Next City welcomes Natalia Rommen, our 2019 urban affairs journalism fellow. Rommen, who lives in and attends school in Philadelphia, was chosen among a group of strong applicants to join our team.
Rommen is a rising junior at the University of Pennsylvania studying both political science and communications in the Annenberg School for Communication. She has completed various research projects during her time at Penn, including an in-depth analysis of Chicago’s Englewood education system.
Rommen has involved herself in various university-sponsored clubs, holding two executive board positions over the past year. She has presided over a fashion-lifestyle print publication, The WALK, as co-creative director. Her time in the position has allowed her to focus on boosting diversity and inclusion in the magazine.
As an African-American woman, Rommen has dedicated herself to minority empowerment. From August 2018 to April 2019 she sat on the board of Penn-based African American culture club, BUILT. In February 2019, she became a FOX Fellow through Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORES) where she studied data analytics.
At Next City, Rommen hopes to use her research and data analytics skills to contribute to important coverage of urban development and inequity across cities. She is particularly inspired by Next City’s emphasis on solutions journalism and hopes to highlight examples of positive urban development. You can read her first article, “This Startup Has Figured Out What Dockless Scooters Need: Docks,” for Next City and follow her future work on her contributor page. Rommen aspires to one day be a broadcast journalist and inspire other minority women to join the media industry.
Rommen is a fellow of the Emma Bowen Foundation, an organization dedicated to strengthening minority presence in media industries. She has been selected for Next City’s journalism fellowship through the foundation. In addition to the Emma Bowen Foundation’s support, the 2019 urban affairs internship wouldn’t be possible without the 122 Next City supporters who donated toward our 2019 spring membership drive. Thank you for making this summer fellowship possible.
Never Miss A StoryDownload our app