Vox Welcomes New Cohort of Fellows to the Network

Vice President Allison Rockey and editor-in-chief Swati Sharma have welcomed Vox’s new cohort of fellows to the network.

This is the second year of the Vox Fellowship Program, which offers full-time, year-long positions to aspiring journalists from diverse backgrounds seeking to break into the field. It aims to address the industry’s need to include writers from backgrounds that were historically excluded from all parts of the industry to strengthen reporting, storytelling and businesses, and to serve diverse audiences with meaningful work. The fellowship provides mentorship, training sessions featuring leaders across Vox Media, and other professional development including a built-in network of Vox Media leadership and editorial talent.

“I’ve long believed that an overlooked secret to our success has been our strategy of hiring people from outside the industry,” said Allison Rockey, VP of Vox. “By bringing in teachers, lawyers, and philosophers and others with different lived experiences and perspectives we are better positioned to offer something unique to our audience. Every person who joins our newsroom changes us, and I cannot wait to see how this class of fellows challenges us to think differently.”

“We received so many incredible applications for the second year in a row, and I’m so proud of this talented cohort. I’m excited to see what they’ll do in the coming months here at Vox,” said Swati Sharma, editor-in-chief of Vox.

This year, Vox has been able to double their fellowship class thanks to a grant for Vox’s Future Perfect program. Future Perfect is a unique editorial objective that focuses specifically on evidence and reason to find the best ways to do good. The grant—from BEMC Foundation— an organization committed to promoting high-impact opportunities for improving lives throughout the world, helps to support this reporting by funding three additional fellowship roles. The following three fellows will be joining Future Perfect as reporters:

Muizz Akhtar is originally from Houston, Texas, and has previously worked in the realms of academia, strategic communications, nonprofit community organizations, and electoral campaigns. Most recently, before joining Vox, Muizz was an editor at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, where they worked on academic papers related to public health, education, and poverty alleviation in China. They also served in the Texas Data Quality Coalition, where they advocated for legislation to improve public health outcomes, particularly in marginalized communities.

Miranda Dixon-Luinenberg trained as an ICU nurse in Canada, and became involved in the effective altruist community through reading and posting on Lesswrong.com. She later worked at the Centre for Effective Altruism in an operations and finance role before joining Vox.

Siobhan Siu Bai McDonough graduated from Harvard, where she wrote about travel, religion, and wonder. She previously worked in Delhi and Lusaka at IDinsight, a global development data analytics and advisory organization, in research and communications.

All editorial fellows will work with their editors on assignments including writing, producing, and publishing. Vox’s cohort includes a total of six fellows from different experiences, interests, and skill sets. In addition, fellows will work editorially in their specialized areas across text, audio and video:

Halley Brown will join the Vox video team. She graduated from The George Washington University where she received a degree in Journalism and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. She is based in Washington, DC, and has worked in video production at media companies like Discovery Inc.

Victoria Dominguez will join the Vox audio team. She graduated from Florida State University, where she discovered her love for audio storytelling and wrote about state politics and culture for several student publications. She interned at NPR’s Morning Edition prior to her fellowship.

Neel Dhanesha will report on tech for Recode. He is a writer from Bangalore and attended the Literary Reportage program at NYU, where he earned a master’s degree in journalism. Before joining Vox he worked at Audubon magazine and Radiolab.

If you would be interested in supporting Vox’s fellowship program with a grant, please reach out to Vox’s Network Director, Sarah Bishop Woods for more information.