Meet Our New Fellows Reporting on Latino Well-Being
November 1, 2022
The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley and the university’s Graduate School of Journalism are pleased to announce the two recipients of their Reporting Fellowship on Latino Well-Being, Jessica De La Torre and Gisselle Medina. Both fellows are students at Berkeley’s journalism school, which is co-sponsoring this fellowship with the GGSC.
The fellowship will support a series of articles exploring the well-being of Latino families and communities, with a particular focus on findings from the social and behavioral sciences. In recent years, there has been a rich and growing body of research suggesting a “happiness paradox”: While greater wealth is often associated with greater happiness, members of the Latino community in the United States and citizens of Latin American countries are happier than would be predicted by their wealth alone, suggesting that there are other important factors to their psychological well-being. Both fellows will explore this and related research, ultimately reporting on the sources of social and emotional well-being among Latino families and communities, threats and challenges to their well-being, strategies for protecting against these threats, and lessons from this research that have implications for other groups and communities across the U.S.
The fellows will work closely with the GGSC’s staff and faculty, including the editors of its award-winning online magazine, Greater Good. They will supplement what they learn from the research with their own reporting and write a series of articles for Greater Good through the summer of 2023.
Please read on for more details about our newest fellows, and visit our fellowships page for more details about the program and summaries of past graduate and undergraduate fellows’ work.
Jessica De La TorreJournalism
Jessica De La Torre is a graduate student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where they are honing their skills as a filmmaker and storyteller. Jessica uses their lens to bring marginalized voices to the forefront, with a particular focus on amplifying the stories of underrepresented communities. Through their international and local experience in filmmaking, production, and reporting, Jessica has developed a passion for producing long-form narratives and short documentaries. Recently, they reported and produced a short film on Latinx teen farmworkers for Teen Vogue, showcasing their commitment to shedding light on important and often overlooked issues.
Gisselle MedinaJournalism
Gisselle Medina is a first-year student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism specializing in Narrative Writing and Multimedia. Through their reporting, they work to elevate diverse communities through investigating and accurately reporting on deep-rooted issues such as policing poverty, racial inequality, and incarceration. Medina’s work has appeared in The Daily Californian, OaklandNorth, The Oaklandside, and College Magazine. As a GGSC fellow, Medina aims to report on research examining how institutional, systemic, and cultural barriers for Latino communities can impede access to mental health services.
