Discovering Deutschland

I was lucky enough to immerse myself in international reporting at a young age, traveling to Caracas, Venezuela after my freshman year of college to report on press freedom issues. My passion for telling stories from beyond our borders also sent me to Mexico, Guatemala, and Tanzania while still a student at Yale University. When I graduated, I started a job at POLITICO in Washington, DC, and while I enjoyed my work there, I also missed the days when I was focusing on and reporting on issues beyond the beltway. Thanks to the news and opportunities featured by IJNet, which still cause me to drop whatever I am doing when they arrives in my mailbox, I came across the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, which each year sends ten American journalists to Germany and ten German journalists to America for language study and work in foreign newsrooms. I was thrilled to receive the fellowship, but even in the excitement I felt before I flew overseas, I had no idea of the impact this experience would have on me. Not only did that experience remind me of why - and how much - I loved international reporting in the first place, leading to my current work for two foreign affairs publications, but it also opened my eyes to the importance of the German-American relationship, a topic I have continued to follow. Now, in November, I am returning to Berlin, Germany, where I will participate in the German-American Fulbright Commission Berlin Capital Program, and report a special series for World Politics Review on Germany. As I wrote in my application for that program, after spending time in Germany, I developed a deep fascination with how Germany and the United States will work together to tackle the challenges of the 21st century. In the months ahead, and throughout my career, I plan to look into and report on that question, both from the American perspective and the German perspective, which I have come to appreciate and understand in a way I never could have without the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship and IJNet. Thank you!