Vanessa Romo
Vanessa Romo is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She covers breaking news on a wide range of topics, weighing in daily on everything from immigration and the treatment of migrant children, to a war-crimes trial where a witness claimed he was the actual killer, to an alleged sex cult. She has also covered the occasional cat-clinging-to-the-hood-of-a-car story.
Before her stint on the News Desk, Romo spent the early months of the Trump Administration on the Washington Desk covering stories about culture and politics – the voting habits of the post-millennial generation, the rise of Maxine Waters as a septuagenarian pop culture icon and DACA quinceañeras as Trump protests.
In 2016, she was at the core of the team that launched and produced The New York Times' first political podcast, The Run-Up with Michael Barbaro. Prior to that, Romo was a Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University's School of Journalism where she began working on a radio documentary about a pilot program in Los Angeles teaching black and Latino students to code switch.
Romo has also traveled extensively through the Member station world in California and Washington. As the education reporter at Southern California Public Radio, she covered the region's K-12 school districts and higher education institutions and won the Education Writers Association first place award as well as a Regional Edward R. Murrow for Hard News Reporting.
Before that, she covered business and labor for Member station KNKX, keeping an eye on global companies including Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft.
A Los Angeles native, she is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University, where she received a degree in history. She also earned a master's degree in Journalism from NYU. She loves all things camaron-based.
-
An anonymous group is independently painting crosswalks at intersections in Los Angeles, arguing "The city doesn't keep us safe, so we keep us safe."
-
The British socialite was accused of procuring underage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. After six days of deliberation, a federal jury found her guilty on five of six counts.
-
The agency implemented experts' advice because of a rare and sometimes fatal blood-clotting problem known as TTS. More than 16 million people in the U.S. have received a shot of the J&J vaccine.
-
The final evacuation flight brought to a close the longest war in U.S. history. The withdrawal leaves the future of Afghanistan in disarray and uncertainty under renewed Taliban rule.
-
The sudden influx means resettlement agencies are rushing to secure a range of services for evacuees as they begin a new chapter of their lives.
-
Health care workers on the front lines of the pandemic say there is another concerning prospect looming: a surge in children diagnosed with a combination of COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus.
-
Critics are outraged, saying the anti-doping agency for the Games is ignoring the actions of the white athlete on the heels of suspending the Black sprinter this month.
-
Ten years ago there were only about two dozen openly LGBTQ Olympians competing in the games. Today, there are more than 160.
-
President Kais Saied plunged the country into uncertainty after shutting down parliament and firing the prime minister as well as the country's defense and justice ministers.
-
Officials had vowed to continue the search for people among roughly 11 tons of rubble that remained until all missing persons had been recovered. Now firefighters have finished their search.