Team

Meet our team of journalists, photographers, videographers, illustrators, visual artists and editors.

CORE TEAM

Anrike Visser

Anrike Visser

Founder & Managing Editor

Anrike founded Global Ground Media in 2018. Previously Anrike worked at the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) as a financial crime investigator.

At the AFM she specialised in derivatives trade at banks and illegal investment products. She also applied her anthropological skillset in cultural transformation projects at the major banks and insurance companies of The Netherlands. She graduated as a special investigative officer (‘buitengewoon opsporingsambtenaar’) at the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) in 2014.

Anrike now operates at the intersection of investigative research, journalism, social sciences, marketing, data analysis and management. She started working as a journalist in Berlin before moving to Southeast Asia. Before founding Global Ground, she wrote mostly about social issues, politics, economics and technology. Among her clients were Mizzima Weekly, Norway-Asia Business Review, Ny Tid and the Dutch Journalism Fund.

Additionally, Anrike helped out startups as a consultant and marketing specialist, and as a partner at TechGrind Incubator and Venture Capital. In 2017 she gave a workshop about lean marketing at TechGrind and a class for MBA students at Assumption University in Bangkok.

Anrike has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a Master’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology. She founded her first business in 2009.

Michael Tatarski

Michael Tatarski

Editor

Michael is a freelance journalist and editor based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He has covered the environment, breaking news, urban development, social issues and more for publications such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, POLITICO, South China Morning Post, Mongabay and New Naratif.

Imad Gebrayel

Imad Gebrayel

Creative Director

Imad is a Lebanese designer and illustrator specialised in research-led design with a focus on sociology, politics and investigative fieldwork. His process is centred on fusing journalistic reporting with visual design skills to communicate key insights with a toolkit that draws from Arabic writing, bilingual design, data visualization, illustration and a variety of research techniques.

After holding the Creative Director position at Mojo Ink – Beirut and Abu Dhabi –  for 2 years, Imad decided to pursue a Masters in Graphic Design at AKV|St.Joost, The Netherlands. Moreover, he collaborated with various Design studios and held a teaching assistant position at the American University of Science and Technology (AUST) in Beirut, Lebanon.

His early commercial endeavours include creating and developing works for brands across Lebanon and the UAE. He is currently based in Berlin, Germany.

Arlene Leigh Navarro

Arlene Leigh Navarro

Social Media Manager

Leigh is a Social Media Manager working in the Philippines. She graduated from Mindanao State University’s Iligan Institute of Technology with a degree in Engineering Technology Management.

She started as a Content Writer and Social Media Manager for a marketing and advertising agency but found she needed more. She wanted to pursue her potential, so she became a Freelance Social Media Manager, with the goal of assisting company owners in delivering their branding voice and reaching their target market through social media.

Kristine Bernadette Carpio

Kristine Bernadette Carpio

Graphic Designer

Kristine is a highly skilled Graphic Designer based in the Philippines. She earned her degree in Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Advertising at the Technological University of the Philippines in Manilla. She excels in designing layouts, producing illustrations, and developing styles for media companies and corporate communication departments. Kristine worked in Digital Print Publishing for seven years.

From 2012 – 2014, as a Graphic Designer at Velocity Made Good International, she accomplished several Metro Media Print (MMP) projects for Australian clients. From 2015 to 2016, she passionately shared her expertise in NewsPrint (NP) and from 2016 – 2017 at Page Build Projects both with clients from New Zealand. In addition, from 2017 – 2019, she also accomplished several projects at BAUER for clients from the USA, Australia and China.

Katya Skvortsova

Katya Skvortsova

Video Editor

Katya is a freelance journalist and video editor based in Berlin. She previously worked in network news for Channel 5, NTV and Ruptly. Since 2014 Katya has covered five Olympic Games for the Olympic Broadcasting Services and produced short films for the United Nations television and social media.

She holds a Bachelor Degree in journalism from Saint Petersburg State University and Master’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Helsinki. Currently, she works on several projects including documentary films, broadcast news and commercial video production as shooter and editor.

