2010 Winners

2009 Winners

2008 Winners

2007 Winners

2006 Winners

2005 Winners

2004 Winners

Previous Winners
1992 - 2003

The OPC Foundation keeps in touch with its scholarship winners and encourages their careers. The following is any update on where our past winners are today.

Jennifer Brookland, 2010 Alexander Kendrick winner, will begin at Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University in the fall.

Leah Finnegan, 2010 Stan Swinton winner, is currently with the Huffington Post and holds to begin her OPC Foundation internship in the Associated Press bureau in Cairo in the spring.

Jenny Gross, 2010 Schweisberg winner, is interning in the Johannesburg bureau of the Associated Press.  Here's a documentary she recently completed on gang violence in South Africa..

Artis Henderson, 2010 Irene Corbally Kuhn winner, has an OPC Foundation internship in the Associated Press bureau in Dakar.  After that is complete she will stay in Senegal for a year on an International Rotary fellowship. Read her story that appeared in the New York Times.

Owen Kibenge, 2010 I.F. Stone winner, has a Reuters internship in New York.

Denise Law, 2010 S&P winner, is in Shanghai to learn Mandarin and will later freelance in Hong Kong.

James Matthews, 2010 Emanuel R. Freedman Scholarship winner, has a Reuters internship in Sao Paolo this summer.  He will return there in January to complete his OPC Foundation internship.

Jeff Roberts, 2010 Reuters Scholarship winner, has an OPC Foundation internship in Paris.  He is now a reporter with Reuters in New York.

Caroline Stauffer, 2010 Flora Lewis winner, has an OPC Foundation internship in the Reuters bureau in Mexico City.

Chris Stein, 2010 Roy Rowan winner, will head to Johannesburg in August for an internship in the Africa bureau of the Inter Press Service.

Simon Akam, a British Fulbright Scholar at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, has won an internship in the Reuters bureau in Istanbul. He was the Freedman winner in 2009. Read his August 21, 2009, front page story in the New York Times. Check out his website. Some of his stories for Reuters concerned the "new" Islamic curiculum and Turkey coming to terms with its past. He is currently in Berlin working for the German newspaper Die Welt.

Haley Sweetland Edwards, 2009 winner of the Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship, Haley Sweetland Edwards, 2009 winner of the Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship,  is taking a break from from Yemen and in now living in Tbilisi, Georgia, covering the Caucasus on a freelance basis for the LA Times, AOL News and whoever-else-is-interested. You can follow her travels at haleybureau.com.

Jeff Horwitz, 2009 Fred Wiegold winner, is now a staff writer at the American Banker.

Michael Miller, the 2009 Stan Swinton winner, who graduated from the joint master's degree program in journalism and Latin American studies at NYU, is back in Mexico City where he worked as an OPC Foundation intern in the Mexico City bureau of the Associated Press. Michael is stringing for AP and freelancing for other publications.

Stephen Nessen, the 2009 Roy Rowan winner, is the first OPC Fellow to intern for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is now a Web producer in the newsroom at WNYC, New York
Public Radio. Here's a story he produced int he summer of 2009 when he was an assistant producer.

Priti Patnaik, 2009 winners of the S&P Award, won third prize in the 2010 Foreign Press Association scholarship contest.

Maria Repnikova, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and the 2009 Kendrick winner, interned in the Reuters bureau in Beijing. The following are links to her favorite stories: http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=112008http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=112210
She is now back at Oxford pursuing a PhD in media politics in China and Russia and freelancing on Russian and Chinese stories.

Michelle Theriault, the 2009 Theo Wilson winner who graduated with a master's degree in the journalism program at the University of Oregon, interned in the Associated Press bureau in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is now living in Anchorage and teaching journalism at the University of Alaska..

Jessica Wanke Deahl , the 2009 H.L. Stevenson winner, is now an assistant producer for digital news at National Public Radio. Here's an article she wrote for the American Journalism Review on an Afghan entrepreneur who opened a business in Kabul catering to journalists: http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4707

Emily Witt, 2009 Flora Lewis winner, is headed back to school for another Master's. Here's an article she did for ProPublica. She is now at Cambridge University pursuing a degree in English literature.

