Alumni Member
Alia Dharssi
Alia is a development studies scholar who came to the fellowship from graduate school at the University of Oxford, where she’d researched a social movement for housing rights in Mumbai’s slums. As a global correspondent, she wanted to place development issues on the public agenda. Alia spent eight months covering economic development and human rights issues for our media partners and, with Ashley Renders, spearheaded a major investigation for Reuters-affiliate Trust.org into the way big oil companies manage royalty payments around the world. Alia is now a William J. Clinton Fellow at the America-India Foundation.
“The fellowship honed my ability to find great story ideas, sharpened my investigative skills and significantly improved my writing. The best part of the program was the opportunity to be mentored by talented journalism veterans. Discussing my work with my mentors over the course of eight months helped me to build solid reporting skills and transformed how I analyze important issues in my beat. I’ve learned to look at my academic expertise with the mindset of a journalist.“