My 19 years at The New York Times shaped me into the versatile, passionate professional I am today. Whether teaming with colleagues or teaching students, I know that communication is key.
To that end, I have three simple rules: Be Kind. Be Clear. Be Curious.
That’s why I thrive on learning new skills and refashioning older ones. I started my career as a sports journalist, landing at the Times to cover tennis, Olympics, and the NBA. In 2008, I published a critically acclaimed book about the New York City Marathon, A Race Like No Other: 26.2 Miles Through the Streets of New York (Harper). When I returned from book leave, I joined the breaking news desk – proving that sportswriters can do anything, and quickly. From there, I covered cops, Brooklyn, and in 2015 I became the Metro immigration reporter. This beat became critically important in 2017 when I wrote about the local impact of Trump’s capricious immigration policies.
After taking a buyout from The Times, I switched from newsrooms to a nonprofit. For two years, I piloted a journalism program at Define American, which works with media to humanize the narrative around immigration. There, I mentored journalists and developed industry guides for responsible immigration reporting, conducting workshops for Poynter, The Associated Press, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and Report for America. I also led the reporting and co-directed the research for a case study on local immigration news coverage in the state of North Carolina.
I believe that local news is crucial to saving democracy. And I firmly believe in giving early-career journalists the support they need so that they can help sustain the industry.
As an instructor for pre-college students at The School of The New York Times, I teach both sports storytelling and local reporting, with a focus on immigrant communities. During the first pandemic spring, I taught the graduate-level class of “Gender and Migration” at Columbia Journalism School. I have been a guest lecturer at Princeton and New York University, and I am currently consulting with the City University of New York’s Initiative on Immigration and Education to help their teachers craft Op-Eds.
In my spare time, I like to cook Italian food and cycle outside New York City.
TELEVISION APPEARANCES
