Active Voice fellows spend the academic year working on a free speech service project in their communities aimed at maximizing the voices of female high school journalists. Research shows these young women disproportionately experience direct school censorship and self-imposed “anticipatory” censorship at rates markedly higher than male students.
Each fellow will design and implement a project of her own choosing, with help from mentors from the legal and communications fields, aimed at advancing the welfare of students who face adversity in speaking about issues of public concern.
The 2017-18 cohort is the second Active Voice group. They are:
Jamie Crockett is a second year M.A. student at the University of Missouri Columbia pursuing degrees in strategic communications and nonprofit and public management. She received her undergraduate degree in strategic communications also at the University of Missouri. Before graduate school she was the deputy director of communications for the Office of the Missouri Secretary of State.
Melissa Gomez is a senior at the University of Florida majoring in journalism. She is the managing print editor of the Independent Florida Alligator and has interned at the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Naples Daily News. She is fluent in Spanish.
Paula Pecorella is a senior at Stony Brook University majoring in journalism and political science. She works as a staff writer for the student newspaper The Statesman and is a journalism/content developer at Stony Brook’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She has interned at CBS’s 60 Minutes in New York and received a Global Integrated Communications and Journalism Fellowship for Semester at Sea in the spring of 2016, stopping in ten countries and Hawaii.
Savannah “Sabby” Robinson is a junior at the University of Southern California majoring in journalism. She is a correspondent for Annenberg Media’s international desk, a research assistant for USC’s Office for Diversity and Strategic Initiatives and a podcast producer and correspondent for Annenberg Media’s The Buzz. She previously interned at Youth Radio in Los Angeles.
Naba Siddiq is a sophomore majoring in public relations at Texas Tech University. She is the athletics section editor for the La Ventana yearbook and was the editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper. A high school censorship experience introduced her to the SPLC and she has launched Texas’ New Voices