communicate the insights needed to understand the promise and potential risk associated with these rapidly advancing fields.
Clips - Viviane Callier
Viviane is trained as a biologist and currently freelances from San Antonio, Texas. She was a Churchill Scholar at Cambridge University, where she studied paleontology. Her doctoral studies at Duke University focused on insect body size regulation. After her postdoctoral fellowship at Arizona State University, she moved to Washington, DC area where she was a science writer at the National Institutes of Health and at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Currently, she writes about biology, medicine, and STEM workforce and training issues. Her work has appeared in Science, Nature, Scientific American, Quanta, Undark, Smithsonian.com, The Atlantic.com, Science Careers, and other places.
Clips - Susanne Courtney
Susanne specializes in international development, especially public policy and development finance, and organizational strategy and leadership. With a decade in leadership and consulting to international nongovernmental organizations, she founded Power of Voice International in 2017. POV is dedicated to communications skills development of civil society organizations in low and middle-income countries in order to strengthen their independence.
Since 2010 Susanne has led the Canadian offices of international NGOs including AMREF Canada and Action Against Hunger Canada (ACF). She has also been engaged in technical training and consulting on communications strategies and planning for NGOs and is a founding member of the Canadian Forum for Impact Investing and Development (CAFIID).
Prior to her career in international development, Susanne founded and led an award-winning, North American communications consulting firm which was sold in 2009 to a multinational agency. Her professional career began with the Canadian Foreign Service where she was posted to Canada’s embassies in Paris, France and Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Susanne is committed to social responsibility through board membership and participation on high level committees including Action Against Hunger, AMREF Canada, The Canadian Film Centre, Grand Challenges Canada, Ontario Cancer Research Ethics Review Board, Women in Development Committee, AfDB. She co-founded the Council of Canadian Public Relations Firms. With English as a first language, Susanne can manage in French as well.
Clips - Stefanie Dreyer
Stefanie is a TV-journalist and a graduate of the International Journalism Center of the Danube University Krems in Austria. She also got a degree in presentation skills and media techniques as well as an MBA in Economics in Germany. She has worked behind and in front of the camera for a number of broadcasting formats over the years. She is also a host and moderator for conferences, trade fairs and panel discussions. An expert on the subject of digitization, she covers topics that include SmartCities, Big Data, cyber security and other digitization issues that influence the tech world. Stefanie has also taken part in the Executive Training Program of the European Commission in Tokyo. On a scholarship, she studied international management at Sophia University in Tokyo, explored Japan’s culture and sharpened her diplomatic skills. Currently living in Toronto, she has lived in various parts of the world including the U.S., Cambodia, Japan, Austria and Germany. She speaks German, English, French and Japanese. As of 2019, she is the newly appointed digital ambassador for Hamburg@work in Canada, which is Northern Germany’s cross-technology digital platform and network for a new world from and for businesses.
Clips - Eleanor Gebrou
Eleanor is finishing a Masters of Public Administration at the University of Western Ontario, with graduate research focused on the effect of ranked-ballot voting on hard-to-reach communities in London Ontario. She is completing this research in partnership with the City of London. She also holds a diploma in General Arts and Science from Humber College, as well as a B.A.S.C.in Psychology from the University of Guelph and works as an assistant for one of London’s City Councillors and has been involved in Evaluative Consultation with City of Sarnia, and Innovation Works.
Clips - Chandu Gopalakrishnan
Chandu is an Indian journalist and researcher, with over a decade of experience in news editing and content management. Currently, he is working as the researcher and content manager for European markets at a specialized business news service called Activistmonitor. After graduating in commerce, his academics were focused on media studies, with a postgraduate diploma in print journalism, a masters in media business management and another in business and financial journalism. In his present role, he is part of a team of analysts and reporters that tracks investments made by activist hedge funds, social and governance issues raised by shareholders and the regulatory changes.
Clips - Marie-Claude Gregoire
Marie-Claude is a pediatrician with sub-speciality training in pediatric pain and palliative medicine. She completed her medical training at Université de Montréal before moving to Halifax for her clinical and research fellowship. After working across Canada in locum positions, she settled in Halifax where she is an assistant professor at Dalhousie University. She is interested in pediatric advocacy and look forward to developing new skills through the Fellowship in Global Journalism. She can often be seen running behind a busy toddler, riding her bike or lost in translation with her Yorkshireman husband.
Clips - Priya Iyer
Priya holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology with a specialization in Genetics and a Master of Public Health. As a Public Health professional, she has worked in the home and community sectors, including at a national home-care organization and a provincial renal agency where she supported initiatives to improve patients’ access to dialysis at home and in the community. She runs an online blog intended to tell the stories and share initiatives of those in the public health field. She has a special interest in the health of aging populations and bridging the gap between acute and community-care.
Clips - Ruth Jones
Ruth is one of three co-editors in chief of The Site Magazine, the current incarnation of Canada’s only independent publication on architecture and urbanism. She holds a PhD in French and Francophone Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, where her research focused on literary representation, spatial narratives, and urban and colonial history, and a BA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College. More recently, she has worked on curatorial and editorial projects related to perception and the political and cultural conditions of design and the built environment.
Clips - Christine Keilholz
Christine is a political journalist from Germany. Based in the City of Dresden she reports as a correspondent for newspapers and magazines. Her special topics are migration, population development and education policy – which she plans to cover at Munk School with a global focus. So far she is a connoisseur of the Eastern German states, which formerly formed the German Democratic Republic, with a deep knowledge of their people, political parties and their special political and economic challenges. Born in 1980, Christine studied history and German Language at the Universities of Göttingen and Leipzig. After her journalistic training at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, she began her freelance work. Her texts appear in newspapers such as Welt, Tagesspiegel and political magazines such as Cicero.
Clips - Dylan Klempner
Dylan Klempner is a journalist and visual artist based in Gainesville, Florida. His articles and essays on creativity, medicine, and science have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers. He served as a writer/artist in residence with UF Health Shands Hospital’s Arts in Medicine program and published essays about the role of the arts in the delivery of healthcare. He was a Creative Scholar-in-Residence in the University of Florida’s Department of Biology where he co-taught Creative Science Communication. Dylan received an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College, and a BS in Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College.
Clips - Michelle Koerner
Michelle has had a long professional association with the arts in Toronto. She has held senior positions in Marketing at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Toronto International Film Festival, Rogers Broadcasting and TVOntario. She is currently a Director of the National Gallery of Canada’s Foundation Board, a Director of Canada’s National Ballet School Board and a Director of the Art Canada Institute Board. Michelle is the Chair of the newly established Public Art Program for the Don Valley River Park Trail and is the founder and Chair of the Women’s Art Initiative at the Art Gallery of Ontario, a group that supports women artists. She was also on the Alumni Board of Havergal College and participated in the Mentor Program in the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Toronto. Michelle has a BA from Victoria College at the University of Toronto.
Clips - Inderveer Mahal
Inderveer is a Family Physician based out of Vancouver, Canada. She completed both her medical school and residency training through the University of Manitoba. Her training has exposed her to both acute and chronic care medicine, extending from the operating room and intensive care unit settings to the bedside at family medicine clinics. She has published papers in the realm of peri-operative cerebral monitoring and multi-disciplinary medical clinics. In her primary care practice, she witnesses the relationship between socio-economic factors and health on a daily basis. Dr. Mahal has a keen interest in reporting on the intersection between patient outcomes, public health policy and health system design. She also explores the unique stories of both patients and their healthcare providers.
