Student Fellows
Rachel Sorcher
Rachael Sorcher is a Master of Public Health candidate at the Boston University School of Public Health where she studies community assessment, program design, implementation, and evaluation as well as global health. With a background in anthropology, Sorcher has always been passionate about using storytelling to amplify marginalized voices and inspire policy and practice change in the global public health arena. She has experience working for various non-profits including, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and Outreach International, conducting qualitative research projects on refugee well-being, and is the co-author of an upcoming student mental health book. As a public health practitioner, Sorcher intends to seek out opportunities that allow her to combine her passions for research, storytelling, and advocacy. In her free time, Sorcher enjoys dancing, being active outdoors, and spending time with family and friends.
Daphne Mark
Daphne Mark is a scientist, journalist, and event coordinator bridging the gap between the sciences and the arts. As a graduate student studying journalism at Boston University, her goal is to make otherwise complicated science more playful, appealing, and accessible so that everyone—regardless of their background, age, and education—can contribute to the understanding of the world in meaningful ways.
Before BU, Mark studied marine biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she held leadership positions with her residential college and in the laboratory. After graduation, she researched gray whale bioenergetics and coordinated lectures, workshops, and conferences on the topics of “International and Global Perspectives” and “Social Justice and Community” with a team of undergraduate student leaders.
Mark has covered stories ranging from eccentric planets light-years away to endangered right whale calves to the pandemic’s effect on the opioid crisis. At BU, she publishes multimedia stories for BU News Service, WTBU, and BUTV10 on the human impact of ground-breaking research with the goal of informing real-world decisions for best business practices and an equitable planet.
Pallavi Puri
Pallavi Puri is a second-year MPH candidate pursuing certificates in Health Communication and Promotion with Health Economics. She has a background in political science and over six years of work experience in journalism and strategic health communication. Before coming to BU, she worked for CNN and a global public health organization, Vital Strategies, in the areas of tobacco control, road safety, and environmental health. She plans to use her skills to bring about effective transitions from knowledge to behavior change and policy promotion. Her aim is to bridge the gap between public health data and effective-visually appealing communication.
Daniel Merino
Daniel Merino cut his scientific teeth dodging angry elephant seals and snorkeling with salmon on the California coast. He has turned his love of science to a love of science journalism where he focuses on topics including Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence, the intersection of psychology and technology, and how developments in science matter for everyday life. He is cautiously optimistic that good ethics, good science, and some futuristic technology can save the world and is a little bit mad that we don’t have hoverboards yet. In the meantime, he makes do chasing the frigid surf around New England.
Arianne Henry
Arianne Henry is a graduate student at Boston University’s School of Public Health pursuing an MPH with a concentration in Global Health. She is a research and teaching assistant for the Center for Health Law, Ethics and Human Rights, engaging in research, writing and advocacy on issues related to social justice, health, and human rights. She recently co-authored an editorial, Human Trafficking: A Health and Human Rights Agenda in the Annals of Internal Medicine. She is also a co-author of a forthcoming publication in Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, an international medical journal, on the legacy of the Nuremberg Code and ethical research practices in the United States. Prior to attending Boston University, Arianne served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Suriname. Translating what is happening on the ground to the greater world is a significant part of global health work, and she hopes to use her fellowship to illuminate the forces impacting women’s mental health in Ethiopia and the local feminist movements working to empower women.
Flaviana Sandoval
Flaviana Sandoval is a candidate for the Master of Science in Journalism at Boston University College of Communication. She has specialized in public health issues, covering the medical shortages and public health infrastructure crisis in Venezuela and its impact on vulnerable populations such as women and children. Before attending BU, Flaviana worked at Prodavinci.com, a digital magazine in Caracas, Venezuela, writing about international affairs and human rights issues, including coverage of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis, the 2016 Brexit referendum, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Campbell Rawlins
Campbell is a graduate student at the College of Communications working towards his Masters in Journalism. Motivated by a strong desire to tell those peoples’ stories that go untold, he is particularly interested in humanizing the issues of homelessness, mental health, poverty, and addiction. Madeline Bishop and Campbell Rawlins will be reporting together from Guyana ton the causes behind one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
Madeline Bishop
Madeline Bishop is pursuing an MPH from Boston University with certificates in Maternal & Child Health and Program Management. She is a writing fellow for the Public Health Post and a research assistant for a study related to juvenile justice and mental health. Her interests include adolescent mental health, social enterprise and global development. Ultimately, Madeline hopes to use narrative storytelling to build understanding in public health and bridge gaps between communities and policymakers.
