El Salvador and Guatemala Fellows

The International Women’s Media Foundation selected 14 journalists from 7 different countries to participate in the Adelante reporting initiative from September 19 to October 7. The journalists began the Reporting Fellowship in Mexico City where they received Hostile Environment and First Aid Training. The training was followed by 12 days on the ground in San Salvador, El Salvador and Guatemala City, Guatemala. Visit our blog for updates from #IWMFfellows on the ground.

VICTORIA BOULOUBASIS AND MONICA WISE

VICTORIA BOULOUBASIS | FREELANCE JOURNALIST AND DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER

Twitter: @thisfeedsme | Instagram: @thisfeedsme

Victoria Bouloubasis is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker based in the southern United States. She is also the food editor at INDY Week in Durham, North Carolina, where she has worked as a chief contributor since 2008 covering food culture and politics, immigration, and worker rights. Her print features have appeared in The American Prospect, Guardian, Guernica and Modern Farmer. Her short documentary films have featured and won awards in festivals throughout the United States and on PBS.org. Bouloubasis has won two Association of Food Journalists multimedia awards for a photo essay collaboration on Karen refugee organic farmers in North Carolina and a short film on immigrant line cooks in fine dining. Bouloubasis is director of The Last Partera, a feature-length documentary film (in progress) about midwifery and feminism in rural Costa Rica.

MONICA WISE | FREELANCE VIDEO JOURNALIST AND DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER

Twitter: @MonicaWise01

Monica Wise Robles is a Colombian American documentary filmmaker and video journalist based in Mexico City. Wise focuses on sharing intimate stories of resistance that span borders and highlights feminist, LGBTI, indigenous, and migrant narratives. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, TeleSUR, OZY, AJ+, MSNBC, PBS, History Now, and NBC Latino. She worked on Pamela Yates/Skylight Pictures’ “500 Years,” a feature documentary following indigenous resistance in Guatemala, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. She was a producer and cinematographer on “The New Deciders,” a PBS special with Maria Hinojosa. She also helped produce and edit “Dictator in the Dock,” Skylight Pictures’ documentary series on the historic genocide trial of Guatemalan dictator Ríos Montt. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and has produced work from Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica, Chile, and Mexico.

ANITA POUCHARD SERRA AND KORAL CARBALLO

ANITA POUCHARD SERRA | FREELANCE DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER

Instagram: @anitapouchardserra

Anita Pouchard Serra is a documentary photographer, working between France and Latin America, after living several years in Argentina. After studying architecture and anthropology, she developed a self-taught photographic approach, collaborating with alternative media in Argentina. Pouchard has a strong transdisciplinary approach, using a variety of mediums like drawing, cartography, sound and text. As a storyteller, she prefers to live the stories rather than only see them. Her topics of focus are territories, social and politic empowerment and identity. She graduated in photojournalism from ARGRA Escuela and documentary photography from the National University of Buenos Aires. She currently participates in the program “Visual Storytelling and New Media” through the Pedro Meyer Foundation from Mexico and World Press Photo. She is a member of the French agency Studio Hans Lucas and ARGRA (Argentinian Professional Association of Photojournalists). Her work has been published in The New York Times Lens Blog, Wired, Les Inrocks magazine, Brando magazine and La Nación among others, as well as in various exhibits in France, Argentina, Uruguay. México and Spain.

KORAL CARBALLO | FREELANCE DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER

Instagram: @koralcarballo

Koral Carballo works in Mexico in the visual arts and documentary photography. Her work explores topics like identity, violence and territory. She has worked at the agency AVC Noticias in Veracruz and the international Agence France-Presse (AFP). Carballo graduated from the journalism school at the Autonomous Popular University of Puebla (UPAEP). She was awarded a scholarship to participate in the Seminar on Contemporary Photography at the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (CaSA) and the Centro de la Imagen (CI) of Mexico. Carballo was nominated for the Joop Swart World Press Photo Masterclass in Holland (2016), the World Press Photo Master Class Latin America (2015) and the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch (2017). Her work as a journalist has been published in various international media outlets, such as Le Monde, El País, The Washington Post, The Daily Post, TIME, Vice and El Universal (Venezuela). In 2014, together with a group of photojournalists, she founded the International Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Festival MIRAR DISTINTO in Xalapa, Veracruz. She is currently a member of the TRASLUZ collective in Mexico.

