The McGraw Internships

Evelin Fajardo-Alvarez

Fajardo-Alvarez worked at Futuro Studios, the original podcasts and programming division of award-winning Futuro Media during her internship. She contributed to various projects, including Chess Piece: The Elián González Story and season two of Suave, which received the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting. She is a 2021 graduate of St John’s University with a B.A in mass communications; while there, she developed a passion for telling stories after taking an intro to radio class. A bilingual reporter of immigrant descent, Fajardo-Alvarez likes to work on stories centered on the Latino community and the economic realities of life in the US. She decided to pursue business and economics reporting because she knows that understanding how the economy works is critical to telling better stories. After graduation, she hopes to work for a podcast that explores the lives of underrepresented communities.

Jiana Smith

Smith worked at the Mott Haven Herald and the Hunts Point Express during her internship, where she tapped into local South Bronx communities to produce stories on the intersection of business, transportation, and environmental justice. She graduated in 2018 from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she wrote about Richmond’s arts and culture scene for the Commonwealth Times. Smith originally wanted to cover arts and culture, but shifted to business journalism to gain the skills needed to write about how business and the economy impact culture. She hopes to report on the fashion industry after she finishes her studies.

Andrew Ancheta

Ancheta spent his summer as an intern at the Mott Haven Herald and Hunts Point Express. His reporting focused on the issues facing businesses and communities in the South Bronx, including local efforts to adapt to climate change, and the environmental impacts of new logistics centers in Hunts Point. A 2007 graduate of Macalester College in Minnesota, with a double major in math and history, he worked as a travel journalist in China and a cryptocurrency reporter for a blockchain news startup before deciding to return to graduate school at Newmark. He chose to study data and financial journalism because he wants to understand the numbers that make the world move. After graduating, he hopes to report on the intersection of science and the economy as the world adapts to a changing climate. 

Francisco Uranga

Uranga spent his internship as a reporting fellow at The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit newsroom in Austin that covers state politics and policy. His reporting focused on economic issues and education, such as the impact of legislation on construction workers, Texas semiconductor incentive laws, and the effect of debt on students. After graduating as an industrial engineer from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he worked as a business consultant for six years. In 2015 he studied at the journalism school run by El Pais, the Spanish newspaper. He worked there for a year covering economics, then returned to Argentina to edit a digital magazine focused on economic development. A student in the bilingual Spanish language program at the J-School, he plans to continue covering business after graduation, with a focus on how the economy affects Latino communities in the U.S.

Angel Adegbesan

Adegbesan worked with the Editorial team at Skift, a travel trade publication, during her internship. She covered a range of stories, including a CEO interview, a mega-brand hotel earnings call and an in-depth feature on the impact international students have on the travel economy. A 2020 graduate of CUNY’s York College with a B.A in Journalism, she has always had a passion for telling stories. She worked her way up on the editorial staff at York’s college newspaper, eventually becoming the editor-in-chief. She decided to concentrate on business and economics journalism because she realized the economy is at the intersection of almost every story, especially during the pandemic. She believes an understanding of the economy will enable her to tell better stories.

Allison Smith

Smith interned at Crain’s Detroit Business, where she covered the city’s economic recovery. She wrote numerous features on the pandemic’s impact on restaurants and other businesses, the plastics industry, the emerging non-alcoholic beverage market and burnout among city workers. After graduating in 2016 from Hunter College with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, Smith moved to Bangkok, where she wrote for outlets like Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, AFAR Magazine and DestinAsian. Since then, she’s written for Grub Street, and her investigative reporting is forthcoming at The Guardian. Smith chose the business concentration because she believes business is at the core of any story. She hopes to help readers make sense of the world by monitoring the financial dealings of companies.

Suzannah Cavanaugh

Cavanaugh spent the summer at Crain’s New York Business, where she covered the city’s post-pandemic economic reopening. Her reporting has focused on everything from the impact on city restaurants to breaking news on the budget deficit. After graduating in 2015 with a B.A. in English from Temple University, Cavanaugh freelanced for the Philadelphia Gay News before applying to the Newmark J-School. Initially planning to write about culture, she switched to the business concentration because she wanted to gain a better understanding of economic systems. Having begun to study business reporting just as the pandemic shuttered the nation’s economy, covering its fallout has cemented her interest in macroeconomics and government spending. She plans to continue that coverage at a business magazine or public radio outlet after graduation.

Samuel Sharpe

A 2013 graduate of the Eugene Lang College at the New School with a degree in Culture and Media Studies, Sharpe interned at The Wire China, a new weekly digital magazine focused on China’s global economic impact founded by former New York Times Shanghai bureau chief David Barboza. He has reported on Chinese government-linked firms receiving U.S. bailout funds, China’s emerging electric vehicle market and the semiconductor industry. After graduating from the New School, Sharpe worked in marketing at tech startups and non-profits for several years before deciding to switch careers and study business journalism. He believes every story, in cause or effect, is ultimately a business story, and his goal is to shed light on the ever-increasing power and influence that the tech sector wields in our everyday lives. 

Spencer Lee

Lee spent the summer as a radio newsroom intern at WNYC, New York’s NPR affiliate. A 1993 graduate of the University of Washington with a BA in Russian, he turned to journalism after working in different writing and project management roles in the travel industry and doing public health research. Lee decided to switch careers because journalism is a field that rewards the curious and permits him to combine storytelling and media production. He chose to study business reporting because he enjoys seeing the many ways a single economic issue has wide-ranging effects on different populations. 

