Léo Hamelin US-Mexico Border Fellow | Photo by Laura Morel

Based in New York City for the past seven years, Léo is a video journalist who works for Blue Chalk Media, a digital media company focused on nonfiction visual storytelling. She also teaches video journalism at Columbia University, where she graduated with a master’s degree from the School of Journalism in 2012. I asked Léo what sparked her passion for journalism recently:

“I grew up traveling a lot and I was always interested in going to new places and meeting new people from very different parts of life and backgrounds and cultures and speaking different languages… Journalism, for me, was the way that I could keep on meeting people, being able to just listen to their stories. I feel like we are very, very lucky to do what we do and we just go and meet people, and most of the time, people who have very interesting stories to tell, very difficult stories to tell. And we’re lucky enough that they are willing to tell us their stories.”