About ME

I spent my childhood living between the Peruvian coast, the tumultuous city of Lima, and a quiet suburban village in Ohio. My homes were completely different. Bay Village, Ohio was a mostly white, small and peaceful town. Peru, and in particular Lima, was lively but, at times, dangerous.

In the outskirts of Lima, it is common to see breathtaking panoramas of pristine nature surrounded by poverty, and citizens living with substandard resources. In the United States, the disparities manifested themselves in multifaceted and at times more discreet manners.

 The clash of these cultures and the variance in the lives and worldviews of the people I met led me to ask questions about why these differences existed. It also led me to think about the influence that the government, organizations, and individuals can have on the everyday and future life of citizens.

 I obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science from North Carolina State University but found I did want to work in politics and preferred a more creative outlet that involved research and conversations. This is how I landed at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. There, I obtained a fellowship with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and graduated with a master’s degree in multiplatform journalism in the fall of 2019. 

The program helped me find an outlet to express my passion for storytelling and researching. I believe journalism can help improve societies and promote freedom and transparency. I think society becomes more just by sharing and giving voice to its members. Thorough research can also help find gaps, issues, and ideally highlight exemplary cases in governments and leaders’ programs, decisions, and management.

 My preferred medium is digital and print journalism, bolstered by data analysis. In investigative projects, data helps me spot patterns, clean datasets, summarize information and combine data sets — which allows me to find relationships. I analyze with R studio, google sheets and excel.

After graduation, I joined Searchlight New Mexico — a nonprofit investigative news organization — as a Roy W. Howard Fellow and reporter. I’ll be there until July 2022. Most recently, I have written articles on housing, state programs and migrant population rights. I am working with incredibly talented and colleagues and editors. While there, I hope to continue work to uncover public affair stories, pursue research into government accountability, learn best practices to target news for underrepresented minorities and continue expanding my storytelling skills.