Class of 2015

Abeer Allam is the Gulf correspondent for the Financial Times, based in the United Arab Emirates. She has covered political and economic developments across the Middle East with a focus on political Islam, the economy, women’s issues, human rights and social media. Since joining the FT as a correspondent in 2008, she has written about topics ranging from political and social issues to the Arab uprisings in her homeland of Egypt and in Yemen. She previously worked as a reporter for Bloomberg News and The New York Times, where she covered the Iraq War, politics and economic developments. At Harvard, Allam will study the impact of social media on accelerating reforms in closed societies and how the 2011 uprisings in Arab countries have influenced Saudi Arabia. She also will examine the role of religion in Western democracies. @abeerallamj

Melissa Bailey is managing editor of the New Haven Independent, a pioneering, not-for-profit news website all about New Haven, Connecticut. Since 2006, she has helped the Independent grow from an under-the-radar blog into a national leader among new media startups that are changing the face of local journalism. She has covered New Haven’s nationally watched school-reform drive in depth, with her stories also appearing in Time, The Christian Science Monitor, The Hechinger Report and The Huffington Post. Bailey is a former Knight-McCormick Leadership Fellow and an active member of the Education Writers Association. She previously was the lead reporter for the Middletown (Conn.) Press. Bailey will study how online learning is redefining higher education, with a particular interest in competency-based programs and the impact on the nation’s class divide. @mmbaily

Gabe Bullard is the director of news and editorial strategy at the public radio station WFPL News in Louisville, Kentucky. He started his career online as an editorial assistant for a St. Louis politics blog before joining WFPL as a reporter. He later served as online editor and news director and in his current role, oversees all aspects of the station and its website. Under his guidance, the station’s web traffic has grown significantly and the station has become a local news leader. Bullard has won numerous awards for his work and the station’s reporting on LGBT issues has earned national recognition. He plans to study the changing perceptions of American history in politics and culture.  @gbullard

Henry Chu is the London bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. He has been a staff writer at the paper since 1990, covering politics, transportation and education before joining the foreign staff in 1998. He has reported from more than 30 countries, including postings in China, Brazil and India. In London, he directs the paper’s coverage of Europe and has written on the euro debt crisis, regional separatism and the recent papal transition. He was part of the teams that won Pulitzer Prizes for the paper’s coverage of the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California and a street shootout in North Hollywood. Chu will study the rise of a global middle class and why, in major developing countries such as China and India, the group has not become the engine of significant political change that it has been elsewhere. @HenryHChu

Wahyu Dhyatmika is an investigative reporter for Tempo magazine in Jakarta, Indonesia. He covers political and social issues at the national level and regularly reports on parliament, the attorney general’s office, the military and various governmental departments. He has written about a wide range of issues including the guerrilla war in Aceh; the links between a suspicious coal mine company and elite police commanders; and a land-grabbing agriculture project. He holds a master degree in journalism from Westminster University, London and received both a Chevening Scholarship and a Jefferson Fellowship. He teaches writing and reporting at the University of Indonesia. At Harvard, Dhyatmika will study how digital media can provide the platform for a collaborative network of independent investigative local and national media supported by crowdsourcing. @WahyuDhyatmika

Kitty Eisele is supervising senior editor at NPR’s Morning Edition. During her 15 years at NPR, she has served as a writer, editor and producer, including work as supervising editor for “Weekend All Things Considered.” She began her career with filmmaker Ken Burns and received an Emmy Award for her work as a producer on “The Civil War” series. She also has contributed to radio and film documentaries on political and cultural figures and is a past fellow of the Japan Society, the French-American Foundation and the Salzburg Seminar. She teaches a journalism seminar every other year at Georgetown University. Eisele will examine the ways in which both journalists and citizens use a visual vocabulary, what that means for radio, and how digital storytelling is shaping the way we see news. She also will study the early history of slavery in the United States and the portrayal of aging in visual culture. @radiokitty

Farnaz Fassihi is senior Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, based in Beirut, Lebanon. She has lived overseas since 2002, covering wars and uprisings in the region. She served as the Journal’s Baghdad bureau chief and is the author of a book about the Iraq War, “Waiting for An Ordinary Day.” Previously, she was a staff reporter for The Newark Star-Ledger and The Providence Journal. She has won numerous awards for her work, including two Overseas Press Club Awards, a Robert Kennedy Award, The Taylor Family Award, The Payne Award and a Sigma Delta Chi Award. Fassihi will study the rise of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, focusing on how they and other Islamic militants on both sides of the sectarian Sunni-Shiite divide are utilizing modern technology to organize, recruit, spread their influence and crush opponents.