Lauryn Claassen
After working as a marketing director in Berkeley, California, Lauryn came to Boston University to pursue her passion for creative communication and reproductive education. She is a graduate student in the School of Public Health, focusing on Health Promotion and Sex & Gender. As a Pulitzer Fellow, she will be reporting on women’s access to reproductive health services in El Salvador in the aftermath of the Zika crisis.
Erica Andersen
Erica Andersen is a graduate student in the science journalism program at Boston University. She studied biology and classical humanities before moving to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to live and work in a mountain town prior to entering graduate school. She enjoys writing at the intersection of health, medicine and environmental science, and plans to use her student reporting fellowship to explore the environmental health effects of pharmaceutical pollution.
Anna Tomasulo
Anna received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Bryn Mawr College in French and Francophone Literature in 2007/2008. Through Bryn Mawr, she studied in France and Senegal, where she discovered an interest in global health. In 2009, Anna began graduate studies at Boston University School of Public Health, where she focused on HIV/AIDS, marginalized populations, and the relationship between health and human rights. While at Boston University, Anna worked in Livingstone, Zambia on the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS, specifically on monitoring Early Infant Diagnosis of HIV/AIDS. After graduating from Boston University in May 2011, Anna will spend the summer of 2011 as an intern and student fellow at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She is specifically interested in the intersection of health and human rights, francophone postcolonial literature and language, and writing.
Nikita Sampath
Nikita Sampath is a visual journalist who graduated from Boston University. She grew up in the South of India and got a Master’s in English Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. She writes a little and likes experimenting with new digital storytelling platforms. Nikita is interested in reporting on issues of social justice, climate change, gender and public health.
Her work has been recognized by the Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture at Beijing Normal University, Boston University’s College of Communication and the Boston Press Photographers Association.
Read Sampath’s contributions to the project Land Under Water: Living With the Effects of Climate Change in Bangladesh.
Kate Petcosky-Kulkarni
Kate Petcosky-Kulkarni is an MPH candidate at Boston University, focusing on global health. Originally from upstate New York, Kate studied business at BU, and spent a semester researching urban development in Argentina, China, and India. In 2010, she completed a Master’s in Food Studies from New York University, where she explored the culture and constructs of food systems in the US and abroad.
Before enrolling at the School of Public Health, Kate worked for various community development projects, including managing service programs for college students in Vermont and working with immigrant, refugee, and beginning farmers in Massachusetts. In addition to pursuing her MPH, Kate is the Director of the Office of Proposal Development at BU School of Medicine.
Read Potcosky-Kulkarni’s reporting in Access and Understanding: Exploring the Challenges of Disability in India.
Caitlin Bawn
Caitlin is currently pursuing a PhD in Global Health at University College London, after completing an MS in Journalism at Boston University where she focused on international reporting. She is also a contributing writer for Words in the Bucket—a news publication dedicated to promoting human rights and gender equality. In her spare time she enjoys photography and traveling. She is the founder of the social enterprise Epiphany, which aims to combat human rights issues worldwide through small-scale locally run projects.
Read Bawn’s reporting in The Re-Emergence of Victorian Diseases in the UK.
Rebecca Sananes
Rebecca Sananes (COM M.A. JO Dec ’15) reported from Cuba in January 2016 and will attend the 21st Annual AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa in July 2016.
Rebbeca’s reporting is focused on AIDS in Cuba and how that country has successfully combated the disease. Cuba is the first and only country to end mother to child HIV transmission and it has the lowest HIV rate in the Western Hemisphere.
See Sananes’s contributions to Cuba’s Headstart on Finding a Cure for AIDS.
Pankaj Khadka
Pankaj Khadka, a Nepali native, is a graduate photojournalism student at Boston University.
He graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in print journalism and a B.A. in photography from McNeese State University, and worked as a reporter/photographer for a year at the Chronicle-News in Trinidad, Colorado, before venturing into graduate school.
Read Khadka’s pieces from his project, Nepali Mass Migration: What’s Left Behind.
Kateri Donahoe
Kateri Donahoe received a B.A. in international relations from Boston University in May 2015, focusing on cultural anthropology and regional politics in the Middle East and Africa. She was admitted into a dual degree program with the BU School of Public Health in spring 2014 and will continue her graduate studies in global health in the fall, specializing in women’s reproductive health in conflict zones and disaster settings.
