The 19th is excited to announce that veteran journalist Fernanda Santos is joining as managing editor to help shape our coverage during this crucial election year and beyond.

Fernanda has spent her career elevating the stories of underrepresented and misrepresented communities, working as a staff writer for The New York Times, contributing columnist for The Washington Post, editorial director at Futuro Media and professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She is a writing coach in the Poynter Institute’s Power of Diverse Voices program, which lifts up the voices of journalists of color, and one of the creators of the Off-Broadway musical “¡Americano!,” based on the life of an Arizona Dreamer.

Fernanda got her start in journalism in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, her home country, and has reported in three languages, in Latin America and the United States. Her stories and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Guernica, Mexico’s Animal Politico, and Época and O Estado de São Paulo in Brazil.

She is a lifetime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and vice president of The Sauce Foundation, which honors her late husband’s memory by raising money for journalism scholarships and pancreatic cancer research. Her first book, “The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots,” won a first-place award from the Western Writers of America in the nonfiction category. She is currently writing a memoir.

Fernanda lives in New York City with her daughter, Flora, and their capricious orange cat, Rocky.

Please join us in welcoming Fernanda to the team!