Irina Gordienko is a correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. For the past eight years she has covered the armed conflict in all North Caucasus regions, including Dagestan and Chechnya. Her articles have focused on the federal policies in that region; the root causes and consequences of Islamist resistance; and individual stories of rebels and radicals, including an investigation of suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month stay in Dagestan prior to the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013. Gordienko is completing a book about Dagestan and regularly contributes to the Russian website Caucasus Politics and the Italian website Observatorio. She will study the role of jihadist ideas in armed conflict in Dagestan and assess their potential: either dramatic radicalization and marginalization or moderation and focus on Islamic society.

Jason Grotto is an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where he has written about the city’s pension crisis, the legacy of herbicides used during the Vietnam War, nonprofit hospitals and the fate of the largest demolition of public housing in U.S. history. He specializes in using documents, databases, GIS mapping and other analytical tools to expose breakdowns in public institutions and government programs. Prior to joining the Tribune, he worked for the investigative reporting team at The Miami Herald, where he exposed corrupt development deals, sentencing disparities, breakdowns in the Florida’s clemency process and a flawed school construction program. Grotto pans to study finance, accounting and economics to sharpen his investigative reporting skills. @JasonGrotto

David Jiménez is the Asia bureau chief for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. He has contributed to CNN, the BBC, The Guardian, The Toronto Star, The Sunday Times, Esquire and other publications. Jiménez has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Kashmir and East Timor; popular uprisings in the Philippines, Burma and Nepal; and the great tsunamis of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. He also has reported twice from inside North Korea. Jiménez is the author of four books including “Children of the Monsoon,” an award-winning collection of essays about the changing face of Asia as experienced by some of its youngest citizens. Jiménez will examine the role of foreign correspondents in the digital era and the development of new platforms to extend the reach of freelancers’ work through the Internet, especially in developing countries and authoritarian regimes. @DavidJimenezTW

Seung Ryun Kim is a deputy editor at Channel A, a new cable television station based in Seoul, South Korea run by the Dong-A Media Group. Before making the switch to television in 2012, Kim spent 16 years as a print journalist with the Dong-A Ilbo daily. He served as Washington correspondent for the paper and covered domestic politics and the South Korean president’s office from his home base. At Channel A, he hosts a daily talk show, is an assistant editor on the political desk and anchors a prime-time show on Sunday evenings. He is a graduate of Seoul National University and Columbia University. Kim will study national security with a focus on U.S. policy in China, Japan and Korea, and news industry transformation, including media management and marketing.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a columnist for The New York Times Magazine and science editor at BoingBoing.net who covers how science interacts with society and culture. Her work has appeared in Discover, Popular Science and New Scientist; on websites including Scientific American and National Geographic News; and in the anthology “The Best Science Writing Online 2012.” She also is author of the book “Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us,” about the U.S. electric grid and the future of energy. Koerth-Baker is a board member of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. Koerth-Baker plans to study the process, history and ethics of medical development and human testing, with a particular focus on the flu vaccine. @maggiekb1

Celeste LeCompte writes from San Francisco and Guangzhou, China, about innovation, the environment and entrepreneurs. She also is the startup columnist for Robotics Business Review and co-founder of Climate Confidential, an experiment in reader-funded journalism about the intersection of environmental issues and technological innovation. Previously, she was the managing editor and director of product for Gigaom Research, one of the first subscription products offered by a major blog network. Her writing has appeared in Scientific American, Smithsonian, Outside, BusinessWeek and The New York Times. Her experience includes working as a researcher, product manager and content strategist. On campus, LeCompte will study motivations for news media consumption, with an eye toward developing media business models that reward reader-centric reporting and distribution. @celrae

Luo Jieqi is a senior legal reporter for China’s Caixin Media Group. She previously worked as legal reporter at Caijing Magazine. She has covered a number of complex legal and criminal issues including official corruption, social conflict, economic crimes, illegal labor camps, prison abuse and organ dealing. Luo also writes about the stories behind the news and shares her personal perspectives as a journalist in her blog, which offers readers rare insight into the way censorship works in China. Her writing has attracted a large following and in 2011, she was recognized as Caixin.com’s most-read reporter. At Harvard, she will study how investigative journalism in China can contribute to the public decision-making process.

Ann Marimow is a reporter at The Washington Post who covers legal affairs and the criminal justice system. She has written about government and politics in New Hampshire, California and Maryland for the Concord Monitor, the San Jose Mercury News and the Post. Marimow has reported on corruption scandals involving government officials and the prison system, in addition to the reach of law enforcement in the digital age. Her work has been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California and the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association. Marimow will study the law and its intersection with politics and journalism, looking at conflicts between U.S. national security interests, privacy protections and press freedoms. @amarimow

