Staff

Sally Herships is an award winning audio journalist.  Her bylines include the BBC, The New York Times and Marketplace. She’s been a frequent guest host at NPR’s daily economics podcast  The Indicator and covered the pandemic and New York’s embattled Governor Andrew Cuomo for NPR’s National Desk.  Her work covers a range of styles and beats and has won critical acclaim. Her 2011 investigation of the DOD’s failure to comply with its own tobacco pricing restrictions won a Third Coast Radio Impact Award and was an IRE finalist.  In 2016, her BBC documentary “As Many Leaves” was described by The Guardian as an "Emotional, wonderful listen," and was rated among the year’s top ten podcasts by Vulture.  In 2022, Sally hosted and co-executive produced “The Heist,” an investigative podcast series which revealed the failures of President Trump’s 2017 tax bill, racked up multiple awards and was honored as a Dupont Finalist.

Sally has been teaching for over a decade. In 2013, she founded the podcast school, Radio Boot Camp. She studied at Parsons School of Design, but in 2004, the kind folks at Radiolab took her in and taught her all things audio for which she is forever grateful.

Priyanjana Bengani is the Tow Computational Journalism Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Her work focuses on using computational techniques to research the digital media landscape, including partisan local news and the intersection of platform companies with the media. She co-teaches a course on Information Warfare Reporting at Columbia Journalism School, and has previously co-taught a class on Algorithms for the Lede Program. 

Her most recent projects, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, have focused on uncovering networks of mysterious ‘pink slime’ local news outlets, looking at activity on WhatsApp groups during the Indian election, and analysing how Facebook labels posts inconsistently. 

Pri is a graduate of Columbia’s MS dual degree in Computer Science and Journalism (2017). She completed her BS in Computer Science and Business Studies from the University of Warwick in England. 

She likes code.

Kristen Lombardi heads the Columbia Journalism School’s postgraduate reporting program, Columbia Journalism Investigations, where she has the privilege of helping produce great investigative stories while training the next generation of great investigative reporters. Under her editorial leadership, CJI fellows have dug into worker heat deaths (link is external), the mental-health toll of climate-fueled disasters (link is external) and online-dating companies’ response to sexual assaults (link is external), and CJI investigations have won accolades from the South Carolina Press Association, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Peabody Awards.

Before joining the J-School in August 2018, Kristen spent 11 years as an investigative reporter at the nonprofit newsroom the Center for Public Integrity, covering environmental and social justice issues. She’s been a journalist (link is external) for 26 years and has received numerous national and regional awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Dart Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service. In 2013, President Barack Obama signed a law addressing problems exposed by her 2009-10 CPI investigation, “Sexual Assault on Campus (link is external).” She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and has a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University. She’s taught investigative skills classes at Columbia and serves as a master’s adviser for students in the Stabile investigative reporting program.

Jonathan Soma is a programmer and educator who focuses on making unapproachable data accessible. He has made maps, processed data, and crowdsourced stories with ProPublica, WNYC, The New York Times, and others.

In 2009 he helped create Big Apple Ed, a web application that crunched NYC school data, which was awarded third place in New York City's first annual Big Apps contest. Since then, Soma's personal projects - analyzing the Japanese census, MTA travel times and more - have been featured everywhere from Gawker to The New York Times Style section.

In 2010 Soma cofounded the Brooklyn Brainery, a community-driven recreational school where he instructs on neuroscience, the Loch Ness Monster, and everything in between. He is also a speaker at Masters of Social Gastronomy, a monthly lecture series on culinary history, food science and culture.

Soma earned his B.A. in Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia.

Joan is a seasoned advancement leader with 30+ years of experience raising funds for higher education institutions and healthcare. Most recently, she was the Director of Development at Stony Brook University, where she supported the School of Communication and Journalism and the Libraries. She has also served in fundraising leadership roles at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, Pratt Institute, New York University, Rutgers University and Saint Peter’s Healthcare System.

She earned her B.A. in Journalism/Mass Media from Rutgers University as well as a Master of Public Administration from Kean University.