Mayank Bubna, 2008 H.L. Stevenson winner, is in New Delhi working as a freelance journalist reporting on defense and security issues. He recently completed a documentary entitled Wayaahu Cusuub about a Somali music band living in Kenya that's been making waves in East Africa. The band members are all refugees with no formal music training or education of any sort. They speak of the trials and tribulations of having to speak up through their music on issues not typically discussed in Somali communities, often facing backlash for it.

Mariano Castillo, IF Stone winner in 2008, is now a newsdeck editor for CNN in Atlanta. He graduated with a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University. Mariano won an OPC Foundation internship in Mexico City where he worked in the Reuters bureau.

Jerry Guo, Reuters 2008 awardee, wrote an article for the Washington Post entitled "My Excellent North Korean Adventure" and was profiled by NPR. He also interned for the Wall Street Journal during the summer of 2008. Jerry also won first place in the Atlantic writing contest for nonfiction. That piece ran in the New York Times' Sunday Styles section.  He will traveled to Nepal on a Yale grant to profile the king, who is about to be dethroned. He was went to Zimbabwe in January 2009. Articles on the African trip appeared in Newsweek.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He graduated from Yale in 2009. He is now a correspondent for Newsweek.

Devon Haynie, the 2008 Flora Lewis awardee, is a reporter at the Post Gazette in Fort Wayne IN. She extended her stay in South Africa and continued reporting from there after her OPC Foundation internship in the Associated Press bureau in Johannesburg.

Sheila B. Lalwani, 2008 Irene Corbally Kuhn winner, is now a Fulbright fellow and journalist in Berlin. She is working on journalism projects relating to immigration and policy.  Previously she had attendedthe Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Previously, she completed two internships in New Delhi, one with the Human Rights Law Network and one with the US Department of State. She was awarded a Nancy Klavans Fellowship from Harvard University's Women & Public Policy Program to research media and human rights in India.

Sarah Mishkin, Freedman winner in 2008, is reporting for Business Today Egypt. She graduated from Yale in December 2008 and later interned at NPR in Hartford.

Paul Sonne, the 2008 Stan Swinton winner, is covering media, retail and consumer goods for the European edition of the Wall Street Journal in London. He received a master's in philosophy in Russian history as a Marshall scholar at the University of Oxford, and worked as an OPC Foundation intern in the Associated Press bureau in Moscow. Read his front page story in the Wall Street Journal on June 24, 2009.

Alexandra Suich, 2008 Theo Wilson winner, has been working at The Economist since she graduated from Yale in 2008.

Rollo Romig, 2008 Roy Rowan winner, after graduating from the master's program at New York University, went to Phnom Penh in the fall of 2008 as an OPC Foundation intern at the Cambodia Daily.

Max Strasser, 2008 Kendrick winner, worked in the summer of 2008 in TIME Magazine's bureau in Jerusalem. In 2009, he graduated from Oberlin and began a job in September as an editor at Al Masy Al Youm English Edition, which is based in Cairo, Egypt.   He writes, “I think that this is going to be a great first job. I remember when I was in New York for the scholarship luncheon and ceremony that a number of people were talking about the good opportunities at English-language newspapers in foreign capitals. It was at that point that I first got the idea and now it's become a reality.   I feel very lucky. The OPC scholarship was a very influential event in the beginning of my journalism career.”

Yu Sun, the first S&P winner in 2008, is now in Shanghai and is an economics reporter for China Confidential, a newsletter published by the Financial Times.

Ben Weller, 2008 Schweisberg winner, is back in Indiana teaching photography at Manchester College and looking forward to his next assignment overseas. After his OPC Foundation internship in the Reuters bureau in Seoul, South Korea, he stayed on in Korea and taught English at Gyeongsang National University. He also did some freelance photo work, including covering Singapore's foreign minister's trip to Seoul  for the Straits Times. A Duke graduate, Ben graduated from Indiana University with a master's degree in journalism in 2008. Click here to see his portfolio.

The 2007 Kendrick winner, Antonio Castaneda, is working as a producer for The Charlie Rose Show at PBS.

Aaron Clark, the 2007 Roy Rowan winner, is an energy markets reporter at Bloomberg News.

