Coleen Jose

Coleen Jose is a student fellow for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Dean Rusk International Studies Program at Davidson College. In the past year, she has lived in the Philippines, India and the United States.

She was nurtured in a Philippines recovering from more than thirty years of dictatorial rule and emerging from the People Power Movement. Years later, Coleen’s family emigrated to the U.S. where her passion for journalism began in the summer of 2007 at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Her first reporting project in Harlem continues to frame her photography and writing.

Coleen continuously looks east, which has taken her from the southernmost tip of India to the Tibetan community’s home in exile at the foot of the Himalayas. Though travel is a constant in Coleen’s studies, service is the most potent part of her personal and professional mission. She felt compelled to join nation-building efforts in the Philippines and worked political communications for Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan in 2009. In 2010, she helped develop communities with Gawad Kalinga, an international community development foundation.

As creative and communications director, Coleen is co-launching an eco-tourism travel and apparel company in the summer of 2011, which is dedicated to the protection and restoration of the world’s coral reefs. She is currently investigating the role of resource extractions on the most marginalized communities in the Philippines with a focus on marine and logging industries. If Coleen could live anywhere in the world, it would be underwater, in Southeast Asia’s Coral Triangle region.

To learn more about Coleen's project for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, visit http://pulitzercenter.org/people/coleen-jose