Fabian Stricker

Fabian Stricker

Interactive & Animated Maps

Fabian is a mapping enthusiast and works out of Vienna, Austria. Since 2016 he visualizes data to bring complex stories to broad audiences. He also works for Accenture and when he’s not busy, Fabian trains Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Laura Alice Martin

Laura Alice Martin

Proofreader

Laura Alice Martin is a UK-based proofreader and editor. She has worked as a proofreader for copywriting agencies, online course providers, independent bloggers, online travel agencies, technology start-ups, consulting agencies, and various online retailers, among others, and also works as a literary editor in both fiction and non-fiction.

She also previously worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language, alternating between the UK and Spain. Her English as Second Language background gives her a particular skill in editing texts written by non-native speakers, and she often works with authors looking to polish their translated novels for the English-speaking market.

She has a BA in Spanish with History and an MA in Teaching English as a Second or Other Language.

CONTRIBUTORS

Photojournalist

Abhaya Balaji

Through her photographs, Abhaya understands, questions and relates to the world. Abhaya’s work on communities has been published and exhibited in India, Europe and America. Her work depicts the changing relationship between human life and its environment.

She has been documenting the Indian agrarian crisis and the Baiga forest tribe as a part of an ongoing long-term project. She holds a Master in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from UAL, with practical experience from Magnum Foundation and Reuters in London.

Abhaya and four other young female photographers co-founded The MILK Collective as a platform to showcase documentary stories with a contemporary woman’s gaze at current global issues. She currently resides in Nagpur, India.

Photojournalist

Andre Malerba

Andre is currently based in Bangkok, Thailand, with five years of experience working throughout South/Southeast Asia. He has extensive knowledge of Myanmar in particular, having lived there for over three years.

In this time, Andre has covered everything from daily life to breaking news and extreme humanitarian crises. His work is made with a strong, ethical sensibility that is focused on maintaining the integrity of the people and places he photographs.

Andre’s work has been published internationally in print and online at: Time.com, BBC, Al Jazeera America, Terra Mater, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Global Post, Pro Photographer Magazine, among others.

He has collaborated with various NGOs including the Novartis Foundation, Save The Children International, Natural Resource Governance Institute, Médecins Sans Frontières and WORTH, producing both still images and multimedia projects. Andre has also produced video for clients including Google, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Al Jazeera+, and China Daily Asia.

Andre has co-led photography workshops in Myanmar, in conjunction with the Caravan’s Journal, and has spoken at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Journalist

Arpan Rachman

Arpan Rachman is a freelance journalist based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He writes about the environment with a glocalization perspective. He covered for 14 years politics, economy, sports, and investigative reporting for publications including AntDaily (Kualalumpur), Prachatai (Bangkok), Torture Magz (Hong Kong), Free Press Kashmir (Kashmir), China Dialogue (London), and Kulturaustausch (Berlin). He is an author at Global Voices.
Photographer

Aung Naing Soe

Aung Naing Soe is a freelance photographer and multimedia journalist based in Yangon, Myanmar. He has been working as a local producer since 2012 and photographer since 2013. Aung Naing Soe’s pictures have been published in the TIMES, The New Yorker and The Washington Post. In 2017 while incarcerated for his journalistic work, he won the second prize of the “My Yangon My Home” photo festival.

Journalist

Daniel Hurst

Daniel Hurst is a freelance journalist based in Tokyo, Japan. His reporting interests include climate change, social justice, education and politics. His news and feature articles about Japan and the wider region have been published by international outlets including The Guardian, NBCNews.com, The Times of London, The Diplomat, The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age.

Before relocating to Japan in 2016, Daniel specialised in Australian politics and public policy. He was a Canberra-based political correspondent for The Guardian’s Australian edition between 2013 and 2016, and before that a politics and education reporter for Fairfax Media titles including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. It was a tumultuous time in Australian politics, with four prime ministers in as many years, during which Daniel scrutinised a series of budget measures that had big implications for the education system and the social safety net.

He started his journalism career with community newspapers The Redland Times and Bayside Bulletin in his hometown in south-east Queensland, Australia, before moving to the digital-only news service brisbanetimes.com.au, where he launched a “spin check” series to debunk politicians’ claims. He completed a degree in journalism at the Queensland University of Technology in 2007.

