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Our Fellows

Sonali Kolhatkar

Chief Correspondent, Writing Fellow for Economy for All

Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is also the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine, co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission, and co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (Seven Stories Press, 2005). She sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Truthdig, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and numerous anthologies. She has a master’s degree in astrophysics and detailed her transition from science to journalism in a 2014 TEDx talk.

Writing Fellow for Economy for All

Nancy J. Altman has a 40-year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition. She is the author of The Truth About Social Security and The Battle for Social Security and co-author of Social Security Works! and the forthcoming Social Security Works for Everyone!

Writing Fellow for Economy for All

Thom Hartmann is America’s number one progressive talk-show host and the New York Times bestselling author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy and more than 30 other books in print. His online writings are compiled at HartmannReport.com.

Writing Fellow for Economy for All

Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist based in New Orleans. His writing has appeared in the Nation, the New Republic, the Intercept, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Foreign Policy, Vice, and more. He is the author of several books, including Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 (Counterpoint Press, 2022).

Writing Fellow for Human Bridges

Deborah Barsky is a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution and an associate professor at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). She is the author of Human Prehistory: Exploring the Past to Understand the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Writing Fellow for Human Bridges

Yann Perreau is a writer, educator and contemporary art curator. He has published several books with French publishers on climateanonymity, and more. His articles have appeared in many publications, including Le Monde, the London Review of Books, the Nation, and the Washington Post. He has served as a cultural attaché for both the French Embassy in London and the French Consulate in Los Angeles. He holds an MPhil in art history from Paris’s EHESS.

Editor, Chief Correspondent & Writing Fellow for Earth | Food | Life

Reynard Loki is a co-founder of the Observatory, where he is the environment and animal rights editor. He previously served as the environment, food, and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health and Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Asia Times, Pressenza, and EcoWatch, among others. He volunteers with New York City Pigeon Rescue Central.

Writing Fellow for Earth | Food | Life

Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner is a writer based in New York. She’s written for the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Glamour, AlterNet, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Architectural Digest, Them and other publications. She holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Columbia University and is also at work on a novel.

Writing Fellow for Earth | Food | Life

Lucy Goodchild van Hilten is a writer with an MSc degree in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology from Imperial College London. She has served as assistant editor of Microbiology Today and senior marketing communications manager for Life Sciences at Elsevier. She set up Tell Lucy in 2014, with a mission to make the complex understandable. Lucy also runs Bucket List Bookshop—home of the world’s best writing.

Editorial Fellow for Earth | Food | Life’s & Art Project

In Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger’s more than two decades working in the arts, she has organized curatorial projects in the commercial, academic and nonprofit sectors with a focus on place-based practices and themes including history, women’s rights, social justice, activism, data, information science, and the environment. She is currently curator of visual arts at Wave Hill, where she organizes artist residencies, exhibitions, and programs with artists in dialogue with the site, ecology, and culture. Previously, she served as curator at No Longer Empty, which presented community-responsive exhibitions and education programs in unconventional spaces.

Chief Correspondent, Writing Fellow for Our Schools

Jeff Bryant is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy.

Contributing Writer for Our Schools

Sarah Lahm is a Minneapolis-based writer and researcher. Her work has appeared in outlets such as the Progressive and In These Times. Follow her on Twitter @sarahrlahm.

Chief Correspondent, Writing Fellow for Local Peace Economy

April M. Short is an editor, journalist, and documentary editor and producer. She is a co-founder of the Observatory, where she is the Local Peace Economy editor. Previously, she was a managing editor at AlterNet as well as an award-winning senior staff writer for Good Times, a weekly newspaper in Santa Cruz, California. Her work has been published with the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, LA Yoga, the Conversation, Salon, and many other publications.

Editor, Chief Correspondent & Senior Writing Fellow for Voting Booth

Steven Rosenfeld has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.

WORLD AFFAIRS
FELLOWS

WORLD AFFAIRS WRITING FELLOW

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

World Affairs Writing Fellow

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. You can find him on his website at podur.org and on Twitter @justinpodur. He teaches at York University in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change.

World Affairs Writing Fellow, Correspondent

John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

World Affairs Writing Fellow, Correspondent

Evelyn Leopold is an independent journalist based at the United Nations and the winner of a UN Correspondents Association gold medal for her reporting. She served at Reuters as a manager, editor and correspondent in New York, Washington, London, Berlin and Nairobi. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and head of the Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists.

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