Meet the 2021–22 O’Brien Fellowship Reporting Interns
Nine students are joining four new Fellows on journalism projects in the fall
The O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism has picked the students who will join incoming reporters Katherine Reynolds Lewis, Sarah Carr, Sari Lesk and Guy Boulton on nine-month investigations into inequities in education, lending and health care.
Those student reporters include seven undergraduates in journalism at the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University. Joining them are two students in the Communication Master’s Program at Marquette.
The undergraduates are Lelah Byron, Aimee Galaszewski, Bryan Geenen, Alexa Jurado, Annie Mattea, Maureen Ojiambo, and Vanessa Rivera. The graduate students are Quinn Faeth and Rachel Ryan.
Lelah Byron
Lelah Byron, 20, is a rising senior in journalism and political science from the Edison Park area of Chicago. She serves as an investigative reporter and executive projects editor for the Marquette Tribune student media news organization. She recently took first place in News Story-Writing (TV) at the 2020 Wisconsin Broadcaster’s Association Student Awards for Excellence. After graduation, she hopes to join Report for America. Byron says she strives to produce narrative-driven, accessible stories that allow a reader to “resonate with an individualized experience of injustice or victory beyond his or her own framework.”
Aimee Galaszewski
Aimee Galaszewski, 20, is a rising senior from Greenfield, Wis., a Milwaukee suburb. She is studying journalism and digital media. Galaszewski was selected executive director for the Marquette Wire student media organization for 2021–22. She has reported for The Wire, and this year was general manager of Marquette University Television, which won nine statewide broadcasting awards for 2020. She says she hopes, through the fellowship, to contribute to stories that could “make a difference in the community.” She is eyeing a career in television reporting.
Bryan Geenen
Bryan Geenen, 21, is a rising senior in journalism and sports management from Appleton in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley. He works as a reporter and social media producer for the Marquette Wire and also hosts a live sports talk show on Marquette Radio. More recently, for a self-produced podcast, he conducted wide-ranging interviews with those struggling to overcome drug addiction. He says getting to learn about new topics in this way and sharing these stories is what “makes journalism unique, challenging and rewarding.”
Alexa Jurado
Alexa Jurado, 20, is a senior student in journalism, digital media and Latinx studies. She is from Cary, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago. For the Marquette Wire she has worked as a news reporter, assistant editor and a radio disc jockey with a show on news and music. She produced a short documentary for Greater Together, a creative storytelling challenge in 2020. She wants to demonstrate the “grit and determination” that reporters need to serve communities and hold those in power accountable. Jurado envisions working as a multimedia journalist at a publication, production company or a nonprofit media organization.
Annie Mattea
Annie Mattea, 20, is a rising senior studying journalism, digital media and political science. She grew up in Grayslake, Ill, north of Chicago. She has worked as a news reporter, news editor and managing editor for the Marquette Tribune, recently voted the best overall student newspaper in Wisconsin. For her, journalism is a way to put her natural curiosity to work for a good cause. “I’m interested in getting to know other people and figure out who they are,” she says. Upon graduation, expected in December 2021, Mattea hopes to start her journalism career at a local newspaper.
Maureen Ojiambo
Maureen Ojiambo, 28, is a junior studying journalism. She grew up in Nairobi, Kenya and gained experience as a local radio news reporter and anchor there. As an independent journalist, she has served as a Kenya news correspondent for the Voice of America. She has an associate degree from Multimedia University of Kenya. A long-term goal is to return to the Kenyan village of Funyula where she grew up and open a media school serving local residents. “As a journalist, I want to give young men and women
who cannot afford education, particularly from marginalized communities, a voice to tell their stories,” she says.
Vanessa Rivera
Vanessa Rivera, 21, is a rising senior studying journalism and digital media, with a concentration in communication leadership. She’s from Zion, a small Illinois city near the border with Wisconsin. She has worked as a news producer for the Marquette Wire with an emphasis on television. She serves as president of the Multicultural Greek Council, and earned the Exceptional Council President award at the 2021 Black & Multicultural Greek EMPOWERMENT! Summit. Rivera says she wants to pursue journalism that matters in a way that helps people, using her producing, writing and editing skills to tell “community-based stories and stories that have yet to be told.”
Quinn Faeth
Quinn Faeth, 22, is a first-year graduate student in media studies. He grew up in Edina, Minn., in the Minneapolis suburbs. He is graduating in May 2021 with a bachelor’s in journalism and communication studies from Marquette. Currently, he works as an assistant editor for the Marquette Wire and was previously an entertainment news reporter. He is also a writer for Breaking and Entering, a publication that features new music from small, independent artists. He produced a racial-justice related podcast called “Levels of Change,”and dreams of working for National Public Radio. “I have always been passionate about social justice, especially race and socioeconomic issues, so doing work that relates to these topics would be ideal,” he says.
Rachel Ryan
Rachel Ryan, 23, is a second-year graduate student studying digital communication strategies. She grew up in Oconomowoc, Wis., a small city 30 miles west of Milwaukee. Prior to Marquette, Ryan earned a bachelor’s in communication at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where she worked in student media while minoring in Spanish and radio-TV-film. In 2020–21, as an O’Brien reporting intern, she helped O’Brien Fellow Ashley Nguyen investigate maternal health issues through stories in The Lily and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They examined challenges faced by birth doulas. She says this work “opened my eyes even further to the change that journalism can generate, not just in society, but also in the communities most greatly impacted.”