CORA CURRIER AND DANIELLE MACKEY

CORA CURRIER | PRINT JOURNALIST | THE INTERCEPT

Twitter: @coracurrier

Cora Currier is a reporter and editor with The Intercept, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism, where she writes about borders and immigration, human rights, and foreign policy. She has also covered national security, surveillance, and privacy issues, breaking stories from the Snowden Archive and contributing to The Intercept’s award-winning coverage of the Obama administration’s drone wars. Prior to joining The Intercept, Currier was a reporting fellow covering national security at ProPublica, a fact-checker at The New Yorker, and a researcher on several books of history and politics. Her reporting has appeared in the Nation, the Columbia Journalism Review, Al Jazeera America, Stars and Stripes and other outlets, and her essays have appeared in the New Republic, Bookforum, and elsewhere.

DANIELLE MACKEY | FREELANCE PRINT JOURNALIST

Twitter: @DanielleMackey

Danielle Mackey is a journalist who has spent most of the past decade in El Salvador. She is interested in long form, investigative storytelling about security and development in Central America and the U.S. Her work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Yorker online, The New Republic and Foreign Policy, among others. Mackey works part-time on the research teams of The Intercept and Field of Vision, and holds an M.A. in journalism and Latin American Studies from New York University. In the past, she has worked as a translator, teacher and horse trainer. Mackey is from Iowa.

MARIE D. DE JESÚS AND OLIVIA P. TALLET

MARIE D. DE JESÚS | PHOTOJOURNALIST | THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Instagram: @mariedennise

Marie D. De Jesús is a staff photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle where she has concentrated on developing relationships with the Houston’s diverse immigrant and marginalized communities telling their stories with depth, context and heart. De Jesús is currently working on several projects. The latest is the series “Out of Time,” an ongoing project about Juan Rodríguez, a Salvadorian immigrant and his struggle to stay in the United States with his American family. De Jesús also contributed to “Denied,” a six-month investigation that uncovered the systematic denial of special education services to children in Texas. In 2017, “Denied” won several major awards and was a Pulitzer finalist. De Jesús is a native of Puerto Rico. She graduated from the University of Central Florida, earning a Bachelor’s of Science in Photography in 2008. Prior to Houston, De Jesús worked for the Democrat and Chronicle located in Rochester, New York and the Victoria Advocate in Texas.

OLIVIA P. TALLET | PRINT JOURNALIST | THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Twitter: @oliviaptallet

Olivia P. Tallet is an award-winning, enterprise reporter working for the Houston Chronicle. She has been covering Latino issues in the United States for more than a decade, focusing on politics, immigration, economics and culture. She previously worked as correspondent and columnist for EFE News Services and as a managing editor for a daily newspaper in Venezuela. Tallet was born in Cuba, where she graduated with a B.A. degree in Journalism from the University of Havana, and has lived and work in several countries in Latin America and Asia. In 2017, Tallet has been working on a multiplatform narrative series chronicling the human cost of the new U.S. administration’s immigration policies, and on enterprise stories tracking the impact of such policies on international communities in Houston.

ELIZABETH MELIMOPOULOS AND ALISON LOUISE RAE

ELIZABETH MELIMOPOULOS | MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST | AL JAZEERA ENGLISH

Twitter: @Liz0210

Elizabeth Melimopoulos is a digital producer at Al Jazeera English (AJE), based in Doha, Qatar. She works closely with the editorial team and commissions content that complements and enriches Al Jazeera’s coverage. Melimopoulos is interested in Latin America and has published a variety of pieces tackling the current crisis in Venezuela. Two years ago, she was the content manager of Al Jazeera’s Digital Magazine. While part of the editorial team, she helped with the logistics that made the magazine a feasible product and was in charge of managing the magazine’s social media strategy. Melimopoulos holds a Bachelor of International Affairs from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City. She has also obtained a Certificate in International Affairs, issued by the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada.

