This month we were happy to host our TalentNZ 2020 Sir Paul Callaghan Science Meets humanities Scholarship recipient Charlotte Greenfield back at the Institute. Charlotte hosted a fundraising evening for her charitable trust Ecko, of which more details are given below.

Whilst back in Wellington, Charlotte was also interviewed by Kim Hill on her Saturday Morning show, on 19 July. Charlotte spoke to Kim about her experience studying investigative journalism at Columbia School of Journalism University, New York (through a Fulbright scholarship to pursue her Masters degree in Journalism) as well as DJing some of her favourite songs throughout the interview.

Kim asked Charlotte the expansive questions “What did you learn?” at Columbia. To which Charlotte’s response picked up on the particular importance she discovered of taking a personal approach to journalism.

As with many of Kim’s interviews, the conversations skipped and skirted around different angles of Charlotte’s experiences, including journalism, and how Charlotte came to establish an educational charity after volunteering in Africa which sponsors Kenyan children into private education. The New Zealand charitable trust Ecko set up by Charlotte supports 2 girls, while other children are sponsored by a wider network of volunteers from Kenya around the globe.

The next destination for Charlotte is an internship position covering business journalism at Reuters in Jakarta. While Charlotte is excited about the opportunities she can gain overseas she does still consider New Zealand as being ‘a place where talent wants to live’, (a theme the TalentNZ Journal emphasised) and she hopes her overseas experiences will allow her to link back to New Zealand in the future.