Clips - Lizan Nijkrake
Lizan is an international legal expert born in the Netherlands. She is the former adviser to the Vice-Minister for International Cooperation at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also worked at the United Nations in New York and managed international cooperation projects in Malawi and Kenya on behalf of the Netherlands. Lizan specialises in policy making, international refugee and human rights law – which she studied among others in Sydney. Lizan perceives life with an open mindset and has a strong sense of social justice. Besides her professional practice she is a fervent musician (singer) and passionate traveller.
Clips - Deidre Olsen
Deidre is a freelance journalist and Digital Marketing Analyst at Dentons where they work as part of a global content team on website management, social media and analytics. As a multidisciplinary professional, Deidre works at the intersections of digital and storytelling. Their reporting, opinion editorials and narrative essays have appeared in over 20 publications, most notably Refinery29, Motherboard, The Cut, Salon, Brooklyn Magazine, NOW Magazine, Narratively and Literary Hub. In 2014, Deidre completed their Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at the University of British Columbia. Since then, they’ve studied Web Intelligence at the University of California, Irvine and Web Development at HackerYou. While Deidre covers a broad range of subject matter, they are primarily interested in queerness, the state, digital rights and technology.
Clips - Swathi Sadagopan
Swathi is a Senior Consultant in Deloitte Canada’s Analytics practice with a focus on driving business decisions through advanced data analytics techniques. She is skilled in quantitative data analysis and visualization of data to tell compelling stories for businesses to take action. She has experience working across retail, aviation, telecom, media, engineering and technology, and non-profit sectors helping clients personalize product recommendations for customers, redesign loyalty program, enter new markets, optimize their physical store network, and more broadly advise them on strategies that generate top line growth. Swathi completed her Masters in electrical engineering from McGill University, where she designed a low-cost induction motor for use in hybrid electric vehicles with >80% reduction in material costs. While at McGill, Swathi developed a sustainable sanitation solution for use in rural India which won the social enterprise track of the Dobson Cup, McGill’s business plan competition.
Clips - Sarah Schulman
Sarah has spent her career in bingo halls, buses, and back alleyways. As a social scientist focused on the experiences of people living on the margins, Sarah uses story as a tool to both document ‘what is’ and re-imagine ‘what could be’. She is the Founding Partner of InWithForward, an international organization that co-designs social services and social policies from the ground-up. Her teams have created award-winning and scalable interventions like Kudoz, a learning platform for adults with cognitive disabilities. Sarah holds a B.A (honors) in Human Biology and an M.A in Education from Stanford University as well as a DPhil in Social Policy from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
Clips - Matt Strauss
Matt Strauss didn’t go to school until he was 14 years old. He studied literature at Waterloo and medicine at Western. He did specialty and subspecialty training at McGill and Western. He practices life support and resuscitation medicine at Guelph General Hospital where he is the medical director of the critical care unit. In addition, he is a clinical assistant professor at McMaster University. His writing is often motivated by skepticism. Journalistic interests include health policy, biotechnology, the economics and inequities of health, philosophy of medicine, fitness trends, sexual health and gender issues, nutrition science, urban planning and the environment.
Clips - Susannah Walden
Susannah is an American journalist based in Beirut. She is currently the Lebanon News & Online Desk Editor at The Daily Star, the largest English-language newspaper in Lebanon. She joined the paper in April 2016, starting out as a copy editor and reporter before being promoted to deputy editor and then editor. While now working in print journalism, her early experience was in radio with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the BBC World Service. Her reporting in Lebanon has focused on the international community’s role in the country, while also covering environmental issues, LGBTQ rights, and women’s rights in the MENA region. Her interest in the Middle East began with her degree in Persian and Philosophy from the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies department at the University of Edinburgh, where she also studied Arabic, Middle Eastern history, and the politics of the region. She has previously worked as a French to English translator in Paris and as a project manager with several non-profits in London.
Clips - Laetitia Van der Vennet
Laetitia has worked on the tensions between human rights and migration policies for the last ten years. She was with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in West Africa and led advocacy campaigns on immigration detention, housing and health care for undocumented families in Belgium. Laetitia is equally interested in the relationship between conflict and peace, which led her to get BA in Psychology, MA is social and cultural anthropology, a MA in conflict and development and become a Rotary Peace Fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand (’16). She’s fluent in English, French, and Dutch.
Clips - Lindsey Vodarek
Lindsey is the Maytree Foundation Human Rights & Poverty Fellow. Her work explores issues of income, housing, and education with a human rights lens. She holds a Masters in Communication & Culture and a BA in Communication Studies & Political Science. Working at Imagine Canada, the national association for charities and non-profits, her work spanned Strategic Communications, Public Policy, and Research. Lindsey also has extensive experience in media production, working for the Canadian Media Producers Association and Canada Media Fund. While living in Berlin, she was production manager for Adam, 2018 Berlin International Film Festival Official Selection.
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Class of 2018
- Tola Afolabi
Dr. Tola Afolabi is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon with a sub-specialization in hand surgery. She practices in Southwestern Ontario. Before entering medicine, Afolabi completed an M.A. in English Language and Literature. She has written and edited scientific literature and is interested in the challenges of translating medical knowledge to the public to influence health outcomes. Afolabi also explores health disparities as they relate to minority and immigrant populations. Additionally, she has an interest in improving efficiency and decreasing costs in health care.
Clips - Tairone Bastien
Tairone Bastien is a Canadian art curator and programmer with 15 years’ experience working in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and New York. After completing his BA in Art History and Queer Studies at the University of British Columbia, and his MA in Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Bastien spent seven years curating in New York City, including projects for the first three biennials of visual art performance featuring over 100 international artists. From 2011 to this year, he was based between Abu Dhabi and Dubai where he led the creation of a series of major public art projects for both public and private art organizations. Bastien recently returned to Canada and will be building the next stage of his career from Toronto.
Clips - Sarah Giles
Dr. Sarah Giles is a Canadian-trained family/emergency room doctor with a diploma in tropical medicine. In her eleventh year of practice, Giles’s interest in neglected populations has taken her to remote areas of Canada, Australia, and into conflict zones with Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders. A board member of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, Sarah is fascinated by factors that influence health policy, access to medications, Indigenous health, medical politics, and medical innovation. She is thrilled to be putting her English literature courses to work 20 years after her undergraduate Neuroscience career advisor told her to take more “practical” courses!
Clips - Kylie Gionet
Kylie completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at McMaster University, and specialized further to become a nurse in the operating room. She began her career at a large hospital in Toronto. Prior to attending university she spent time travelling in Tanzania. This is where she became interested in health care, and particularily how our environment impacts our health. Gionet also hoped to pursue further training in journalism.Clips - Zehra Imam
Zehra Imam is a teacher and the founding director of Illuminated Cities Project (ICP), an education organization that uses travel and the pedagogy of hope as tools for transformation with students, teachers, and their communities. In the United States, she has worked in the field of education in Detroit, Madison, Chicago, the South Bronx, and Brooklyn. Globally, she has taught public speaking to midwives in Pakistan, Urdu in India, and English and Humanities in Saudi Arabia. Imam is an alumnae of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and is currently completing her Masters in in English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Clips - Conor Lavelle
Originally from Brantford, Ontario, Dr. Conor Lavelle received his BA from McGill University where he majored in World Religions and Cognitive Psychology. After a brief stint as a research assistant in the department of psychology at the University of British Columbia, he then packed his bags to complete medical training at Trinity College Dublin, one of the oldest medical schools in Europe. Lavelle is currently in the midst of specialist training in Emergency Medicine at the University of Toronto, and will be joining the Global Journalism Program this year with plans to cover issues related to healthcare access and health equity.