Editor

Fatima Abuzar

Fatima Abuzar is a freelance editor based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Fatima works as a content writer for financial consultant agencies and media organisations based in the U.S. and Europe. She has recently graduated from COMSATS university Islamabad with a degree in Master of Science in Biosciences.

Photojournalist

Jean Chung

Jean Chung is an award-winning photojournalist from South Korea who believes in surviving power of women in dire situations like war. After living in Afghanistan in 2006 and travelling to Africa from 2008 until now, she has been documenting the lives of women who were affected by war such as pregnant mothers and survivors of sexual violence. Her work gained international recognition such as the Grand Prix of CARE Humanitaire Reportage (2007), the Pierre & Alexandra Boulat Award (2008) at Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan; first place of 4th Days Japan Photojournalism Awards and WHO’s Stop Tuberculosis Partnership Award (2008), and 6th and 7th Days Japan Photojournalism Awards (2010 and 2011). She is also in an Ambassador Program for Canon U.K. (2017)

She is currently a contract photographer for Getty Images based in Seoul, South Korea, and is working for international media notably The New York Times, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Stern, Der Spiegel, M -Le magazine du Monde, Time.com, among others. She hopes to tell her visual story and deliver the voices to the world about the women’s side of the history of armed conflict.

Journalist

Laura Villadiego

Born and raised in Spain, Laura Villadiego is a freelance journalist specialized in human rights, labour issues and the environment. Based in Thailand, she has been covering Southeast Asia since 2009. Her work has been published in international media outlets, such as Al Jazeera, The Guardian or the Spanish News Agency EFE. She has also co-authored two books focused on supply chains.

Journalist

Magdalena Rojo

Magdalena Rojo is a Slovak freelance journalist published internationally. She covers global issues and human rights from the field, mostly in developing countries. In 2017, she co-founded the long-term, global project Women Who Stay that brings a different perspective on migration – the perspective of women left behind after their male counterparts migrate. She pursues this project together with her husband, a photographer, Noel Rojo. She is a journalist fellow for the Spiritual Exemplars Project by the University of Southern California.

Writer, researcher & activist

Mariya Salim

Mariya Salim is a women’s rights activist, researcher, and writer from India. She undertook her second Master’s degree in human rights law from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London as a Felix scholar. She was a minority fellow at the OHCHR office in 2017 and invited as an expert and mentor for the same program in 2019.

With over ten years of experience in the development sector, she has lent herself to many feminist concerns, and writes extensively in various media outlets including Al Jazeera, on issues related to women’s human rights as well as themes of Nationalism, Identity Based Violence and Muslim women’s rights.

Interpreter & Translator

May Thet Zaw

May Thet Zaw has been working as a freelance interpreter/translator for media professionals and media development workshops since 2014. May is also a theatre artist who believes that contemporary theatre can play a vital role in the development of an actively engaged, socially aware, and culturally tolerant society. Her job as a translator coupled with the experiences she has had working with international theatre artists during the last 12 years of her life has expanded her sociopolitical awareness and deepened her understanding of interpersonal and international politics.

Photojournalist

Nick Axelrod

Nick specialises in documenting the adverse impacts of development on local communities and the environment. He has worked for a number of international humanitarian organizations such as UNICEF, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

His journalistic work has been published in various local and international publications, including The International New York Times and Time Magazine.

Nick has been based in Southeast Asia since 2008 and is a founding member of Ruom. He is currently based in Bangkok, Thailand. He is fluent in English and French.

Photographer

Noel Rojo

Noel Rojo is an internationally published photographer from the Northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, where he was raised till the age of eight, before moving and settling in Denver, Colorado, USA. His domain is documentary photography that he considers a way to capture the human condition. He co-established the long-term, global project Women Who Stay about stories of women left behind while their husbands migrate. He is also a journalist fellow in the Spiritual Exemplars Project by the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

Data Journalist

Peter Allen Clark

Peter Allen Clark is a data journalist, editor and writer based in Brooklyn, New York.

He has seven years of award-winning experience in journalism, and has specialized in covering politics, culture and how they affect each other. Currently a freelance editor for Time Magazine’s news desk, he has also worked as a reporter and editor with The Guardian, Variety and Mashable. This came after years of working as a local and regional print reporter all over the United States.