Sareena Dalla, 2007 Theo Wilson winner, returned to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government after taking the fall 2007 semester off to serve as CNN’s 2008 New Hampshire Campaign Producer leading up to the state’s January 8 primary. Click here to learn of her experiences.

Elizabeth Dickinson, the 2007 IF Stone winner, is an assistant editor at Foreign Policy. Before that she was stationed in West Africa, working as the Nigeria correspondent for The Economist. She has held previous internships with the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels and the New York Times' West African bureau in Dakar. In addition, her writing has appeared in IRIN News, AllAfrica.com, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International, and the Mail and Guardian.

Jeremy Gantz, 2007 H.L. Stevenson, became the full-time Web editor of In These Times in March 2009, a magazine published in Chicago that reports on workers’ rights and labor issues, both domestic and international. He graduated from the master's program at Northwestern after a two-month OPC Foundation internship at the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh.  Among the highlights of that experience were traveling across the Tonle Sap lake to interview snake hunters in a remote floating village and interviewing Sam Rainsy in the National Assembly.

Ben Hubbard, 2007 Stan Swinton, is now back as a reporter in the AP bureau in Jerusalem, the same site where he served as an intern in the OPC Foundation internship program. As an intern, the Arabic speaker was able to travel quite a bit and filed stories from Nazareth, Bar Sheva, Ramallah and Nablus, among others. Ben graduated from the master's program at Berkeley in 2008.

Andy Greenberg, 2007 Reuters winner, is a senior reporter at Forbes.com.

Ed Ou, the 2007 Dan Eldon winner, is a freelance photographer based in the Middle East. He has worked for Reuters and AP and is now a featured photographer with Getty Images. Ed just finished a documentary about nuclear radiation victims in Kazakhstan. He is currently in Yemen and Somalia. See his work on his Web site. Here is the project he is currently working on.

Katie Paul, 2007 Kuhn winner, is now working at Newsweek.com. After a six-month internship, she was hired as a reporter-researcher. She is a contributor to its blog, Wealth of Nations. In 2007, Katie remained in Buenos Aires after her two-month Reuters/OPC Foundation internship ended and contributed to the bureau’s national election coverage. 

Emily Rotberg, who won the Freedman scholarship in 2007, is now in London freelancing for The Guardian and Financial Times where she once held a two-month internship. She covered the first British bank run since 1973 as well as emerging markets and UK news stories.

Erica Schlaikjer, 2007 Schweisberg winner, is the EMBARQ Information & Innovation Coordinator at World Resources Institute. She also interned at Crain's Chicago Business. She returned from Taipei, where she wrote articles for the Taiwan Business TOPICS magazine, published by the American Chamber of Commerce.  Her blog: www.ResponsibleChina.com, is about environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility in China.

Ayesha Nasir, formerly Ayesha Akran, the 2006 Stan Swinton winner, spent 30 days in September and October in the Associated Press bureau in Bangkok, serving as the first OPC Foundation Internship winner. She was on the ground when the coup occurred. She is now a filmmaker. See a film she did on Pakistani prostitutes in 2010.

Elizabeth Barchas, who won the Flora Lewis Scholarship in 2006, has an article in the February 2007 Harvard Law Review on international journalism and the threat journalists face when they report on international events and are then called into foreign courts because their stories were available on the internet.

Galima Bukharbaeva, the 2006 If Stone winner and Uzbek exile, is currently in Germany, working as editor-in-chief of the online informational service on Uzbekistan, www.uznews.net. She is alsochairwoman of the Real Unity of Journalists of Uzbekistan. In May 2009, she was trying to rally world support for her colleague Sali Abdurakhmanov. Click here for more information.

Harriet Clark Steiman, 2006 Kendrick winner, a former associate editor at Inc. magazine, is communications manager at the Clinton Global Initiative.

Anupreeta Das, the 2006 Reuters winner, is a senior reporter covering M&A for the Wall Street Journal.

Cory Eldridge, the 2006 H.L. Stevenson winner, is now in Jordan working at  JO magazine, an English language monthly magazine that he interned for when he studied in Jordan during college. Here's an article he wrote in 2009 about his internship with the Reuters' Dubai bureau. He later wrote, “I used my OPC Foundation scholarship to pay for the trip. Because of the scholarship, I met the Reuters editors who offered me the opportunity. Thank you so much. I still don't believe I won the award, as a West Coast, state-school undergrad, and I still feel honored knowing that such a stellar organization included me in a group of brilliant, young journalists.” Check out his blog and website.

