"The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan news publication that covers the criminal justice system, and I worked on a few projects related to that mission. At a high level, I was responsible for architecting data pipelines for a project on gaining more insight into a court system, and writing code to build systems that would process and analyze the data. I was also responsible for building data visualizations, reporting, collecting information, and writing and reporting original pieces. More specifically, I contributed reporting to tracking the number of COVID-19 cases in prisons across the country, built data visualizations for a published piece on the use of drugs to treat opioid addiction in prisons across the country, reported and wrote a story about labor data and policing, and helped to architect a data pipeline to analyze court dockets to understand bias in the court system. While the fruits of my labor will continue to flower, my main focus was using my skills as a software engineer to unlock data driven reporting and empower the reporters who are already doing amazing investigative stories.

I completed a dual master’s degree in journalism and computer science this past year. This fellowship was a perfect blend of those two fields. I was on the data reporting team, and pitched and wrote stories as a reporter does. On top of that, I used my computer science background to architect how some of our databases would store data, and wrote code to turn thousands of documents into an easily queryable dataset. That data can then be used to guide reporting, and my journalism training allowed me to investigate newsworthy questions and speak with experts on what that data could mean for the world. Additionally, I used skills learned in my computational journalism classes to analyze and detect meaningful findings buried within thousands of documents.

Due to the extraordinary situation of our times, it was hard to meet and connect with people in the organization in person. It’s amazing how much we absorb from our fellow coworkers just through the osmosis of being in the same room, and it was sad to miss out on the opportunity to hear other reporters on the phone, or have water cooler chats with others in the company. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, this was rendered impossible. Through virtual coffee chats and some in-person outdoor meetups, it was possible to eventually connect with many in the newsroom, but it was a challenge to absorb a lot of unintentional information from others.

I left my former career as a software engineer to embark on a journey to find a more meaningful application of my skills. I loved working for a publication that is dedicated to reporting on the criminal justice system, an area of coverage that has long been overlooked. I am hoping this marks the beginning of a long and impactful career as a data journalist, working tirelessly to document broken promises, system inefficiencies, and holding the powerful to account. The goal is to one day live in a more equitable society, and journalism of all kinds is imperative to greasing the wheels towards such a future. The Marshall Project's focus on documenting how the system interacts with some of its most vulnerable populations is inspiring, and I have learned an immeasurable amount on how to investigate, unpack, and document the failures of our society. The goal is always to stay curious and ask questions about why the world is the way it is, how it came to be as such, and what work there is to be done."