Megan Myscofski

Myscofski interned during the summer at Montana Public Radio, as well as with Threshold, a podcast about climate change. After graduating from NYU in 2013 with a B.A. in Comparative Literature, she spent several years working for a non-profit that facilitates high school student exchanges before coming to the Newmark J-School. Myscofski chose the business concentration because she believes all stories have a money angle. She hopes to continue reporting on business and the environment for public radio when she finishes the program. 

Lukas Southard

Southard spent his summer internship at Futuro Media Group working on Latino USA, a weekly radio show distributed through NPR.  He helped edit stories, provided fact-checking and produced several profiles of his own. Southard graduated in 2007 from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in History of Arts and Visual Culture and a minor in Education. He spent the next 10+ years working as a chef, a sommelier and a whole-animal butcher, among other roles within the food industry. He enrolled at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY to learn to report on the food business. He hopes to cover the changing landscape of the world’s food systems and the economic factors that drive the food markets. 

Matthew Cutler

Cutler spent the summer as a general assignment intern at KUT, the public radio station in Austin. After graduating from the New College of Florida in 2013 with a B.A. in economics, Cutler worked as an engineer, producer and reporter for various radio outlets – WSLR in Sarasota, and WBAI and Clocktower Radio in New York — before coming to the Newmark J-School. Cutler entered journalism to cover the political economy of media and technology. He chose the business concentration because he is interested in the American economy and role of companies in creating its culture.

Scarlett Kuang

Kuang worked as an intern with the digital story telling team at Philly.com. A Chinese native, she graduated from Toronto’s York University in 2015 with a degree in communications. She worked as bilingual reporter and videographer in the Vancouver bureau of Xinhua, China’s national news agency, before enrolling at the Newmark J-School. She chose the business concentration because she wants to incorporate economic issues and analysis into the stories she covers.

Oscar Gonzalez

Gonzalez spent the summer as a general assignment intern working on local news at WNYC, the New York public radio station. A native of San Antonio, Texas who received a bachelor’s degree in communications from Texas A&M University-San Antonio in 2016, He was the editor-in-chief of the student digital outlet, The Mesquite, while an undergraduate, and has also written regularly on technology for his own news website since 2008. He chose the business concentration because he realized that money played a key role in many stories he’s written, on subjects as varied as technology, politics and local news. His goal is to take what he learned in journalism school, along with his previous experience, to dive further into overlooked stories.

Liz Ramanand

Ramanand split her summer internship doing work for three jointly-managed sites, ScottishFinancialNews.com, NorthernFinancialReview.com and Centerforce’s IPStrategyNews.com. She covered international business news for the trio, in addition to managing their social media accounts. The Queens native graduated in 2011 from Brooklyn College with a dual degree in Journalism and English. Prior to coming to the journalism school, Ramanand worked for six years as an arts and music journalist and photographer for Townsquare Media. She has long been interested in combining her passion for the arts with her interest in business, and hopes to develop a strong business journalism career when she graduates.

Tanvi Acharya

Acharya interned at InvestmentNews, a digital news site and weekly magazine for financial advisors. She was a general assignment reporter covering stories on the financial services industry. A native of Mumbai, India, Acharya graduated from Rutgers University in 2015 with a major in journalism and double minor in English and economics. She hopes to combine her passion for economics with her interest in journalism to write stories that help society understand this complex topic.

Zameena Mejia

Mejia covered the sportswear industry for Footwear News, reporting on retail companies, fashion industry trends, tech and legislation for the publication’s consumer website and large format print magazine. A magna cum laude graduate of SUNY New Paltz with a double major in journalism and Spanish, her goal is to write stories about business and the economy that show how they impact the lives of young consumers, especially millennials, Hispanics and women.

Danni Santana

Santana spent the summer as an intern at Crain’s New York Business, where he worked on the web desk and wrote stories as a general assignment reporter.  A Bronx native who graduated from CUNY’s York College in 2013 with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Communications Technology. Santana covered York’s athletics department for the school newspaper. He hopes to combine his love of sports with the training he received at the Newmark J-School to cover sports business.

Following graduation, he was hired as an associate editor at Insurance Networking News.

Mark Fahey

Fahey spent the summer of 2014 at Crain’s New York Business, where he split his time between writing news stories and assisting in research and web development. Fahey is especially interested in the economics of agriculture, real estate, technology and any project that involves sifting through large sets of data. After graduating with a degree in biology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2010, his first feature stories were published in Thailand in 2011. Mark covered education, cops, courts and the economy for the Springfield News-Sun and Washington Court House Record-Herald in Ohio before enrolling at the Newmark J-School. 

Following graduation in December, Fahey is now working as a reporter and data specialist at a new data unit being set up at CNBC.com.

Reem Nasr

Nasr worked as an intern in the news department at Michigan Radio during the summer, where she focused on the economic revitalization of Detroit. A graduate of New York University, where she majored in journalism and Middle Eastern studies, Nasr studied broadcast journalism with a concentration in business reporting. A producer of Muslim State of Mind, a weekly radio show that airs on WBAI in New York, she previously served as a producer on the Brian Lehrer Show at WNYC. Reem is a contributor to PolicyMic, a digital news site for millennials. She is of Egyptian and Lebanese descent and is interested in affairs of the Muslim American community. Fluent in English and Arabic, she hopes to continue her journalistic work in America and abroad.

Nasr has begun working as a reporter at CNBC.com.