Denise-Marie Ordway is a senior reporter who covers higher education at the Orlando Sentinel. She previously worked as a correspondent at The Philadelphia Inquirer and wrote news for a newspaper and two radio stations in Central America. She has won several top journalism awards for her education reporting and has covered topics ranging from the problems caused by mold in public schools to the plight of migrant workers. She also led a team of reporters covering violent hazing in the Florida A&M University marching band, work that was chosen as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013. Ordway will study performance-based funding models for state universities to understand their effect on instructional quality, tuition rates and degree completion and how these models affect universities with large minority enrollments, including historically black institutions. @DeniseOrdway

Miguel Paz is a Chilean journalist, former Knight ICFJ Fellow and president of the Poderomedia Foundation, an organization that promotes the use of new technologies to rethink journalism and foster transparency and digital innovation in Latin American news organizations. He also is the founder and CEO of Poderopedia.org, a data journalism platform that maps who’s who in business and politics in the region. Paz is the creator of the Hacks/Hackers chapter in Santiago and the Iberoamerican Data Journalism Handbook and is co-founder of OpenDataLatinoamerica.org; and a 2012 Start-Up Chile winner. He previously was deputy director of ElMostrador.cl, the first digital-only newspaper in Chile. Paz plans to study new data visualization models, innovative news startups, and civic media approaches to building quality sustainable journalism models. @miguelpaz

Laurie Penny is contributing editor at The New Statesman, editor-at-large at The New Inquiry and a contributor to The Guardian, Vice, The Nation and other publications. She has reported from the front lines of the new social movements in Britain, Canada, Greece, Spain, Egypt and the United States and is the author of four books on politics and culture, most recently “Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet.” She blogs at Penny Red and is a regular commentator on youth politics and women’s issues for the BBC. Penny graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English literature. At Harvard, she will study the economic history and theory of social movements, with an emphasis on digital culture and linguistics. @PennyRed

Vladimir Radomirovic is editor-in-chief of Pistaljka, an online investigative journalism outlet that he founded in 2010 to report on rampant corruption and cronyism in Serbia and to advocate for the protection of whistleblowers. As a reporter, he has covered topics ranging from sports to politics to war crimes. He was previously editor-in-chief of Reporter Weekly; news editor at B92 TV; and deputy editor-in-chief of the Politika daily. His work also has appeared in the Sunday Times. Radomirovic is the recipient of the Civic Courage Award and the annual Verica Barac Award given by the Serbian Anti-Corruption Council. Radomirovic will study business models of nonprofit organizations, the use of online and video tools for human rights activism and how whistleblowing organizations and media outlets can interact. @vladaradomirov

Elaine Díaz Rodríguez is a journalist, blogger and professor at the University of Havana. She has written about digital communication, tech infrastructure and the digital divide for Cuban media. As the digital editor at the Cuban bureau of Inter Press Service, she created Cuba 2.0, a project dedicated to increasing Cuban voices on the Internet. She also has directed multimedia work on sexual rights, gender violence and political issues. Díaz Rodríguez is the sole Cuban author for Global Voices Online and has blogged for La Polemica Digital (The Digital Controversy) about social problems and the politics of online expression in Cuba. She will study Internet-based models of journalism that could serve a plurality of voices in Cuban civil society, with a particular focus on political consensus building and national reconciliation. @elainediaz2003

Alicia Stewart is an editor at CNN.com. She joined the news organization in 2007 to launch and build Engage, the unit that identified and incorporated under-covered news stories into network coverage. She later worked as a senior producer/editor for the “In America” documentary unit and edited the award-winning In America blog. Prior to CNN, she worked as a documentary and online producer for the PBS series “African-American Lives.” Stewart has also produced news and developed programming at NBC, ABC, Oxygen and Women’s Entertainment Television. She began her career as a radio and television reporter/anchor in Columbia, Missouri. She intends to study entrepreneurial and editorial models for nuanced reporting on under-covered communities, with a focus on women and people of color. @aliciastew

Dawn Turner Trice is a columnist and specialist reporter for the Chicago Tribune who writes about people and issues that fly below the radar. She has written commentary for National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” as well as for television in Chicago, and was a regular analyst on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.” She moderated the Tribune’s online forum/blog “Exploring Race,” which she designed to encourage readers to discuss racial issues. Turner Trice also is the author of two novels, “Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven” and “An Eighth of August.” She also received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She will study creative nonfiction writing and screenwriting for documentary films. @dawnturnertrice

Johanna van Eeden is a senior newsroom executive and columnist with Media24, owned by the multinational media group Naspers. She began her career as a reporter, covering stories ranging from high fashion to violent protest action to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She later moved on to news management including posts as sports editor and lifestyle editor. In her current position as editor of the Volksblad Group in Bloemfontein, South Africa, she manages 10 print and online publications. She has received various awards for her work, including Journalist of the Year from the Pretoria National Press Club. Van Eeden plans to study strategic leadership in a digital economy, with a special focus on the importance of commercial skills in editorial management roles. @JohannavanEeden