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FI2W Fellowships

About Fi2W Fellowships

Fi2W fellowships pair journalists from immigrant backgrounds and communities of color with veteran reporters, editors, and audio producers. Fellowships are designed for working journalists who want to learn new skills and advance their careers. We offer reporting fellowships that typically last for four months, and a year-long editing fellowship. Working with their mentor through weekly communication and meetings, fellows develop a story or series of stories. The work of Fi2W fellows is published on our website and our podcast platform, as well as by partner organizations which include public media outlets, online news sites, and outlets that serve immigrant audiences.

  • Fi2W fellows have won numerous awards from The Society of Professional Journalists, the Asian American Podcasters Association, the AP of Michigan, and the Ippies, which honors community journalism in New York.
  • Our fellows have reported from New York, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Puerto Rico, New Hampshire, Michigan, Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, and other parts of the U.S.
  • The Fi2W network of alumni extends to New York, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Toronto, San Francisco, Boston, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, as well as overseas locations in the Philippines, Latin America, and Western Europe.

CURRENT FI2W FELLOWS:

Stephanie Rodriguez, Investigative Research Fellow is a writer, producer, and nonprofit consultant. She supports creative storytelling endeavors and contributes to vision-building for editorial, film, and podcasting mediums for clients like Google, NPR, and LWC Studios. Most recently, she served as editor for Islas: A Celebration of Tropical Cooking (Chronicle Books, summer 2023), a culinary exploration through recipes, ancestral cooking techniques, and the personal lives of tropical islanders. Stephanie began working with Feet in 2 Worlds in 2016. She organized journalism workshops in New York City and Detroit, helped build Fi2W’s 2021-22 business plan, and was instrumental in securing multi-year grants from the Ford and MacArthur foundations. Before a career as a freelancer, Stephanie served as the Individual Giving Manager at El Museo del Barrio.

Virginia Lora, Editing Fellow, is a multilingual audio producer, writer, and storyteller who works in English and Spanish, and dabbles in French. Born in Peru, she moved to the U.S. at age 13 and grew up in Miami. She stumbled into the audio world while interviewing people in communities all over the country for StoryCorps’ Traveling Oral History Project. During her fellowship, Virginia will edit and report for our upcoming series, “Immigrants in a Divided Country,” which will explore the current political landscape from the perspective of immigrants – including voters, and non-voters, citizens, legal residents and undocumented people.

“I wouldn’t be the journalist that I am today and write in English if it wasn’t for Feet in 2 Worlds. After being part of their fellowship I went on to freelance at PRI’s The World, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, AP, and magazines. Their incredible team of producers and editors helped me make the cross-over and realize the value of stories from immigrant communities that needed to be told beyond the Spanish publications where I worked.”

– Valeria Fernandez, Feet in 2 Worlds fellow, 2009. Managing Editor, palabra from NAHJ and recipient of the 2018 American Mosaic Journalism Prize from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

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