Chicas Poderosas — an organization dedicated to empowering Latin American women journalists to excel in visual storytelling, data visualization and interactive media with hands-on skills training — will hold its first workshop in the United States from April 17 to 20 in Miami. The final two days of the event will be hosted at the University of Miami School of Communication, and SoC students and faculty will participate.
Chicas Poderosas was founded in 2013 by the International Center for Journalists’ Knight Fellow Mariana Santos to improve the skills of women journalists in digital reporting, design and programming and to create a new generation of women leaders in newsroom technology. The workshops are immersive, multi-day experiences that connect journalists with global leaders in interactive and data journalism for one-on-one training on the entire digital storytelling experience, from brainstorming stories to gathering data to programming apps and sites and launching products.
“We are excited to have our first U.S. Chicas Poderosas workshop in Miami, which serves as the link between Latin America and the United States and is home to some of the most prominent Latin American media,”said Santos. “Our goal is to empower women journalists with mentors, training and teamwork to help them to tell incredible stories in new ways for global audiences.”
Chicas Poderosas demonstrates proven success at providing powerful mentoring and guidance from journalism leaders to engaged, eager-to-learn journalists with limited training opportunities, resulting in measurable impact and outcomes. Former Chicas Poderosas workshops in Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Colombia have trained more than 1,000 journalists. Former workshop participants will present past projects and stories that they built using Chicas Poderosas training at the Miami event.
Speakers and mentors who will participate in the workshop represent some of the most accomplished digital storytellers in the world. To list a few: Giannina Segnini, former investigative editor of La Nación and winner of the García Márquez Award for Excellence in Journalism; Chrys Wu, New York Times Developer Advocate and founder of Hacks/Hackers; Alastair Dant, interactive developer at at the New York Times; Chris Cross, news developer at The Guardian; Michael Bauer with the Open Knowledge Foundation’s School of Data; Erika Owens with Knight-Mozilla OpenNews; Miranda Mulligan and Joe Germuska from Northwestern University Knight Lab; and Alberto Cairo, an international data visualization expert and University of Miami School of Communication professor.
Chicas Poderosas Miami is free to attend, and students, journalists, designers and developers may register at: www.meetup.com/Chicas-Poderosas.
Sponsors for Chicas Poderosas Miami include the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, International Center for Journalists, University of Miami School of Communication, University of Miami Center for Computational Science, Univision, Northwestern University Knight Lab, Society for Professional Journalists Florida Pro Chapter and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, South Florida Chapter.