Gregory D. Johnsen, the 2006 Schweisberg scholarship winner, has an article on the future of Yemen in the October 2006 edition of The American Interest.  Johnsen is now a PhD candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton. A former Fulbright fellow in Yemen and an Arabic speaker, Johnsen wrote his winning essay on presidential politics in Yemen's fledging democracy. Click here for a 2010 update and his current views on Yemen.

The 2006 Theo Wilson winner Rachel Jones, formerly with The Associated Press in Caracas, Venezuela, is now freelancing there.

Zvika Krieger, who won the Freedman award in 2006, is deputy web editor at the New Republic. He worked for two years as a correspondent for Newsweek living in Cairo and writing for Slate, the Daily Star (Lebanon) and the Chronicle of Higher Education. For updates, see his blog.

The 2006 Irene Corbally Kuhn winner Michelle Loyalka won the Missouri School of Journalism's O.O. McIntyre award, which will fund her writing a book next year. She will be working on the same topic that she wrote about for her OPC essay - the social and psychological impact China's rapid development is having on the lives of ordinary people.

Rawya Rageh, the 2006 Dan Eldon winner, is back in Cairo as Egypt Producer for Al Jazeera English. She designs and oversees coverage of all Egypt's news, as well as contribute on-camera reports. Her beat includes Sudan and Libya. Rawya's comments at the scholarship luncheon were memorable for her plea that "Africa matters." She also covered the Saddam Hussein trial for AP in Baghdad.  In a September 14, 2006, article on the web, she described locking eyes with him. On a television assignment in the Sudan,where she traveled to the South, to the border with Chad and to Darfur, she had a half hour exclusive interview with the president.

Zvika Krieger, 2006 Freedman Winner, wrote that an article "Kifaya: The Rise and Decline of Egypt's Secular Opposition," which grew out of the essay he wrote for the OPC Foundation scholarship appeared in the March 2006 issue of the Jerusalem Report. He wrote that as he begins making his plans for Beirut next year, “the generous scholarship will certainly come in handy, and hopefully allow me to experience more exciting opportunities like my reporting on Kifaya last summer.”

Jacob Adelman, 2005 HL Stevenson winner, is is now working full time in the Los Angeles bureau of the Associated Press.

Maria Ahmed, 2005 Stan Swinton winner, is working as a staff writer at Global Agenda Magazine in London, part of the Euromoney Institutional Investor group, and is hoping to move to Institutional Investor to cover emerging markets.

A story by Kristen Gillespie, the 2005 Irene Corbally Kuhn scholarship winner, used the rest of the scholarship to go to Turkmenistan and filed this report for NPR.

Marina Walker Guevara, the 2005 Emanuel Freedman winner, told us that one of the stories that resulted from her scholarship work won the European Commission Lorenzo Natali Award for Latin America and the Caribbean. The award recognizes excellence in the coverage of human rights and democracy in the developing world.

Shlomi Simhi, 2005 IF Stone winner, did an internship for the L.A. Times in Israel last summer.  For three months, he covered Tel-Aviv, Gaza and Jerusalem. He writes, “I feel that it's the ultimate fulfillment of the scholarship I was awarded by the OPC Foundation.”

Emily Steele, the Schweisberg winner in 2005, is a reporter in the media and tech group at the Wall Street Journal. She has been with WSJ since 2006.

An in-depth project by Garance Burke, 2004 Freedman winner, was published on the front and back pages of the Sacramento Bee on the legacy of the braceros, California's forgotten fieldhands.  She wrote, “It goes without saying that my research would not have been possible without the OPC Foundation’s support.” She is now a reporter for AP in Fresno. She recently won the John L. Dougherty Award, an AP Managing Editor’s prize given to a staffer with less than three years of experience.  

Joe Hanel, the 2004 HL Stevenson winner, is the Washington correspondent for the Durango Herald.

