Rest of World was founded to tell the world’s best technology stories, particularly from places that are overlooked. We believe in the power of local perspectives, and our inaugural class of reporting fellows — hailing from Lahore, Johannesburg, Beirut, São Paulo, Beijing, and New York — will bring their impressive talents to bear as we expand our global coverage. 

We are delighted to share that Aanu Adeoye, Priscila Bellini, Elia El Habre, Mehr Nadeem, Leo Schwartz, and Zeyi Yang start today as our first reporting fellows.

In addition to contributing original stories, our fellows will work alongside the Rest of World team to continue establishing our voice, collaborating on new ideas and storytelling formats, and raising the bar for our reporting. We were bowled over by the enthusiastic response to our fellowship announcement. We reviewed more than two hundred candidates, and are very excited to welcome these six.

Meet our fellows

AANU ADEOYE (Johannesburg) writes about politics, technology, and culture in Africa. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Mail & Guardian, CNN, Vice and elsewhere. He was most recently managing editor at TechCabal, a Nigerian publication covering technology, and is currently a Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Scholar at Wits Journalism.

PRISCILA BELLINI (São Paulo) writes about gender, human rights, science and education in Latin America. She holds a master’s degree in gender, media and culture from the London School of Economics. Her work has been published in BBC Brasil, Folha de S. Paulo, Galileu, Cosmopolitan among others. She currently co-manages the Chicas Poderosas’ network in Brazil, promoting opportunities for women in the media in Latin America.

ELIA EL HABRE (Montreal) is an American University of Beirut alumnus and recently completed her masters in digital innovation in journalism from Concordia University in Montreal. She’s also the founder of Café Scientifique Beirut, a space for people to gather and discuss science, and a contributor to The Beirut Banyan podcast.

MEHR NADEEM (Lahore) has reported for Reuters, Bloomberg News and Lebanon’s Daily Star. Born in London to Pakistani parents, she spent most of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, and is proficient in Urdu, Hindi and Arabic. In 2019, she was one of sixteen young foreign correspondents to be awarded a prestigious Overseas Press Club of America fellowship. She graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s in History. 

LEO SCHWARTZ (New York) is a journalist based in Brooklyn. He graduated from New York University with a dual master’s in journalism and Latin American studies and was the web editor at the NACLA Report, a quarterly magazine and online publication on Latin America. His work has appeared in Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, PBS NewsHour, and Roads & Kingdoms.

ZEYI YANG (New York) is a writer and journalist from Wuhan. While a master’s student at Columbia Journalism School and School of International and Public Affairs, he contributed to the South China Morning Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Narratively, and Nikkei Asian Review, among other publications. Born and raised in China, Zeyi strives to tell accurate and impactful stories about the country’s complex relationships with its citizens and the outside world.