Jo Napolitano spent nearly two decades reporting for The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsday before winning a Spencer Education Fellowship to Columbia University in 2016 in support of her reporting on immigrant youth. Her first book is The School I Deserve: Six Young Refugees and Their Fight for Equality in America, published by Beacon Press.
Napolitano has reported on many topics throughout her award-winning career, including crime and science. But education remains her primary focus, and for good reason: It was the only means through which she would escape poverty.
Born in Bogota, Colombia, Napolitano was abandoned at a bus stop by her birthmother when she was just a day old. Placed in an orphanage, she nearly died of starvation before she was adopted by a blue-collar family from New York. She was raised by a single parent and is a first-generation college graduate having earned her bachelors from Medill at Northwestern University. She believes no child’s life should be left to chance.
Jo Napolitano spent nearly two decades reporting for The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsday before winning a Spencer Education Fellowship to Columbia University in 2016 in support of her reporting on immigrant youth. Her first book is The School I Deserve: Six Young Refugees and Their Fight for Equality in America, published by Beacon Press.
Napolitano has reported on many topics throughout her award-winning career, including crime and science. But education remains her primary focus, and for good reason: It was the only means through which she would escape poverty.
Born in Bogota, Colombia, Napolitano was abandoned at a bus stop by her birthmother when she was just a day old. Placed in an orphanage, she nearly died of starvation before she was adopted by a blue-collar family from New York. She was raised by a single parent and is a first-generation college graduate having earned her bachelors from Medill at Northwestern University. She believes no child’s life should be left to chance.