Jimmy So is the editor of Columbia Global Reports, a publishing imprint from Columbia University that commissions authors to produce works of original thinking and on-site reporting from all over the world, on a wide range of topics. He has commissioned and edited authors such as Masha Gessen, Bill Keller, Harriet A. Washington, Margaret Sullivan, Bethany McLean, Tim Wu, Roxane Gay, Edmund Morris, Jonathan Schell, Clay Shirky, Gish Jen, and Sasha Issenberg, among many others.

He is a regular film and book critic and was a culture and books editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, where he contributed many film, book, television, and music criticism, and won a National Magazine Award as part of the books team for his reviews. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Chronicle of Higher Education, CBS News, and other publications. He has worked for The New Yorker, CBS News, and KUOW radio. He was a classical music critic for The Seattle Times, and a news anchor and senior editor at the Hong Kong television stations TVB and ATV, where he covered the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and the Beijing Olympics. He is writing a book about the early friendship of two Chinese film directors. He is a graduate of the MA program at Columbia in the arts and culture concentration, where he won the Pulitzer traveling fellowship.

Jim earned his bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Bridgeport, where he learned to report/produce and direct local cable newscasts. He began his career at WTXX-TV in Connecticut, where he was an award-winning Director/Producer/Editor rising to Production Manager and Creative Services Director in the Hartford/New Haven, Connecticut 27th market. His hands-on experience in all phases of studio and field production began here. His work included producing/directing on-air promos and original studio programs on topics like finance, public affairs and sports. His career includes work as a Senior Editor and Creative Director at Video Production Associates in Shelton, CT, A Producer/Editor/Director at ESPN Digital Media in Bristol, CT where he directed and produced over 100 short-form video pieces for the ESPN web properties, including ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. He directed live coverage of the winter and summer X-Games from Aspen, Colorado and Los Angeles, California over several years, delivering some of ESPN’s first high-quality digital streaming to a global audience. For the last 13 years at the Columbia J-School Jim has worked with video students in a variety of classes and led the broadcast department, equipping students with the latest video and audio technology, upgrading the studios and performing strategic planning for the future needs of the J-School.

Jelani Cobb joined the Columbia Journalism School faculty in 2016 and became Dean in 2022. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2015. He received a Peabody Award for his 2020 PBS Frontline film Whose Vote Counts? and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary in 2018. He has also been a political analyst since 2019.

He is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress, To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic and most recently, Three Or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012-2025. He is the editor or co-editor of several volumes including The Matter of Black Lives, a collection of The New Yorker’s writings on race and The Essential Kerner Commission Report. He is producer or co-producer on a number of documentaries including Lincoln’s Dilemma, Obama: A More Perfect Union, Policing the Police and THE RIOT REPORT.

Dr. Cobb was educated at Jamaica High School in Queens, NY, Howard University, where he earned a B.A. in English, and Rutgers University, where he completed his M.A. and doctorate in American History in 2003. He is also a recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Journalism Project and the Board of Trustees of the New York Public Library. He received an Honorary Doctorate for the Advancement of Science and Art from Cooper Union in 2022, and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Rutgers University in 2024. York College / CUNY and Teachers College have honored Dr. Cobb with medals.

Dr. Cobb was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023.

George Miller is a longtime journalist and educator.

He was a photojournalist and reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, and he later published a local music magazine in Philadelphia called JUMP. His words and images have been published around the world.

Before arriving at the Graduate School of Journalism, Miller was on the faculty of the Journalism Department at Temple University. He taught magazine writing, documentary photography, entrepreneurial journalism and a multimedia reporting class called Philadelphia Neighborhoods, as well as many other classes. From 2018 through 2021, he also served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Temple University’s Japan Campus in Tokyo.

He taught in summer multimedia journalism programs in Cagli, Italy, in Armagh, Northern Ireland, and in London.

He is a graduate of Loyola University of Maryland. He earned master’s degrees at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his doctorate in higher education leadership from Wilmington University.

As the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Journalism School, Miller’s primary duty is to ensure that students receive the best possible learning experience.

