About

By way of introduction... the word jina means "name" in Swahili and "the overcomer" in Sanskrit.

I cover human rights, Africa and foreign affairs.  I also write quirky features and character-and-place- rich narratives.  I'm a regular correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor.  My print work has also appeared in Foreign Policy, Newsweek, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Walrus (Canada), Glamour Magazine, Harvard Magazine, Congressional Quarterly Press, and a slew of others. My narrative journalism on doctors who treat torture survivors was reprinted in Best American Science Writing (2009).  My broadcast work has appeared on public radio's World Vision Report and PRI's The World.

I'm also a nonfiction editor at Guernica Magazine and the editor of Dart Society Reports, an online human rights magazine focused on sensitive coverage of trauma stories.

Previously, I was a very proud editorial assistant at Harper's Magazine; an editor for "Telling True Stories," a handy how-to resource for narrative nonfiction writers put out by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University; and the content planner of several Nieman Conferences on Narrative Journalism, also at Harvard.

I've been awarded the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize Gold Medal (2011), the New York University Reporting Award and visiting fellowship (2011), a Fulbright Fellowship in Journalism (2009), an Ochberg Fellowship with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University (2009), and four awards from the American Society for Journalists and Authors (2009/2010).

I've been able to do all of this because of help from countless people and several institutions. I am indebted, literally and figuratively, to Boston University and its Trustee Scholars program, the Harry S Truman Scholarship Foundation, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Fulbright Commission and its related architecture, and the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.