Annika McGinnis is from Ellicott City, Maryland. She recently graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she created her own major in international development and also completed degrees in journalism and French. Throughout college, she interned with USA TODAY, McClatchy Newspapers, Reuters in the White House, and on Capitol Hill. She also worked with The Advocacy Project NGO, coordinating a fellowship program and communications materials with human rights-centered grassroots organizations. She studied abroad in France, interned in rural Nicaragua with a social enterprise, and led or participated in service-learning trips to Haiti, Ecuador, and Guatemala. For her senior thesis, she traveled to Peru to research indigenous and digital journalism on extractive industries in the Amazon. She has also worked with Amnesty International and Internews.