JC

I first began writing at six years old. I wrote stories extrapolating elements from the farthest depths of my imagination - commanding fantasy and forgoing reality - until I entered the political arena as a teenager in 2016. I spent my four years of high school digging my claws into progressive politics in my incredibly conservative town in southern Alabama, culminating in a formal complaint I filed in July 2018 alleging bias and discrimination against my county's board of education.

After a year-long highly publicized battle between myself and my school board and graduating high school, I moved to New York City to attend Barnard College, where I graduated with a degree in sociology.

During my undergraduate studies, I interned for an NYC-based women’s civic engagement non-profit called Women Creating Change, the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, and Barnard Women in Entertainment. I also edited an astrophysics textbook and the Columbia Neuroscience Journal, contributed to The Columbia Spectator, and worked as a nanny, basing my sociology thesis on my experiences nannying in the Upper East Side. I returned to my core identity as a writer and editor--and now, a journalist.

During my nine-month Master of Science at Columbia Journalism School, I reported on work violations in the small restaurant industry. As a Toni Stabile investigative fellow, I was engrossed in a six-month investigation into corruption within Alabama Power Company, the most oppressive entity in the state. I then received a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and moved back to Alabama to continue that investigation, which is yet ongoing.

Currently, I work as the lead reporter at Steamboat Pilot & Today, the local newspaper in the town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado.