2018 Summer Institute for Educators

Fareed Mostoufi

Fareed Mostoufi is part of the education team at Pulitzer Center, where he focuses on designing classroom resources and connecting journalists to students. He has been a freelance curriculum writer for Pulitzer Center for several years, but he joins the team after working for nearly four years as a theater artist and educator in the Community Engagement department at Arena Stage in Washington D.C. While at Arena, Fareed devised and directed original, autobiographical plays with communities in Washington D.C., Peru, India and Croatia that explored violence, health and identity. Before that, Fareed taught ESL and Spanish in D.C. Public Schools. As a recipient of a 2009 Fulbright Scholarship to Argentina, he also taught culture, literature and playwriting at a teachers’ college in San Miguel de Tucuman. In collaboration with the Ministry of Education there, he created the workshop Drama Techniques for English Language Learners, which was presented to more than 400 teachers in the Tucumán province. Fareed received his BFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University in 2008 and his MA in Teaching from American University in 2012. He is passionate about social justice and is a firm believer in the power of storytelling to cultivate empathy.

Hannah Berk

Hannah Berk is education coordinator with the Pulitzer Center. Previously, she spent a year teaching English, international issues, and creative writing in a rural community through the Chilean Ministry of Education and served as Digital Editor for Asymptote, an online journal for world literature in translation. She holds a B.A. in Government from the College of William & Mary and an A.A. from Tidewater Community College.

Reese Erlich

Reese Erlich’s history in journalism goes back over 40 years. Today he works as a fulltime, freelance print and broadcast reporter, filing for National Public Radio, CBC Radio, and GlobalPost among others. Erlich won top honors from the Society of Professional Journalists (N. Calif.) in 2012 for his radio documentary on the Syrian uprising. He shared a Peabody Award in 2006 as a segment producer for Crossing East, a radio documentary on the history of Asians in the U.S. His article about the U.S. use of depleted uranium ammunition was voted one of 2003’s “most censored stories” by Project Censored at Sonoma State University. Erlich’s book “\Target Iraq, co-authored with Norman Solomon, was a best seller in 2003. He also published The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis (2007); “Dateline Havana: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Future of Cuba” (2009); and Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence and Empire (2010). His latest book, Syrian Uprising: Assad, the Rebels and U.S. Policy, was published in 2014.

Natalie Keyssar

Natalie Keyssar is an award-winning photojournalist based in New York City. Her work focuses on political unrest, youth culture, and class disparity, primarily in the US and Latin America. Her work has been published in Time, California Sunday Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde M Magazine, and El Pais Semanal among many others, and exhibited in the US and Europe.

Nahal (Halley) Toosi

Nahal (Halley) Toosi is a reporter with Politico, where she writes about foreign policy and national security. Before joining Politico, Toosi spent eight years as a reporter and editor for The Associated Press in New York, Islamabad, Kabul and London. Prior to that, Toosi worked for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where she primarily covered higher education but also managed to report from Iraq, South Korea, Thailand and Germany. Toosi has always had a strong interest in migration and refugee issues. While in Milwaukee, she wrote a series about Hmong refugees. In Pakistan, she covered the human displacement caused by militancy. At Politico, she’s written about the policy and political challenges posed to the United States by the global migration crisis.

Max Duncan

Max Duncan is a British journalist, filmmaker and director of photography, producing documentaries and features with a particular focus on China, where he has worked for almost a decade. His recent work has been featured by media including The Guardian, The New York Times, VICE, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Bloomberg. He previously worked for five years as a video journalist for Reuters news agency, based in Beijing. His work has received a Webby Award, a One World Media Award and been selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick. Max divides his time between China and Europe, and is at home working in Mandarin and Spanish.

Anna Nemtsova

Anna Nemtsova is a Moscow-based correspondent for The Daily Beast, Newsweek magazine and The Fuller Project for International Reporting, covering Russia and the former Soviet states. She also contributes her stories to Politico and Foreign Policy magazines, nbcnews.com, The Guardian, BBC, the Washington Post, Vanity Fairand Marie Claire. She is the winner of the Pulitzer Center’s 2012 Persephone Miel Fellowship and a 2015 recipient of the IWMF Courage in Journalism award. Anna began reporting on crisis in the North Caucasus and Central Asia 19 years ago, as a researcher for The Washington Post. Since then she has worked as a reporter covering Russia for Western audiences and the West for a Russian-speaking audiences. She focuses her reporting on human rights and social issues in post-Soviet states and Europe. She writes as well as takes photographs and videos for her multimedia projects. Anna lives in Moscow with her husband and son.