RIAS Germany Standard Program starts in Brussels – June 6 -17, 2022
Ten American broadcast journalists arrived in Brussels on Monday for the start of a two-week RIAS Berlin Commission fellowship in Belgium and Germany. The radio and TV journalists from Oklahoma, South Dakota, Georgia, Utah, California, New York and Washington DC will be learning more about NATO and the European Union in meetings with NATO officials, defense policy experts and the EU until taking a two-hour train ride to Cologne on Thursday for meetings with senior German broadcasting journalists at WDR TV, RTL TV and NTV all-news network before meeting with the Cologne alumni chapter on Thursday evening.
After that they will take a four-hour train ride across the country to Berlin early on Friday for a full week’s worth of meetings with political leaders, leading German and American journalists in Berlin, think tanks, political scientists, Turkish community leaders, refugees from Syria and Ukraine who have settled in Berlin, take a tour of the Reichstag parliament building and US embassy officials.
In Brussels, they got an introduction to NATO and life as a freelance foreign correspondent for NPR and Deutsche Welle from Teri Schultz, a RIAS alumni originally from New Mexico.
Schultz took part in a RIAS program in the late 1990s from New Mexico State University and ended up working in Finland for CNN. She later moved to Brussels and has carved out a niche as one of the most authoritative journalists covering NATO for Deutsche Welle and NPR.
The American journalists on the two-week RIAS Berlin Commission fellowship are:
Sheryl Worsley
News Director, KSL, Salt Lake City
is Vice President of Podcasting at Bonneville and KSL Podcasts in Salt Lake City, Utah. Worsley spent ”20 years in radio as a news director before concentrating full-time on podcasts. She manages the production of 25 original podcasts, including the investigative true crime hit COLD. Worsley serves on the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) board of directors.
Omar Atia
WNBC New York, NY
is is the 5 p.m. producer for WNBC-TV in New York City. A native New Yorker who still resides in Brooklyn, he started his career at NY1, a local TV news outlet in NYC, and has earned several prestigious honors, including a 2017 NY Press Club award and the 2021 duPont-Columbia University award for WNBC’s COVID-19 pandemic coverage.
Esther Ciammachilli
WAMU, Washington, D.C
is the local host of Morning Edition on WAMU 88.5. Ciammachilli presents local news updates from the WAMU and D.C. news team, along with feature stories and conversations with newsmakers from around the Washington, D.C. region. She is a fan of sports and has won several regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for her coverage of sports-related stories.
Kevin King
Dakota News Now, Sioux Falls, SD
is the News Director at Dakota News Now (KSFY/KDLT) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Before moving to South Dakota, he was a newscast producer at KWCH in Wichita, Kansas, KSDK in St. Louis, and KTVT in Dallas/Fort Worth. He is a past president of the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association. He currently serves as a regional vice president for the Upper Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Brandon Benavides
NBC4, Washington, D.C
works as a content producer at NBC4 in Washington, D.C. He has field produced Emmy Award-winning broadcasts and teaches journalism at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland. His interest in supporting diversity in media led him to serve as president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (2016-2018), and he is on the board ofSAG-AFTRA Washington – Mid-Atlantic Local. He graduated from American University with a Master of Arts in Communication: Journalism and Affairs, and earned his Bachelor of Arts from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas.
Matthew Gregory
WUSA9, Washington, D.C.
is a Washington, D.C.-based reporter for WUSA9-the CBS affiliate. His career began as a sports producer in Baltimore for WBAL. His news-reporting career began at WTHI-TV in Terre Haute, Indiana, and then moved back across the country to report at WAVY-TV in Norfolk, Virginia. He has a special interest in crime & justice reporting, as well as tech and finance. He runs his own finance podcast called “Funance.
Andrea Gutierrez, NPR, Los Angeles, CA is a radio producer in Los Angeles and on the NPR podcast “It’s Been a Minute“. She has also worked on “Planet Money”. Her work has also appeared on “Code Switch”, “Alt.Latino”, “All Things Considered” and “Up First”. Her work has received awards and honors from the Podcast Academy, LA Press Club, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the International Women’s Media Foundation. Gutierrez has a bachelor’s degree in German at Scripps College and MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of California, Riverside.
Scott Neuman
NPR, Washington, D.C.
is a writer and editor for NPR, based in Washington, D.C. He focuses mainly on digital platforms, writing breaking news and features. Previously, he worked as a Hong Kong-based editor and correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and as an editor at the Asia Desk of the Associated Press in Bangkok. He also worked in South Asia for United Press International.
Katherine Bennett
CNN International, Atlanta, GA
is a news writer for CNN International and is based in Atlanta. She has worked for CNN since 2000 with career highlights there including an Emmy Award for 9/11 coverage, duPont-Columbia University Award for news coverage of Tsunami Disaster in South Asia, Peabody Award for news coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. She shares all of these awards with the CNN Newsgroup.
Pam Ortega
Freelance Radio/TV Journalist, Oklahoma City, OK
is a freelance journalist in Oklahoma City and a researcher for the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies with UC-San Diego. She holds a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from UC-San Diego and bachelor’s degrees in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. She has worked with CNN, POLITICO, Bloomberg and ProPublica. Ortega has a special interest in immigration and spent time researching asylum in Southern California and in rural Georgia.
