Emma Zayer

Emma is a small girl with big dreams. (Really, that picture doesn't show how short she is.)

But seriously... I'm a 22-year-old journalist born in New York, currently living outside Washington, D.C. I write for The Beacon Newspaper, a monthly publication geared toward people 50 and over in the Washington-metro area. We also have a second newspaper in Baltimore, Md. Though I occasionally get questions like 'are you someone's granddaughter?' when I'm on-the-job (well-meaning inquiries!), it's given me a lot of great opportunities to meet interesting people and learn about their lives. And that's what I love to do.

Before that, I studied journalism and Russian language/literature at The George Washington University. I served an editor at the school's daily online newspaper for 3.5 years, including a year and a half as Editor-in-Chief. During my tenure, The Daily Colonial's readership grew more than 20 percent and the paper was awarded its first national prize from the Associated Collegiate Press.

My work with The Daily Colonial also earned me a spot on UWire's list of the top 100 college journalists in 2008.

From September 2007 to May 2008 I worked as journalist Marvin Kalb's assistant at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy in Washington.

My skills include AP Style, basic web design (Html, some Flash and Dreamweaver), and photo and video editing. I have intermediate proficiency in Spanish and Russian, and hopes to continue learning both.

In my free time I enjoy reading blogs, listening to music, playing with dogs, making greeting cards and cooking. I'm also a fairly good tap dancer, which could be fate, since she shares her birthday with Fred Astaire.

(Updated: Jan. 2009)