He has covered localized devastation of climate change, the usage of nationalist internet culture to affect the international election and how America’s opioid crisis has spawned rogue underground recovery networks. His work has reflected his interest in exposing the hidden corners of global life, how they are reflective of socio-economic trends and their larger scale impacts.

Additionally, he has professionally been a graphic designer, copywriter, web designer, podcast producer, film reviewer, yoga teacher, musician, maintenance man and motorcycle mechanic.

Journalist

Peter Ford

Peter has been based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the past six years. After a year reporting on daily news for the now-shuttered Cambodia Daily, he has freelanced from across Asia covering history, travel and the joys of train journeys for publications including The Guardian, The Independent, South China Morning Post, Christian Science Monitor, ThinkProgress and The Diplomat.

Journalist

Rachel Blundy

Rachel Blundy is a journalist from London, based in Hong Kong. She currently works as a fact-check editor for Agence France-Presse and previously held roles with news agency Storyful and English-language newspaper South China Morning Post. She is skilled in reporting, feature writing, social media, editing, debunking misinformation andonline media production.

Journalist

Urvashi Sarkar

Urvashi Sarkar is an independent journalist based in India. Her interests include international politics, culture and gender. She was a 2018 fellow with the UN Reham al Farra Memorial Journalism programme and a 2016 fellow with People’s Archive of Rural India. She is a 2018 recipient of the Laadli  Media Awards for gender sensitivity.

Her work has appeared in various publications like Al Jazeera, People’s Archive of Rural India, Caravan Magazine, The Wire, Scroll, The Print, Newslaundry, Newsclick, Himal South Asian and The Hindu. She is currently

Journalist

Varsha Torgalkar

Varsha Torgalkar is an independent journalist based out of Pune. She covers social justice, gender, climate change and travel for national and international news publications. She has covered agrarian crisis in Marathwada and Vidarbha extensively and interested in rural Journalism. She holds a diploma in Journalism and a Masters in political science from Pune University.

She is an avid trekker and has successfully scaled Everest Base Camp, Annapurna Circuit Trek and Goecha La.

Multimedia Journalist

Victoria Milko

Victoria Milko is a freelance multimedia journalist based in Myanmar. Her work focuses on human rights in South and Southeast Asia and can be found in publications such as The Washington Post, Associated Press, NPR, and more.

Journalist

Viola Gaskell

Viola Gaskell is a multimedia journalist from Hawaii, where she got her start freelancing for the Maui News and generating content for non-profits. Now based in Hong Kong, Viola’s fascination with her new home inspires her to write and photograph her vibrant surrounding, with the aim to capture both the wonderful nuances and hazy contradictions of Hong Kong. Her work has been published around the world on sites like Al Jazeera, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Free Press, Zolima City Magazine, Rice Media Co. in Singapore, NeoCha in Shanghai, and The Daily Beast and Mashable in the US.

To Viola, photojournalism is the perfect means to ending up in rooms you were never meant to be in — a backdoor to what is off the beaten path and hidden in plain sight. She enjoys delving into cultural and social eccentricities, our interaction with the natural world, adventure, design, the lives of inspiring humans, and more — ready to observe and inquire at length.

Viola holds a bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism from the Brooks Institute in California and has done additional research in journalism and conservation at Emerson College and the University of Hawaii.

Journalist

Yewon Kang

Yewon Kang is a freelance journalist based in Seoul, South Korea. Her passion is writing about technology with a feminist perspective.

In the past 7 years, she covered technology and business for publications including IDG News Service, Nikkei Asian Review and The Wall Street Journal. She also worked as a managing editor with Platoon Cultural Development, an art/culture/communications agency based in Seoul and Berlin.

Yewon holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.S. from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. In her free time, Yewon enjoys swimming, practising yoga and reading indie magazines.

Thanks also to our network of over 15 translators and language editors.

A big thanks to Sanne Breimer for developing a digital content strategy.

The website is stellarly maintained and debugged by Ciaran Gaffey.

Taking you where others don't
Ready to make sense of foreign news?

By subscribing you agree that your information will be transferred to MailChimp for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy (https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/) and Terms (https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/).