ALISON LOUISE RAE | MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST | AL JAZEERA ENGLISH

Ali Rae is a digital senior producer at Al Jazeera English (AJE) in Doha, Qatar. Her current role sees her streamlining the social/web efforts of AJE Programmes, in conjunction with AJE Online’s social team, and working on a variety of long-form interactive projects. Previously Rae worked for 3 years as a digital producer with AJE’s London bureau. In 2016, Rae was selected as an International Reporting Project fellow to South Africa and Lesotho. She has also undertaken a number of multimedia projects in Palestine, Fiji, PNG, Ghana and the Balkans. Rae has completed dual-degrees in Journalism and Arts (Peace and Conflict), together with Master’s degree in Communication for Social Change from the University of Queensland, Australia. Her work has received awards, including the DART Center for Journalism and Trauma Prize for reporting on violence, disaster or trauma in society. In 2013, she was awarded a Rotary Global Grant Scholarship to complete a Master of Science in Social Anthropology and Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

XIMENA NATERA AND LORENA VEGA

XIMENA NATERA | MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST | PIE DE PÁGINA Y EN EL CAMINO

Twitter: @menanatera | Instagram: @menanatera

Ximena Natera is a multimedia reporter based in Mexico City. Her work focuses on human rights violations, collective memory processes and migration in the region. Natera is part of the editorial team at the sites Pie de Página and En el Camino. As a member of these teams, she participated as a reporter and producer in the documentary series, “Buscadores en un país de desaparecidos,” which was awarded the Gabriel García Márquez Award of Iberian American Journalism in the “Image” category and received third place at POY Latam 2017. Since 2013, Natera has been a member of the Red de Periodistas de a Pie, a national journalist network that aims to empower journalists to improve media coverage and personal safety in the context of extreme violence. Natera has studied journalism, photography and documentary film and has been a fellow for journalism programs at the Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano in Colombia and the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

LORENA VEGA| RADIO JOURNALIST | COLOMBIA NATIONAL RADIO

Twitter: @loreprensa

Lorena Vega is a radio reporter and senior editor at Colombia National Radio (Radio Nacional de Colombia), where she leads the investigative unit. Vega has traveled across the country investigating and producing stories about human rights and conflict. In 2017, Lorena won the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) National Journalism Award, along her team, for the documentary series “Después de la guerra: un país que le apuesta a la paz,” about the transformation in the Colombian regions affected by the long-lasting conflict. Her reporting on “The Disappeared of the Palace of Justice” for Cablenoticias TV channel was recognized with the Simon Bolivar Journalism Award in 2010. Vega holds a degree in Journalism from the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia and has been selected as a fellow on two occasions by the Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano for workshops related to new narratives and radio journalism.

ANDREA PATIÑO CONTRERAS AND JESSICA WEISS

ANDREA PATIÑO CONTRERAS | VIDEO JOURNALIST | UNIVISION

Twitter: @patinoandrea | Instagram: @andreapatino

Andrea Patiño Contreras is a video journalist from Bogotá, Colombia. She is based in Miami where she works with the features video team at Univision Digital News. She produces, shoots and edits short documentaries, both individually and as part of large team projects. Most of her work focuses on issues of immigration and the Latino community in the United States. Patiño has worked as an anthropologist and journalist across different regions, including the West Bank and West Africa. In 2015, she reported on the Mediterranean refugee crisis from Southern Italy. Since joining Univision, she has worked in the United States and Latin America where she has reported on immigration and gender violence from Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize and the U.S.-Mexico border. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University and an M.A. in Media and Journalism from UNC-Chapel Hill.

JESSICA WEISS | MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST | UNIVISION

Twitter: @jessweiss1 | Instagram: @jessweiss1

Jessica Weiss is a multimedia journalist at Univision News. Based out of Miami, she writes and edits stories on immigration and other issues of interest to Univision’s Latino audience. She is also part of a team of reporters documenting hate against Latinos since the 2016 presidential election. From 2011-2015, Weiss worked as a freelancer in South America, from Argentina and Colombia, covering a range of topics for publications including The New York Times, Fast Company Magazine and Ms. Magazine. She has also reported various times from Brazil, as well as from Cuba and Mexico. Prior to joining Univision, Weiss worked as a staff writer at the alt-weekly Miami New Times. She has also worked as a reporter on Capitol Hill and on the communications team at the International Center for Journalists. Weiss was a 2016 IWMF Adelante fellow in Chiapas, Mexico. She is a 2011 graduate of Georgetown’s Master’s in Journalism program.