Olivia Fanders

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT OLIVIA FANDERS

Underneath the loud roar of the subway train pulling out of the twenty-third street station, you could hear both the clack of healed pumps and the drag of broken sneakers on the platform floor. Through the turnstyles, up the stairs, and down the street to find people asleep on the sidewalk, passed by chatty women rifling through their designer handbags. If you walk a bit further, you see a collection of brick buildings that make up the Elliot-Chelsea Houses, a New York City Housing Authority-owned housing project for low-income households. Across the street lies Avenues: The World School, which is one of the most expensive private schools in Manhattan. During the summer, however, its building is home to two programs: a Nike Basketball Camp for kids that arrive in chaffered black Cadillacs with their affluent parents, and an International Rescue Committee school readiness program for refugee youth who receive free lunches and metrocards from the city. They enter through separate doors on either side of the lobby, and the children in each program exchange brief glances before entering elevators on their own respective sides — North or South. They will never interact again, unless they are unlucky enough to see eachother in passing the next morning.In the summer of 2023, I was working in downtown Manhattan commuting from my apartment in New Jersey, writing small pieces like the one above to illuminate the nuances that I saw in the world around me. I kept all my passionately-written pieces hidden away in a small drawer in my desk for no one to read – until the fall of 2023. With the support of my high school newspaper advisor, I nervously submitted a piece I’d written to the Jersey Journal. A couple days later, it was published for the world to see, changing my trajectory forever. Since then, I have spent every free moment chasing story after story first for my high school newspaper, then for the Georgetown Voice, and then for professional news outlets like Montgomery Community Media and SRQ Media. I plan to graduate from Georgetown University\'s Walsh School of Foreign Service with a major in International Politics and minors in Journalism and French. I am interested in potential opportunities in journalism, multimedia, and international relations.