As Assistant Dean of Student and International Programs, Elena oversees partnerships with universities in Paris, Barcelona, Chile, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires. She oversees the part-time MS program for students who live and work in the New York City area. A 1999 graduate of Columbia Journalism School, Elena was a staff reporter at Newsday and The Miami Herald and a freelance magazine writer. She has also worked as an editor at Scholastic News and a staff writer at the Ford Foundation. A longtime adjunct professor at CJS, Elena is the faculty adviser to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists student chapter at Columbia. She is a board member of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting in Latin America and the Caribbean, and she administers several post-graduate fellowships that support reporting projects around the world.

Duy Linh Nguyen Tu is a journalist and documentary filmmaker, focusing on science, climate, and the environment. He is the Dean of Academic Affairs and a Professor of Professional Practice.

His teaching focuses on reporting and documentary filmmaking, and his work has been honored with several awards, including Emmy, Murrow, NPPA, POY, ONA and other prizes.  

 

He is also a graduate of the program. 

Dolores Barclay is an author and former National Writer and Arts Editor of The Associated Press. She worked for AP first as a reporter covering City Hall, federal and criminal courts, and the police beat for the New York City bureau, before advancing to National Writer and investigative reporter. She later moved into culture coverage as a writer and critic and rose to manage and overhaul AP's culture beat as Arts and Entertainment editor. Her investigative series with fellow National Writer Todd Lewan, "Torn From the Land," was a seminal work in documenting the massive loss of wealth suffered by Black Americans through land loss. The project was awarded the Aronson Prize for Social Justice Journalism, the APME Enterprise Award, and the Griot Award of the New York Association of Black Journalists and was submitted for a Pulitzer Prize. It remains a studied and much discussed work. Barclay, who has taught feature writing at Rutgers University, is the author of two inspirational books, and co-author of "A Girl Needs Cash" and "Sammy Davis Jr. My Father,” now a film project with the Emmy-winning actress/producer/writer Lena Waithe. She also worked with Diana Ross on her best-selling memoir, "Secrets of a Sparrow." A graduate of Elmira College, Barclay was honored with the Alumni Association’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 2011. She is also a recipient of The Multiple Sclerosis Award for Excellence in Communication. She is currently working on her first novel and a nonfiction account of her family’s storied history.

When not working, Barclay sails, fishes, snorkels, travels, gardens and cooks. She enjoys theater, film, music, art, dance and comic books.

Books

A Girl Needs Cash

Sammy David Jr.: My Father

Believe in Yourself

Starting Over

Anusha Shrivastava is the associate dean of career development at Columbia Journalism School. In this role, which she has had since 2022, she leads and manages the team that organizes the largest journalism career expo in the country and trains students for their professional lives. Prior to this role, she was the director of alumni relations at Columbia Journalism School. This is her second stint at CJS, which she originally joined in 2013.

Shrivastava served as a lecturer for Columbia University’s Department of Statistics, where she was head of career development and alumni relations for six years. While there, she taught a course on professional development, covering topics including digital presence, negotiation, and mentoring. 

Before she transitioned into higher education, Shrivastava spent over 20 years as a business reporter on television, in print, and newswires in the U.S., Canada, and India. Most recently, she was at The Wall Street Journal in New York, where she covered global foreign exchange and credit markets. Her specialties included asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities, derivatives, commercial paper, money market funds, corporate bonds, and the Federal Reserve. 

Shrivastava was also an on-air reporter for BBC World's 'India Business Report” in New Delhi and the web editor at The Globe and Mail in Toronto. She has worked at the Associated Press in New York, The Hartford Business Journal in Hartford, Conn., and The Republican American in Waterbury, Conn.

Shrivastava holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Hindu College at the University of Delhi, an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia Journalism School, and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

Aarti Virani, assistant director, was a part-time faculty member at the J-School and worked with Prof. Ari Goldman, traveling for the Covering Religion class in 2015. She has worked as a writer and editor for over 15 years. Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Vogue India, where she was a contributing editor and Travel + Leisure, among other publications. Most recently, Aarti was a blog editor at OpenTable, where she coached a team of writers to develop content that reflected the diversity of cuisines and restaurant ownership found in various communities across America.

Born and raised in Kobe, Japan, Aarti discovered her passion for storytelling at age 10 when she wrote about experiencing the Great Hanshin Earthquake. She holds an M.A. in International Affairs from The New School and a B.A. in Magazine Journalism from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.