Clips - Helen Leask
Helen Leask is an award-winning medical writer and Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF). She currently earns her living facilitating meetings of senior medical professionals to explore new visions for Canadian healthcare. For almost 20 years, Leask ran a Canadian healthcare communications consultancy, as well as a qualitative research company aimed at understanding the patient-physician divide. Helen has a PhD in zoology from the University of Bristol, UK, and a private pilot’s licence. She is the founder of an international writing award, The SCRIPT Award, and her publishing label has published 12 books for patients sold in bookstores worldwide. She is an invited lecturer at Laurentian University and the University of Toronto, and is currently working on a blog exploring the nature of love (what-is-love.ca).
Clips - George Lewis
George Lewis enjoyed a 30-year career with RBC, Canada’s largest financial institution and most valuable public company. He started as an investment banker in 1986 with RBC Capital Markets, became a top-rated equity analyst covering utilities, pipelines, and telecom companies, and led the segment’s Research and Institutional Equity Sales and Trading businesses before moving to RBC Wealth Management in 2000. He led the segment’s Global Asset Management business for eight years, which became the largest asset manager in Canada. He also led the product businesses within the RBC Banking segment from 2004 until his appointment to RBC’s Group Executive (Management Board) in 2007 as Group Head of Wealth Management, adding responsibility for RBC Insurance in 2012. Lewis earned a MBA degree with distinction from Harvard University, and a B.Comm degree with high distinction from Trinity College (University of Toronto). He obtained the professional designation of Chartered Accountant while working with Arthur Andersen & Co., and became a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (FCA) in 2013. Lewis currently serves on the boards of Ontario Power Generation, Enbridge Income Fund Holdings (TSX), the Canadian Film Centre, and the Anglican Diocese of Toronto Foundation, and previously, on the boards of Operation Springboard, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Holland Bloorview Foundation, and the campaign cabinet for the United Way of Greater Toronto. Lewis is the Colonel Commandant (Hon.) of the Royal Canadian Chaplain Service of the Canadian Armed Forces, and Deputy Warden at Christ Church Deer Park in Toronto.
Clips - Belinda Lloyd
Belinda Lloyd is a journalist with extensive experience in broadcast news. She started her career in journalism with Hong Kong’s sole public broadcaster, Radio Television Hong Kong, working as a radio reporter. Lloyd went on to become a senior reporter and television news anchor for ATV News. Her experience in covering politics in Hong Kong and Greater China opened up the opportunity for Belinda to serve as Head of Press and Political Affairs at the European Union’s Office in Hong Kong and Macau. After taking a four-year break to focus on raising her children, she is keen to get back into journalism again. Lloyd speaks fluent English and Cantonese, as well as basic Mandarin and French.
Twitter: twitter.com/newshound4life
Clips - Adriano Marchese
After receiving a BA in Political Science and History at the University of Toronto, Adriano Marchese has been covering foreign affairs and international politics with a special focus on the European Union. He is interested in the EU as a unique social experiment, tracking the health of the Union, and the political currents within individual member states. Marchese has reported on North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Clips - Shannon McDermott
Shannon McDermott is a writer by trade and passion. After graduating with a degree in International Politics, she began her career with a focus on content development, landing roles in corporate communications and broadcasting. She then relocated to New York City, where she has spent the last seven years working alongside industry legends. McDermott owns and operates Revel & Convey, a content firm which develops strategic communication programs for clients in the legal, financial, real estate, tech, and entertainment industries. She is the founder of The #EveryWoman Project, a collective of teams across North America that assemble and distribute feminine care packages to women in need in their communities.
Clips - Mojola Omole
Dr. Mojola Omole is a global surgical oncologist with over 10 years of experience developing and implementing patient focused care in various settings both in Canada and sub-Saharan Africa. She has been integral in advancing awareness of the global burden of oncological diseases and increase visibility across key stakeholders. Omole has experience promoting surgical oncology care, education and relevant research to improve health standards in resource poor and resource rich settings. This has been a dynamic process that includes the synthesis, dissemination, exchange, and culturally-appropriate application of knowledge to improve health, provide sustainable oncology services, and strengthen the health care system. As a Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellow, in conjunction with Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, she was integral in the development of an oncology curriculum for Rwanda’s national residency training program. Omole completed her general surgery residency at McMaster University. She finished her breast surgical oncology fellowship at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
Clips - Stephen Portman
Stephen Portman has spent nearly a decade as a legal advocate, working on the frontlines of law based anti-poverty reform in British Columbia. As Advocacy Lead of Together Against Poverty Society (TAPS), Portman has worked to highlight legislative inequality with a focus on achieving lasting systems change though community building, the courts, and in the political realm. Through his work, he aims to advance a rights-based analysis to the challenges posed by needless poverty. When not at work you can find him at a rally, in the forest, on the sea, or in the kitchen. Portman is the recipient of the 2017-18 Maytree Human Rights and Poverty Fellowship.
Clips - Leanne Tory-Murphy
Leanne Tory-Murphy is a writer, researcher, and translator currently living in Palermo, Italy, where she completed research on contemporary migration as a Fulbright scholar. Her work has been published in The Huffington Post, African Arguments, and The Indypendent. A longtime labour and immigrant rights advocate, she has worked with various organizations including the Worker Justice Center of NY, Domestic Workers United, and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Tory-Murphy is a graduate of the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York at Hunter College.
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Class of 2017
- Aala Abdullahi
While earning an Honours degree in Neuroscience from the University of Alberta, Aala authored a children’s book series on mental illness awareness. She also spent a great deal of time researching how those living with mental illness internalize the stigma they receive from the outside world, and how that affects their ability to seek and benefit from clinical treatment. Since graduating, Aala has worked with a student advocacy organization on a provincial strategy to improve mental health on campuses across Alberta. Through journalism, Aala hopes to deepen the discussion around mental health to reduce stigma and empower others to make their mental health a priority. She has a particular interest in the barriers surrounding access to mental health care for ethnic and religious minority groups.
twitter.com/aalasabdul
Clips - Ghada Alsharif
Since graduating from the University of Toronto with a BA in Political Science, Ghada Alsharif has worked in the media and non-profit sector. Most recently, she was associate program manager, working with corporate partnerships at Free the Children, a Toronto-based global NGO active in international development. Ghada managed over 80 partnerships with corporations that funded domestic and international development projects. Her experience also includes project management at Shaw Media where she managed national campaigns for television and online. Ghada has lived in seven countries around the world.
Clips - Sara Badiei
Sara Badiei is a humanitarian aid and international development engineering expert with extensive experience in complex emergencies spanning the Middle East, Central Asia, South East Asia and Africa. She has coordinated emergency response operations in conflict zones, natural disasters and disease outbreaks working with the International Committee of the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres. She currently works with the World Bank as an Energy Specialist in Jerusalem focusing on energy policy, institutional reform and regional integration in collaboration with Palestinian and Israeli Energy Authorities. Sara holds a BASc and MASc in Electrical Engineering and another MASc in Civil/Environmental Engineering.
