Fernanda Santos is a multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-skilled storyteller who has focused her career on elevating the stories of underrepresented and misrepresented communities. She got her start in journalism in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has reported in three languages, in Latin America and the United States, where she has lived since 1998. Moved by the desire to present a most American of stories in a different format and to a broader audience, Fernanda combined her knowledge and creativity to co-write the script for ¡Americano!, an Off Broadway musical about a Dreamer from Arizona whose stage served as host for President Barack Obama’s celebration of 10 years of his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The musical won the prestigious Gilberto Zaldivar award for outstanding production presented by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors, the oldest organization devoted to increasing Latino representation in the arts.
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Fernanda has taught and mentored hundreds of journalists and journalism students, both as a professor of practice at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, a newsroom trainer and a writing coach in the Poynter Institute’s Power of Diverse Voices, a program focused on elevating the voices of journalists of color. She did a year of meaningful work as editorial director at Futuro Media Group, giving voice and space to the new American majority through weekly podcasts and a digital platform until her resignation in 2023 in solidarity with the many colleagues who lost their jobs during a devastating round of layoffs.
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Fernanda was the first Brazilian staff writer at The New York Times, where she worked for 12 years, including five as a national bureau chief based in Phoenix. She received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for the columns she wrote for The Washington Post about the political transformation in Arizona and a first-place award in the nonfiction category from the Western Writers of America for her first book, The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, about one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history. She is currently at work on a memoir.
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Fernanda’s work has been featured across various countries and media platforms, including The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Bloomberg Opinion, High Country News and Guernica in the United States; Animal Político in Mexico; and Época and O Estado de São Paulo in Brazil.
She is a lifetime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and vice president of The Sauce Foundation, which honors her late husband’s memory by raising money for journalism scholarships and pancreatic cancer research. She lives in New York City with her daughter and their capricious Tabby cat. To follow Fernanda and her work, consider subscribing to her newsletter. |