Dow Jones Chicas Poderosas Digital Fellowships

Women in the developing world face even greater challenges than their developed-world counterparts breaking into IT and taking leadership roles in the field – especially when it comes to news media. Chicas Poderosas is addressing this challenge by helping to bring Latina women in the Americas into the forefront of digital journalism.

Chicas Poderosas, a movement started by Mariana Santos during her ICFJ Knight Fellowship, provides digital and new media skills and leadership training to women across Latin America. With support from the Dow Jones Foundation, Chicas Poderosas is partnering with ICFJ to launch the third Dow Jones Digital Fellowships. The program gives two women journalists from Latin America the opportunity to work in digitally-advanced U.S. newsrooms. One will be hosted by WNYC, New York's flagship public radio station. The other will work at National Public Radio (NPR) in Washington, D.C.

Selected from a growing network of Chicas Poderosas ambassadors, the Fellows will strengthen their digital and data skills and bring back new skills and knowledge to their colleagues at home.

During their four-week fellowships, each of the Chicas Poderosas Digital Fellows will be paired with an expert mentor. They will work with digital and data teams to produce creative reporting projects that leverage data visualization, graphic design, and interactive storytelling to examine current affairs.

Meet the Fellows

Loren Giordano

Country: Guatemala

Digital Fellowship Host: WNYC, New York

Fellowship statement: "My goals for this fellowship are to learn more skills in design thinking and digital platforms in order to develop innovative products for digital journalism and create better storytelling while working with others through a collaborative process that allows us to enrich each others' learning experiences and create a networking space that may bring us to collaborate together in future projects."

Jessenia Araya-Vega 

Organization: Independent Industrial, Graphic and Web Developer/Designer

Country: Costa Rica

Digital Fellowship Host: National Public Radio, Washington, DC

Fellowship statement: “I'm sure everything I can learn in this experience will allow me to walk, walk, walk... spend myself without fear, talk to strangers, ask all the questions, express every moment, make mistakes without fear, to love what is done in another language and to reduce distances in some way. I'm lucky to be a Chicas Poderosas Fellow and to be able to amaze and empower myself, be a testimony to many other women who once saw an impossible... and make it possible, do it!”