Clips - Evan Balgord
Evan Balgord is the former Deputy Director of the John Tory for Mayor War Room and Special Assistant to the Mayor at City Hall. Before that he was a campaign manager for a number of provincial and municipal campaigns. He is completing his BSc at the University of Toronto for Psychology and Sociology. His driving interests are in politics, governments, and the future of journalism. When he’s not working he’s riding his motorcycle.
Clips - Blair Bigham
Dr. Blair Bigham is a paramedic, physician, and scientist completing specialty training in emergency medicine at McMaster University. He has worked in health care settings on five continents and has responded to emergencies in urban, rural, and remote settings on helicopters, boats, and vehicles that could generously be described as pick-up trucks. He witnesses the relationship between wealth and health on a daily basis, and reports on the undertold stories of patients, healthcare providers, and the systems that help or fail them.
www.blairbigham.com
@blairbigham
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Academic - Nicholas Chadi
Dr. Nicholas Chadi is a paediatrician and Adolescent Medicine Fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He obtained his medical degree at McGill University and is currently completing a Masters of Public Health at Harvard University. Nicholas has worked with marginalized communities in the Canadian Arctic, Latin America and West Africa. Passionate about medical research, he is leading a large clinical trial on mindfulness meditation for teenagers. He is eager to bridge the gap between academic experts, patients, and the policy debate. Nicholas is Fluent in French, English, and Spanish. He is also a jazz pianist and a competitive runner.
www.nicholaschadi.com
https://twitter.com/nicholaschadi
Clips - Rebecca Fortin
Rebecca Fortin, Hon BSc., University of Waterloo; MHSc., University of Toronto. Rebecca is a Public Health professional who specializes in the discipline of Health Promotion. She has worked with Canadian universities, government, and NGOs at local, provincial, and national levels. Rebecca’s Masters research with the National Film Board of Canada documented experiences of young mothers with homelessness. She worked most recently as a senior-level adviser for Peel Public Health, Ontario’s second largest public-health-unit located west of Toronto. She volunteers as a Board of Directors with International Teams Canada, and is the founding Chair of Health Promotion Canada. Rebecca is also a fine-arts photographer.
www.rebeccafortin.com
twitter.com/RebeccaBFortin
Clips - Sahil Gupta
Sahil Gupta is training to be an Emergency Medicine physician at the University of Alberta. Alongside his clinical work, he has an interest in understanding how social factors intersect to influence health. He studies how communities organize to tackle the social challenges around them. He hopes to use cross-disciplinary learnings to inform policy and program development in his work. His professional experiences include working with Aboriginal communities and exploring harm reduction approaches in Canada. Outside of work, he enjoys urban exploration, bicycling, and good tea.
https://twitter.com/sgupta11
Clips - Amitha Kalaichandran
Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran is a paediatrics resident (MD) with an interest in global public health, with a focus on children and youth. She holds an MD from the University of Toronto, a Master of Health Science in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and additional certifications in Humanitarian Assistance (Harvard University) and Vaccine Science and Policy (Johns Hopkins University). She is board certified in public health (CPH) from the National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE). Dr. Kalaichandran is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. She has published research articles in the realm of global health and integrative medicine. Her creative nonfiction writing has been featured in Ars Medica. Dr. Kalaichandran looks forward to applying what she learns in the Munk Global Journalism Fellowship towards illuminating hidden stories around the well-being of children and youth in Canada and globally.
https://t.co/QyWyhYl2p3?amp=1
twitter.com/DrAmithaK
Clips - Tina Knezevic
Tina Knezevic holds a BSc in biological science and environmental studies from Ontario’s University of Guelph, and a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of Toronto. She has worked for Environment Canada and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, and worked throughout 2014 and 2015 for the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Brussels, Belgium. She is interested in environmental issues that range from wildlife conservation to policy and urban sustainability. Through her writing, she hopes to bridge the gap between science and the public.
twitter.com/tknez2
Clips - Jonathan Levinson
Jonathan Levinson is a trained EMT who taught himself photography while serving as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army. After leaving the military, he received a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University where his research focused on non-state actors and identity. After graduate school, Jonathan worked in nuclear non-proliferation at the U.S. Department of Energy before dedicating himself full time to photojournalism. He has reported in the Middle East, Afghanistan, the United States, and Latin America. His work explores questions of shared experience and how people define themselves and their communities. His photographs have been featured in The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, and the Wall Street Journal, among others. He is currently based in Mexico City.
Clips - Kelly Geraldine Malone
Kelly Geraldine Malone is an independent multi-media journalist. She graduated with distinction from the University of Regina with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, and has worked in newsrooms across the Prairies including CBC, News Talk Radio, and the Brandon Sun. Her work has also been published in VICE News, Bangkok Post, Ms. Magazine, and Women’s eNews. Malone produced the Indigenous Affairs program “Meeting Ground” for CKOM News, and won the 2014 RTDNA National Adrienne Clarkson Award for Diversity for the series “Journey of Indigenous Gender Identity.” She also covered Saskatchewan’s wildfires for News Talk Radio, which won the Ron Laidlaw Prairie Regional and National RTDNA for continuing coverage in 2015.
Clips - Seema Marwaha
Dr. Seema Marwaha is an internal medicine physician and scientist at Trillium Health Partners and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. As a Frank Knox Fellow, she studied the use of technology and innovation in education at Harvard University, looking at novel ways to educate the public on health. Leveraging her background as a documentary filmmaker, her major career focus is on translating health knowledge to the general public through narratives. She also seeks to document and improve the patient experience, exploring areas for human-centred design methodology in healthcare. She recently helped start Faces of Health Care, a website that explores the stories of people who work or access health care.
www.seemamarwaha.com
twitter.com/SeemaMarwahaMD
Clips - Ali Okhowat
Dr. Ali Okhowat is a physician, bioethicist, and humanitarian worker who is currently working at the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) as a Health Emergencies Officer in the Emergency Response and Operations Unit. In this capacity he is responsible for supporting WHO’s humanitarian health response activities in EMRO countries, including Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Prior to this, Ali worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. Ali completed his medical training at the University of Toronto and McGill University and is a PhD Candidate in Bioethics at the University of Montreal. Apart from English, Ali speaks with varying fluency Mandarin, Arabic, French, Spanish, Farsi, and Russian.
Clips - Sukanya Pillay
Sukanya Pillay is an international lawyer, has worked at organizations in North America, Europe and Asia, and has been a law professor. For several years, Sukanya has been General Counsel and Executive Director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, directing its activities relating to Canadian policies on counter-terrorism and national security, police accountability, freedom of expression, and equality. She has conducted human rights missions to over 20 countries worldwide collecting video evidence of rights violations, and has made documentaries and used photography to advance rights and remedies. She is the inaugural Maytree Foundation Scholar in Poverty and Human Rights, and will focus her reporting on poverty through the lens of rights in Canada and around the world. She will also cover civil liberties issues outside of Canada.
Clips - Stephanie Robinson
Stephanie Robinson is an attorney and former Foreign Affairs Officer. A graduate of Brown University (B.A., Development Studies; M.A., Brazilian Studies) and Case Western Reserve University School of Law, she also studied at the Universidade Federal da Bahia in Brazil. As a consultant for UNHCR, Stephanie trained Argentine, Ugandan, and Caribbean officials in international refugee law. She also served in the U.S. State Department’s Consular and Western Hemisphere Bureaus covering the Haiti Desk during the 2010 earthquake. MORE magazine featured her blog for African-American expats in 2013. Stephanie’s specialties and interests include migration, development, transnational and personal identity.
