I am driven by curiosity.

I’m intensely interested in the world around me, the people that I meet, the way we interact with each other, and how different components of our world—technology, natural and built environments, political systems, culture—work, and work together. A few key questions underpin all of my work: Why does the world function as it does? How is it understood differently by different people? And how might it change?

My award-winning work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, The Nation, Al Jazeera, Reveal, Insider, The American Prospect, the Mail & Guardian, The Appeal, Bloomberg News, The British Medical Journal, the Globe & Mail, and elsewhere. I have also had a career in global health, working for South Africa’s the Treatment Action Campaign, the Access Campaign of Médecins Sans Frontières, Open Society Foundation, and Partners in Health. I have lived in America, Canada, South Africa, and Sierra Leone. My time living and working in different parts of the world informs the questions that I ask as a journalist, and how I frame my stories.

I am an alumna of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where I focused on long-form narrative and audio journalism, and investigative reporting. While at the J-School, I received two fellowships from the Human Rights Center, as well as an internal fellowship, to support my reporting on microfinance. I also received a fellowship from the National Institute of Climate Education to support reporting on the renewable energy transition in Texas. I received the 2019 Robert Whittington Award for Exceptional Reporting for my reporting on the petrochemical industry in St. James, Louisiana and the Clay Felker Award for Excellence in Narrative Writing in 2020 for my reporting on microfinance. I have also received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, as well as a Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Award in South Africa. In 2021, I lectured in the first ever joint course between the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center. 

My first book, We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky, a critical history of microfinance, was published by Metropolitan Books/Holt in June, 2024. I conducted reporting for the book from 2019-2023, including when I was a Logan Nonfiction Fellow; I later worked on the manuscript at the Mesa Refuge and the Blue Mountain Center. This work has been supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Richard J. Margolis Award. I’m represented by Wendy Strothman.

In my free time I spend as much time outdoors as possible, exploring whatever place I’m in. I dabble in painting. I’m always on the hunt for the perfect olive.