About

I’m a writer, digital strategist and community builder, currently based in Arizona. By day, I’m a communications director of digital and content at Change Consulting. By night, I pursue my own creative and community projects. I’m an alum of the VONA Voices Writing Workshop in 2015, THREAD workshop at Yale in 2017, Catapult’s Writing for YA class in 2018, and The Power of Diverse Voices: Poynter Minority Writers Workshop in 2018. You can check out my full résumé here.

Also, the awesome portrait on the homepage is drawn by Jahanara Hoque.

Some things I’m passionate about:

• Media with a purpose:

  • How can media encourage outcomes such as as civic engagement, community building, greater empathy, and empowerment? Whether that be solutions journalism, movement journalism, audience engagement or other participatory methods, I believe we need to radically shift the relationship people have to the news as well as how the media system serves people’s information needs. I care a lot about diversity and inclusion in media, so that’s another issue I advocate for.

• Philanthropy and social good:

  • I explored these topics through my academic studies, but also through an internship in Guatemala and as a New Sector fellow in San Francisco for a year after feeling jaded about the unintended (and sometimes intended) effects of the international development and humanitarian aid industry. I’m interested in the various approaches to ethical change-making, the successes and flaws of the private and public sector, and how power affects development in the Global North and Global South.

• Eritrean affairs

  • I’m the daughter of Eritrean immigrants/asylum-seekers, so that has made me personally and professionally invested in keeping up with news about Eritrea’s developments regarding politics, human rights, culture, migration, media and more. I’ve written several papers on the region, have visited Ethiopia, and hope to visit Eritrea in the near future for the first time. Eritrea is so rarely covered in mainstream news, so I’m working on ways to give those stories more prominence and understanding.

• Creative writing and multidisciplinary art:

  • I’ve been a creative writer ever since I can remember, penning stories about missing yo-yos and getting lost at Disneyland as a child to eventually more substantial fiction, poetry and personal essays. Most of my work in this area has been private but have been slowly performing, publishing and sharing as time allows. At the moment, my focus is on my novel-in-progress.I also facilitate storytelling events and workshops that support the creative wellness of underrepresented communities.