Clips - Cristina Roca Phylactopoulou
Cristina Roca Phylactopoulou is a freelance writer focused on fashion, food, film, literature, and popular culture. She approaches cultural phenomena and attitudes as significant and telling of the zeitgeist they form part of, and is therefore particularly interested in the social significance and effects of culture. Having grown up in, and moving between, multicultural environments, she is interested in exploring different cultures and the forms that cultural exchange takes. She is fascinated by language and speaks English, French, and Dutch in addition to her native Greek and Spanish. Cristina has reported for two national magazines in The Netherlands, The Holland Times and ACCESS. She was a member of the editorial board as well as regular contributor of Scriptus magazine in her alma mater, and she also keeps a personal blog on fashion and food. As an academic researcher, she combines and explores the intersections of the disciplines of philosophy, literature, film studies and gender studies, focusing on the relationship between aesthetics, language, performance and identity and their representation in cultural products. She has also worked as editor and member of the editorial board for her university’s peer-reviewed academic journal. Cristina graduated suma cum laude from her BA at Amsterdam University College, and earned an MA in Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam.
Twitter: www.twitter.com/crisisfwp
Clips - Shuang Esther Shan
Shuang is a marketer who manages pricing initiatives within Canada’s telecom industry. Having worked in public, private and nonprofit sectors, and having studied in France, Singapore and China, she is fascinated by the people she encounters. Through all her interactions, she is attracted to stories surrounding food and music, and how these facets of life bring people together. She shares her cultural discoveries from the food scene and travels on her blog (The Teleporta), and interviews musicians and artists on CIUT 89.5FM. Her journalism will explore how individuals shape our collective culture.
Twitter: www.twitter.com/shuangesther
Instagram: www.instagram.com/shuangesther
website: www.theteleporta.com
Clips - Kara Sherwin
As Associate to the Chief Energy Economist of Alberta, Kara Sherwin is responsible for translating economic and financial analyses into policy advice for the government of Canada’s largest energy producing province. She has a master’s degree in political science, specializing in international relations and development, from the University of Alberta. With training from Harvard and the World Trade Organization in peace and conflict negotiation and resolution, Kara is particularly interested in applying a human lens to energy issues by exploring how energy, economics, and the environment shape everything from state building to social equality.
Clips - Melissa Tessler
A lawyer with a background in media, multimedia design and production, Melissa brings a unique lens to the exploration of international justice and public policy issues. Her legal experience and expertise ranges from international humanitarian and human rights law to privacy, telecommunications, intellectual property law, and other civil matters. She has spent the last year working on international legal investigations, first in Cambodia for the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials, and more recently on a delegation to Colombia through Lawyer’s Rights Watch Canada. Her earlier experience included several years at a mid-sized litigation firm in Toronto. Melissa uses photography to engage deeply with subject matter and to better explore the human impact of justice and policy issues.
Twitter: @mtess020
Clips - Meera Vijayann
Meera Vijayann is an independent journalist based in Washington DC who covers gender rights and development. As an activist, she works closely with +SocialGood, an initiative by the United Nations Foundation, and the international youth-led organization, Youth to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. Her work has been published in several leading publications that include Open Democracy, The Huffington Post, CNN, The Deccan Herald, Forbes, and the Guardian. She was the recipient of the CNN IBN Citizen Journalist Award in 2013 for her reportage on the aftermath of the Delhi Rape case. She has a Master’s degree from the University of Leeds.
meeravijayann.net
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Class of 2016
- Tiffany Bateman
Tiffany Bateman is a public health nurse specializing in infectious diseases. She led the Ontario tuberculosis control program and has experience in disaster relief. She has an interest in global health as it relates to communicable diseases and health promotion such as physical activity and healthy eating. Tiffany is a fitness competitor and has particular expertise in the area of fitness. She has a curiosity and passion for travel and special interest in travel writing.
Twitter: @TiffanyBBateman
Instagram: tiffanybateman1
Clips - Benjamin Bathke
Born and raised in Northern Germany, Benjamin Bathke earned his B.A. in History & Journalism from the University of Giessen. While he was getting his M.A. in Communications in the U.S. from 2012-14 in the U.S., he circumnavigated the globe with Semester At Sea. Since his graduation, he has been working as an entrepreneurial multimedia journalist covering technology, media innovation, startups and a host of other topics for North American and European publications.
Twitter: @BenjaminBathke
benjaminbathke.contently.com
Clips - Amanda Coletta
Amanda Coletta is a journalist at The Economist in London, UK, and a regular contributor to CBC Radio programs, where she comments on issues at the intersection of sports and politics. Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, Foreign Policy, Women in the World, OpenCanada.org, and online at CBCNews.ca. She won the European Union Delegation to Canada’s Young Journalist Award in 2015 for a story she reported on North African refugees squatting in Turin’s abandoned Olympic village.
Twitter: @a_coletta
Clips - Luke DeCoste
Luke has spent the last decade managing money and relationships at the centre of business and government. He has promoted foreign investment, negotiated agreements on resource projects, and helped grow Aboriginal investment trusts. Luke leveraged his graduate work on public – private partnerships to help manage more than a quarter billion dollars in capital spending. Through these experiences, Luke has developed a keen interest in what happens when government and business go head to head. Luke holds an MA in Public and International Affairs, and a Bachelor of Engineering. He grew up in Nova Scotia, but after working and studying in Asia, Africa, and five Canadian provinces, he currently calls Yukon home.
Twitter: @lukedecoste
dlsphjournalism.tumblr.com/tagged/lukedecoste
Clips - Frank Elbers
Frank Elbers is a freelance journalist specialised in reporting on human rights, migration, and displacement. He is currently also a visiting fellow at the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World at Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut, where he teaches courses on gender and human rights, and does research on the effects of displacement on gender relations among urban refugees in Amman, Beirut, and Cairo. A political scientist by training, he has worked in human rights, transitional justice, and international development in post-communist Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, West Africa, and Southeast Asia over the past 25 years. He has published on political extremism, migration, gender equality, citizenship, and human rights. Frank’s stories and commentary have appeared in CBC News, National Post, Dallas Morning News, taz, and De Volkskrant, among others.
Twitter: @franckelbers
www.frankelbers.info
Clips - Sandro Frenguelli
Sandro Frenguelli holds an H.B.A and an M.A. in Criminology and Socio-legal Studies from the University of Toronto. He is interested in reporting on how private military contractors and private security firms function in conflict environments. Sandro’s graduate work examined accountability mechanisms for non-state actors and he has written about the EU’s use of such actors to guard its borders. He has lived in Italy and speaks fluent English and Italian. Sandro has taught upper-level high school international law and has translated major criminological publications for professors at the University of Bologna.
Clips - Lauren Heuser
Lauren Heuser is a freelance journalist and lawyer. She writes a weekly column for the National Post, and is a member of Flex Legal Network, an association of freelance lawyers. Lauren holds a J.D. from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law; a B.A. (Hons.) in Literature and Political Science from the University of Manitoba; and is a former Fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs Fellowship in Global Journalism. Lauren previously worked as an associate in the business law group of an international law firm, where she practiced primarily in the areas of energy and environmental law, regulatory law, and project finance.