For the past year, Kateri has worked as an intern, and later as an operations assistant, for Mali Health Organizing Project, an international non-profit committed to reducing maternal and child mortality in West Africa. She is passionate about combating violence against women, increasing access to information about sexual health and reproduction, and fostering a healthy future through adequate prenatal and neonatal care.
Read Donahoe’s pieces from her project, Cutting Ties: Mali’s Struggle Between Tradition and Women’s Health.
Claire Elizabeth Felter
Claire Felter is a Pulitzer Center student fellow and a recent graduate of Boston University, where she received her Master’s degree in Journalism. Claire spent the last year working as a web intern at the Christian Science Monitor and wrote stories primarily for the Science section. Claire holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Africana Studies from Tufts University and has refined her Swahili over six years of language study in the U.S. and East Africa.
Claire’s reporting interests lie at the intersection of sci/tech innovation, global health, and economic development.
Read Felter’s pieces from her project, Water Safety in Zanzibar.
Sascha Garrey
Sascha Garrey is a Pulitzer Center student fellow and a recent graduate of Boston University, where she received her masters degree in Public Health. She grew up in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and holds a Bachelors degree in economics from Dalhousie University. Studying economics drew her attention to systematic inequalities that specifically affect the health outcomes of women, an area of focus during her graduate work as a public health communications student.
Sascha first came to journalism as a writer for the Common Health blog at WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station and has continued reporting as a regular contributor to BU Today, Boston University’s news source.
Read Garrey’s pieces from her project, Cervical Cancer in Uganda.
Selin Thomas
Originally from San Francisco, Selin Thomas recently received her Bachelor of Science from Boston University. A Pulitzer Center student fellow, she began reporting as a high school student for a local newspaper, further pursuing reporting through BU’s on-campus media and publications, as well as working for WGBH radio, NBC-7, Time Out Istanbul and the Boston Globe.
She is now based in New York, pursuing a masters degree in political journalism from Columbia University.
Read Thomas’s pieces from her project, Syrian Refugees in Turkey.
Kerstin Egenhofer
Kerstin is currently pursuing her Master of Public Health at Boston University. She came to Boston from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she studied anthropology with a focus on African studies. She is interested in contemporary issues related to international health and development, especially the political and economic forces that make access to quality healthcare a reality in one place and a luxury in another.
As part of her graduate coursework, Kerstin studied radio journalism. She is excited about the space where public health and journalism overlap and hopes to tell stories about health and development through the voices of people who directly experience global health crises.
Kerstin grew up in Maine and is fluent in German.
Read Egenhofer’s pieces from her project, Paying the Poor: Cash Transfer Programs in Malawi.
Lusha Chen
Lusha Chen graduated from Boston University, class of 2013, with her masters in broadcast journalism. Her multimedia skills, as a news anchor, videographer, editor and cameraperson, have taken her around the world.
Lusha grew up in Guangzhou in southern China, a port that 300 years ago was the sole point of access between mainland China and the rest of the world. In 2011, she set sail for Boston, another coastal city known as “the Hub.” While there she covered the Boston Marathon, the 2012 election and the Clinton Foundation Annual Meeting. The stories Lusha produced have covered a broad range of subjects from spinal cord injuries and pediatric brain tumors, to discrimination within the military, and a boat-building class in a Massachusetts public school.
In the last two years, Lusha has reported from the London Olympic Games for China Central Television (CCTV) and worked as an assistant producer at WHDH (NBC Boston) and in the communication division at UNICEF.
She speaks English, Cantonese and Mandarin fluently.
Read Chen’s pieces from her project, Burmese Brides Along the Chinese Border.
Jason Hayes
Jason is a graduate student at the Boston University’s School of Public Health where he is pursuing a masters degree with a focus on International Health. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, he obtained an undergraduate degree from Colby College and spent a semester in the Brazilian Amazon to study resource management and human ecology. In recent years, Jason worked for public health organizations in Haiti and Cambodia, as well as a wilderness therapy program in Alaska. As an aspiring public health professional, Jason views responsible reporting for the world’s underserved and vulnerable populations as an imperative and is excited to join the Pulitzer Center this summer.
Read Hayes’ pieces from his project, Changing Waters: Cholera Permeates Life in Haiti.