Krista Mahr, the first Flora Lewis winner in 2004, is at Time magazine in Hong Kong. Before that, she edited two English language magazines in Iceland: the Iceland Review, a cultural quarterly, and Atlantica, the inflight magazine for Icelandair.

Doug Merlino, Kendrick winner in 2004, was editor of the OPC Bulletin and is completing two books.

Tess Taylor, the 2004 IF Stone winner, is spending 2010 on a year long poetry fellowship, living at the Amy Clampitt's house in the Berkshires, and working on a new book of poems. 

Matt Whitaker, 2004 Stan Swinton winner, is a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires.

The 2004 Dan Eldon winner Martin Patience is the BBC correspondent in Kabul. He writes in April 2009: "It's a great job, fascinating story, and absolutely beautiful country. I really wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

Nick Zamiskis, who won the Schweisberg scholarship in 2004, is at Yale Law School after several years covering China for the Wall Street Journal.

The 2004 Theo Wilson winner, Sarah Garland, traveled to El Salvador where Inter Press Service published her article on gangs, the same subject of her winning essay.

Fariba Nawa, 2004 Kuhn winner, wrote an article on the Afghan women and the drug trade that ran on the cover of the London Sunday Times Magazine. Click here for an updatae.

Marton Dunai, who won the Roy Rowan scholarship in 2003, moved to Budapest in September 2008, after six years in California. He's a traveling regional (Balkans, Central Europe) correspondent at the leading Hungarian daily and is working for some American initiatives on the side, as well as Transitions Online in Prague and the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo. He is also starting his own blog /news site to chronicle his travels in multimedia

Mariam Fam, 2003 Stan Swinton winner, an AP writer based in Cairo, reported for the wire service from Iraq.

Jason McClure, 2003 Freedman winner, is an East Africa-based correspondent for Bloomberg. He and his wife Tessa live in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Previously he covered the Justice Department for Legal Times in Washington D.C. and interned for Newsweek on the foreign desk and in the Boston bureau. He writes, "The OPC scholarship was a key factor in getting the Newsweek internship, as I handed my clips to their chief of correspondents during the OPC tour."

Kristy Siegfried, 2003 Stevenson winner, worked at The Star (in Johannesburg), South Africa’s best-selling daily newspaper.

Wei Gu, 2002 Reuters winner, relocated to Hong Kong to become a columnist for Reuters Chinese language service after 3.5 years with the company in New York. She writes, “As a former Reuters scholarship winner, I owe a great deal to the Overseas Press Club Foundation. Without you, my fulfilling journey at the company would not have been possible.”

Brad Hong, who won the Schewisberg scholarship in 2002, is working as a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He was part of the P-I's business staff that won the 2006 Best Business Section award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

William Nessen, 2000 Dan Eldon Scholarship winner, is in Cape Town S.A. working on a film.

Carissa S Wyant, 2002 Dan Eldon winner, used her scholarship to further her education, and complete her studies at Yale. A 2002 graduate of Wellesley College with a double-major in Peace and Justice Studies and Comparative Religion, she holds a master's degree in Religious Studies from the Yale University Divinity School. Her dream is still to work as a Middle East correspondent. She writes, “Receiving the OPC Foundation scholarship in 2002 brought me one step closer to that dream by investing in my education, thus equipping me with the historical framework and analytical tools needed to be an effective and responsible journalist.”

Melissa Chan, 2001 Kendrick winner, who spent time with ABC News and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings wrote, “I thank the OPC Foundation for really moving beyond just the scholarship fund; I've had support far above what I ever expected when I won the scholarship.” She joined Al Jazeera English as a producer/reporter in the network’s Beijing bureau.

Damien Cave, the IF Stone winner from 1998, is now a a reporter at the Mexico City Bureau of The New York Times. He was previously served as Miami bureau chief, after several years reporting from Baghdad. For a revealing look at marraige in a war zone, see Damien's story that ran in the Times On January 20, 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/fashion/20baghdad.html?_r=1&ref=style&oref=slogin

Kristina Shevory, the 1998 Reuters winner, has been an energy reporter at TheStreet.com since last November. She has been writing about business since 1998 in Russia, Texas and Seattle for the Seattle Times, Dow Jones, BusinessWeek, Investor's Business Daily, New York Post and the New York Times.