Twitter: @laureneheuser
Clips - Ryan Hoskins
Ryan has practiced family and emergency room medicine in a wide array of locations in rural and remote parts of Canada, as well as in Cuba, Kenya and Venezuela. He has an MSc in Health Economics and Policy from the London School of Economics as well as a Diploma in Tropical Medicine from the London School of Hygiene. He is fascinated by the politics and economics of healthcare – exploring the impact of trade relations and diplomacy on health, as well as the different responses internationally towards the challenges of smoking, unhealthy eating, health insurance, pharmaceutical costs and population control.
Clips - Joelene Huber
Dr. Joelene Huber is a medical doctor (MD/PhD), broadcast medical journalist, and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. A graduate of both the Munk School of Global Affairs fellowship in Journalism and Seneca’s Broadcast Journalism program, she has become one of Canada’s leading media health experts, providing knowledge translation of health information through television, web, and print media. Dr. Huber is a regular health contributor on CBC national television news network. As a medical journalist and health expert, she has contributed nearly 70 health segments on major television networks (CBC, CTV, CityTV, Global, CHCH, Rogers), and written columns for The Globe and Mail, CBC, Today’s Parent magazine, and Inside Soccer magazine, and has published several medical research articles, presented at numerous medical conferences and is an author in two medical textbooks. Dr. Huber was recently nominated for an Ontario Premier’s Award in the category ‘most outstanding recent graduate’ for her contribution to health promotion through multimedia medical journalism. Dr. Huber holds an MD from McMaster University, an MSc from McGill University, and a PhD in Medical Science and Neuroscience from the University of Toronto. She completed her pediatric residency training at the Hospital for Sick Children and subspecialty fellowship training at Holland-Bloorview Rehabilitation Centre. She works as a staff academic physician at St. Michael’s Hospital, is an associate staff at SickKids hospital, and is part of the Inner City Health Pediatric Outreach Team, providing specialized medical care in Toronto’s Regent Park. Dr. Huber has been a consultant several times on behalf Sick Kids Hospital International to help develop pediatric medical clinics in the Middle East.
Twitter: @drjoelenehuber
www.drjoelenehuber.com
Www.uberhealthykids.com
YouTube channel: https://m.youtube.com/user/uberhealthykids
Instagram: @dr.joelene.huber
Clips - Keren Landman
Keren Landman is a physician trained in internal medicine and pediatrics with specialty training in infectious diseases, and is a graduate of the Epidemiology Intelligence Service of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a researcher, she has focused on the prevention and treatment of HIV and malaria in resource-poor countries. She most recently worked as a medical epidemiologist in the Bureau of Communicable Diseases at the New York City health department. She writes about the complex social ecology around infectious diseases and major public health events in both the developing world and developed countries.
Twitter: @landmanspeaking
http://www.kerenlandman.com/portfolio.html
Clips - Aline Lara Rezende
Aline Lara Rezende is a contemporary art and design curator, designer, and writer. She has worked for the National Art Center, Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Sao Paulo Biennale, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Vitra Design Museum, Basel. As a Research Coordinator for MoMA R&D, she worked with Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Design and director of MoMA R&D, researching innovations, and developing strategic projects for the future of museums. Originally from Brazil and currently based in Vienna, she was awarded Japanese Government Scholarship for six years, and holds a MA and PhD in Art and Design from the University of Tsukuba. Her writings have appeared in exhibition catalogues, and museum brochures, on topics ranging from Brazilian Contemporary Art, to Japanese Fashion and Architecture, and African Contemporary Design. She is currently collaborating with DAMn magazine, writing about contemporary design.
Twitter: @alinini
Clips - Kristina Ljubanovic
Kristina is a journalist and former Munk School of Global Affairs fellow based in Toronto, Canada. She covers architecture, design, art, culture, and urban issues, and has written for The Atlantic CityLab, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, TVO.org, and has appeared on CBC Radio. Kristina is also an exhibition designer at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and core faculty at the Institute Without Boundaries at George Brown College. She received her Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto in 2006.
Twitter: @kljub
http://cargocollective.com/kristinaljubanovic
Clips - Sarah Reid
Sarah Reid is a journalist specializing in politics and the economy. Her work has appeared in publications including The Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, Boston Globe, TVO, iPolitics, and on radio. Prior to her career in journalism, Sarah worked in communications and public policy at the Business Council of Canada, one of Canada’s most prominent business advocacy groups. She also spent several years working for the federal government in research and policy roles, both in Ottawa and at the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C. Sarah holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia and a Masters of Science in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Twitter: @sarahcreid
www.sarahreid.info
Clips - Sami Siva
Sami Siva is an experienced freelance photojournalist now covering his stories in written and broadcast media too. He has worked for the New York Times, TIME Magazine, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, CNN, and Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders – covering India, the Caucasus and Afghanistan among other regions. He is also a three times recipient of a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Based in Eastern Europe, Sami covers stories related to Russia’s foreign policy in the region and the way local populations are responding to growing tensions.
Twitter: @samisiva
Instagram: samisiva
www.samisiva.com
Clips - Linda van der Horst
Linda van der Horst is a lawyer specializing in litigation with additional experience in human rights law. She has worked in Taiwan, Hong Kong and London, and has studied in Beijing and Singapore. Linda discovered her passion for writing whilst doing field research in rural China for an MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, and has been writing on the Greater China region since. Linda also has degrees in law and liberal arts & sciences from Utrecht University, and she speaks several languages – amongst which an advanced level of Mandarin Chinese – in addition to her native Dutch.
Twitter: @LindaXiaXian
Clips - Ola Wam
Ola Wam holds an M.A. in Security Studies from University of Birmingham, and an M.Phil. from the University in Oslo for graduate research on how Shell manages political risk in the Niger Delta. He has written on issues relating to oil, regional geopolitics, and civil conflict in the Middle East, which has been published in The Global Intelligence, Le Monde Diplomatique English Edition (online), and several Norwegian newspapers. He currently works as a freelance journalist focusing on oil politics, particularly on the geopolitical impact of the shale gas and tight oil revolution on the Middle East.
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Class of 2015
- Brooke Binowski
Brooke Binowski is an award-winning freelance reporter and writer. Binowski began as a general-interest and breaking-news roving reporter and presenter, but now has a strong interest in immigration, indigenous rights, and the concept of decolonization and environmentalism. She has reported from locations as far-flung as Guam, the Alaskan Arctic and Argentina.
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Twitter: @brooklynmarie - Sophie Chamas
Sophie Chamas is a freelance writer currently based in Dubai, and co-editor of the Middle East-focused online publishing platform Mashallah News. Her work has been featured in Al Jazeera English, The Outpost, REORIENT, Egypt Independent, The State, and Jadaliyya, among other publications. She was the recipient of the 2012 Anna Lindh Mediterranean Journalist Award in the category of new media. She has a Master’s degree from New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.
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Twitter: @SophsC87 - Kimberly Curtis
Kimberly Curtis is a freelance journalist and lawyer based in Washington, DC, covering migration, human rights, humanitarian aid and international law.
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Website: www.kimberlyjcurtis.com
Twitter: @curtiskj - Jovana Drinjakovic
Jovana Drinjakovic is a neuroscientist whose research over the last decade focused on understanding how the brain is made. Drinjakovic was born and raised in Serbia but left her troubled homeland in the aftermath of Balkan conflicts to follow her passion for science. She dived into cutting edge neuroscience research at Cambridge University to do her PhD. Following her curiosity for all things microscopic, Drinjakovic has gained a deep understanding of molecular and cell biology by working in a number of top international research institutions.
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Twitter: @JDrinjakovic - Devina Gupta
Devina Gupta is the principal correspondent on India Today, and a senior correspondent and news reader with India’s leading English News Channel TIMES NOW. She has worked for over five years in the Indian broadcast news industry, and loves a high-speed 24-hour news environment. She has reported extensively on Indian politics, social issues, and government policies. Her passion to raise awareness about local issues led her to pursue a Master’s in journalism.
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Twitter: @dg86 - XN Iraki
Kenya-born XN Iraki is a former Fulbright scholar and assistant professor at Kentucky State University. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi Business School, and has been an adjunct lecturer at Strathmore Business School in Nairobi. He has been a research fellow with National Economic and Social Council (NESC), the government of Kenya think tank. He is a columnist with The Standard, Kenya oldest newspaper. Iraki has also trained journalists and economists in Kenya and Ghana for the UK based Thompson Foundation.
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Twitter: @XN_Iraki - Nousha Kabawat
Nousha Kabawat is the founder and director of Project Amal ou Salam and director of the Syrian Center for Dialogue, Reconciliation, and Peace in Toronto. Her work has been recognized by the United States Institute of Peace, and featured in National Geographic, BBC News, USA Today, and the Peace and Conflict Monitor. She holds a master’s degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.
Clips - Christopher Labos
Christopher Labos is a cardiologist and epidemiologist trained at McGill University, Montreal. He writes regularly for the Montreal Gazette and Maclean’s magazine. He is also a regular contributor to CJAD radio in Montreal, as well as CBC Radio and CBC Television. He co-hosts a medical podcast: “The Body of Evidence.”
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Websites: www.bodyofevidence.ca; https://www.youtube.com/c/thebodyofevidence
Twitter: @drlabos - Michelle Leslie
Michelle Leslie is a journalist, meteorologist, and former Munk School of Global Affairs fellow, focusing on issues of environment, energy, climate, people, health, and weather.
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Website: https://michelleleslie.contently.com
Twitter: @MichelleMLeslie - Campbell MacDiarmid
Campbell MacDiarmid is a New Zealand freelance journalist writing about the Middle East from his base in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. Recently, he has reported for USA Today, Al Jazeera, Vice News, Maclean’s magazine, and other outlets.
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Website: campbellmacdiarmid.com
Twitter: @CampbellMacD - Shanifa Nasser
Shanifa Nasser has an M.A. in Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto. Rather than continue in the world of academia, she recently switched gears and decided to leverage her background to address a gap in the way that religion is covered in the news – between the way that it is presented by talking heads and lived by people every day. Her stories span themes as varied as radicalization, immigration, end-of-life issues, and human rights.
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Twitter: @shanifanasser - Tara Paterson
Tara Paterson is a Rhodes Scholar, and a MSc candidate in geography at the University of Oxford. Previously, she completed her Master’s of Public Policy at Oxford. Her writing interests include gender and sexuality, Canadian politics, and climate justice. Paterson has extensive experience in the non-profit sector where she worked with local and international organizations in the areas of youth political engagement, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
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Twitter: @TaraPater - Shafiq Qaadri
Dr. Shafiq Qaadri, MD, MPP, is a family physician, lecturer, and Member of Provincial Parliament; he has broadcast more than 1000 radio and TV shows, and published more than 700 articles—and counting…
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Website: www.doctorQ.ca; www.ShafiqQaadri.com - Marcel Sangsari
Marcel Sangsari is a writer, journalist, and personal historian with interests in ethics, social economy, international affairs, sports, and sustainable development. Marcel founded (’17) a writing and creative communications agency, Monsieur Marcel Communications Classics, after four years of work – in Ottawa and Europe – for Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and doctoral studies in ethics and political economy at Carleton University.
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Twitter: @MSangsari
http://monsieurmarcel.ca/ - Maria Vanta
Maria Vanta completed an MA in Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. Her interest in organized crime and corruption translated into a dissertation commenting on the culture of corruption by comparing several instances of it and their treatment in developed and developing countries. A keen interest in travel has allowed her to further her understanding of organized crime through her work with a number of non-profit organizations geared towards the elimination of human trafficking in Romania.
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Twitter: @m_vanta - Samar Warsi
Samar Warsi is a lawyer licensed in New York and Texas. She currently practices IP law, and works as a freelance journalist covering legal tech stories.
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Website: www.samarwarsi.com
Twitter: @swarsi
Class of 2014
- Michelle Adelman
Michelle Adelman is a Toronto-based, freelance journalist writing on the environment and public health. Michelle Adelman is a graduate in architecture at the University of Waterloo.
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Website: http://michelleadelman.ca
Twitter: @michelleadelman - Evelyn Boychuk
Evelyn Boychuk completed her BSc degree with a major in Zoology at the University of Calgary. During that time, she researched the effects of low oxygen and low temperature on the neurobiology of pond snails. She then completed her MSc in Physiology and Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario, in 2013. Her research focused on the physiology of low-temperature tolerance in sub-alpine beetles. Boychuk’s goal is to bring her passion for animal biology out of academia and into the public eye.
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Twitter: @EvelynBoychuk - Rachel Browne
Rachel Browne is a correspondent for VICE News in Toronto who focuses mainly on human rights, immigration, and breaking news. She also appears in VICE News documentaries as well as segments for Daily VICE, VICE Canada’s daily news and culture show. Her previous work has appeared in Maclean’s magazine, the National Post, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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Twitter: @rp_browne - Meera Dalal
Meera Dalal is pursuing her specialty training in Internal Medicine at Vancouver General Hospital. She has a special interest in knowledge translation of medical information into practical use and hopes to use journalism and social media to engage health professionals and empower the public. She is a strong advocate for patients and underserved communities and has a passion for medical education. She is an avid proponent in the intersection of the arts and medicine and her leadership in this arena has been recognized with the Rachael Bagnall Arts in Medicine Award. Dalal is an accomplished dancer and writer—she has written for Al-Jazeera and ABC—and currently works as a reporter for CBC News Vancouver.
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Twitter: @DrMeeraDalal - Alia Dharssi
Alia Dharssi currently reports for the National Post and Calgary Herald with a focus on immigration as the 2016 Michelle Lang Fellow, and is on the editorial team for the The Global Urbanist. She came to the Global Journalism Fellowship after finishing graduate studies in international development at Oxford, and has since written about international development, business, urban affairs, and human rights for the Guardian, the National Post, the Financial Post, the Times of India, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, VICE, and Ozy, among other publications.
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Website: https://aliadharssi.com/
Twitter: @alia_d - Jordan Fletcher
Jordan Fletcher has practised business litigation at an international law firm, clerked at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and worked on land rights and anti-torture projects in India, Central Asia, and East Africa. He received his law degree from New York University. Fletcher is also a graduate of the radio and multimedia program at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. His documentary about racism and a double murder in a southern Maine mill town was a finalist for Best New Artist at the Chicago-based 2012 Third Coast International Audio Festival, and he was a contributor to Sandy Storyline, Winner of the award for best transmedia project at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.
Clips - Shelina Jaffer
Shelina Jaffer obtained an MA in Muslim Cultures from the Aga Khan University (International). She worked as an educator in Japan, England, Lebanon, and Canada, and assisted with curriculum research as an intern with the flagship Aga Khan Academy in Kenya. As a result of her travels and work experience, Jaffer has had the opportunity to interact with, and experience, a broad range of cultures and religious faiths. This has sparked her interest in reporting on the role of faith at the crossroads of the modern world and ancient faiths and cultures.
Clips - Marta Lillo
Marta Lillo is a journalist from Chile, and holds an MA in Globalization and Development from the University of Warwick, England. She has specialized in business journalism, first at UPI’s Chile field office, and then at Diario Financiero, one of Chile’s leading financial and business newspapers. At DF, she went from being an International business news desk reporter to assistant editor at the Financial news desk, and later was deputy editor for the Features section. She became Latin American ESG correspondent for Morgan Stanley Capital Investments (MSCI) Sustainability Indices. She is also a former chief website editor at INACAP, the largest technical higher education institution in Chile.
Clips - Richard Matern
Richard Matern is the Senior Manager of Research at Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto. At Daily Bread he is responsible for the development and implementation of a research program to support its government relations strategy. Matern and his colleagues at Daily Bread have produced a number of reports on poverty and hunger in the GTA, including Daily Bread Food Bank’s annual Who’s Hungryreport. Matern was also part of the research team that developed the Ontario Deprivation Index, the first poverty measure of its kind in Canada. In addition to his work at Daily Bread, Matern was a case author and research assistant for the first MBA-level Canadian Business History course at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
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Twitter: @RichardMatern - Sophie Muller
Sophie Muller is an international development professional working in non-profits, the UN Development Program, and the World Bank. A French national, Muller is passionate about the Arab world, having lived and worked in Egypt, Morocco, and Syria. She holds a MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. Muller has worked on a wide range of socio-economic issues: she led the design of the UN development strategy in pre-war Syria, and wrote the final evaluation report of the World Bank’s Country Assistance Strategy in Tunisia for the years 2004 to 2008. She currently works on governance and institutional reforms with post-Arab Spring governments.
Clips - Anna Nicolaou
Anna Nicolaou has worked in the financial sector, after graduating from McGill University in Montreal with a BA in Economics and Political Science. Her most recent role was as senior economic research analyst for a high-frequency trading firm. Nicolaou’s experience includes stints at the U.S. Department of Commerce and New York State Division of Human Rights. Nicolaou won an Overseas Press Club Foundation Fellowship in 2014, which funded an internship in the Brussels bureau of Reuters. She was the recipient of the Standard & Poor’s Award for Economic and Business Reporting.
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Twitter: @annaknicolaou - Ashley Renders
Ashley Renders is a freelance journalist and editor based in Toronto who travels frequently to cover stories for Canadian and international publications. She was previously an associate producer at VICE Canada, and assistant editor and senior writer of Corporate Knights—a web service and magazine that covers corporate social responsibility around the world. Ashley had researched European climate change activism for her graduate degree at the University of Utrecht. She brought those insights to us, where she covered big debates shaping the natural resources industry for the National Post, Reuters-affiliated Trust.org, and VICE Canada. During the Fellowship, Ashley broke news about the Canadian mining industry for the National Post, and, with Alia Dharssi, ran a major investigation into U.S. oil companies’ royalties, which appeared on Reuters.
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Twitter: @iamrenders - Chethan Sathya
Dr. Chethan Sathya is a surgeon, journalist, and researcher who has a passion for reporting on healthcare issues surrounding surgery. He is currently finishing his general surgical training at the University of Toronto, and will be specializing in pediatric surgery at Northwestern University in Chicago next year. Dr. Sathya writes for major media outlets such as CBC, the Toronto Star, CNN, andScientific American.
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Twitter: @drchethansathya - Seema Yasmin
Seema Yasmin, a physician epidemiologist who served as a disease detective in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, has investigated epidemics in maximum-security prisons, American Indian reservations, and healthcare facilities. Since graduating from Cambridge University Medical School, Yasmin has worked in Botswana, Kenya, England, and the U.S. As a clinical professor, Yasmin directs a course on Public Health. She also holds a degree in Biochemistry, and is a board member for various non-profits.
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Twitter: @DoctorYasmin
Class of 2013
- Kristen Courtney
Kristen Courtney came to FGJ from the Library of the Parliament of Canada, where she was an Environmental Law Analyst assigned to be legal researcher and writer for the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans and the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. She’s a member of the Law Societies of B.C. and Upper Canada; has her JD and a Certificate in Environmental Studies from the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. While she was there she won the Fogler Rubinoff Prize in Municipal and Planning Law. Kristen has a very close eye on developments in environmental and natural resources law.
Clips - Michael Kempa
Michael Kempa is a criminology professor with the spirit of an investigative journalist, focused on questions of police authority, corruption, and justice. An investigative feature on the RCMP for Walrus magazine received an Canadian Magazine Association honourable mention for Best Investigative Feature (2015), and he was honoured to receive the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Social Sciences Award for Activities in the Media (2016), recognising his efforts to collaborate with the media to advance the research mission and the public interest.
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Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-anthony-kempa-103a0426
Twitter: @michaelakempa - Burton Lim
Burton Lim received a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Toronto, and is an assistant curator of mammalogy at the Royal Ontario Museum. He has an interest in journalistic reporting on biological discovery with an emphasis on bridging the gap between communicating academic research to the general public through various forms of media, including print and social.
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Website: http://www.rom.on.ca/en/collections-research/rom-staff/burton-lim
Twitter: @burtonlim - Ali Morrow
Ali Morrow is a strategic planner on social issue campaigns for major clients. Academically, she has an MA in Professional Communications from the University of Western Sydney, and a post-graduate certificate in corporate communications, from Seneca College. She has spent a number of years designing and managing global Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns and social issue campaigns both at J. Walter Thompson and at Manifest. Ali is interested in exploring the broader issues around corporate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility.
Clips - Raja Moussaoui
Currently based in London, UK, Raja Moussaoui trained as an architect, and works as a designer and freelance print and video journalist, telling stories about design, city building, and the social impacts of both. Raja is one half of the creative team behind In-Context, a national video documentary series and online platform about contemporary architecture, made in partnership with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
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Website: www.rajamoussaouiworks.com
Twitter: @RajaMoussaoui - Santiago Ortega
Santiago Ortega is a Civil Engineering Professor at Universidad EIA, near Medellín, Colombia. He focuses his research in water, climate change, and renewable energy. He is part of La Ciudad Verde, a non-profit citizens collective that advocates for urban sustainability.
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Website: https://santiagortega.contently.com/
Twitter handle: @sortegarango - Alyson Rowe
Alyson Rowe was senior manager, community development, at War Child Canada – in the course of which she led their social media strategies shot and produced video with refugees in the South Sudan, Eastern DRC, and the Ethiopian Eritrean border. Academically, Alyson has a Bachelor of Educational Studies and Etudes Quebecoises et Francaise from Bishop’s University, and completed the Rotman Initiative for Women in Business at U of T. Alyson is well positioned to cover important changes in the not-for-profit sector, development aid and philanthropy.
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Website - Stephen Starr
From Istanbul, Stephen Starr has been covering Turkey and Syria for The Irish Times, and other outlets since finishing the fellowship in 2013. He is working on expanding his reporting into cities, environment, and outdoor life issues.
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Website: stephenstarr.info
Twitter: @stephenstarr - Zinta Zommers
Zinta Zommers, a Rhodes Scholar with a PhD degree in zoology from Oxford U., currently works with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya. As leader of UNEP’s Climate Early Warning Programme, Zinta is working to improve the delivery of hazard warnings to the most vulnerable. Her book, Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change, was published by Springer in 2014.
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