Press Kit: IWMF Speaker Biographies
2005 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow
Catherine Elton
Catherine Elton has covered Latin America as a freelance reporter for the past seven years. For the past four years, she has been based in Guatemala, where she has reported on human rights, labor issues, trade and migration, among other subjects. From 1997 – 2000, Elton was a stringer in Peru.
Elton’s stories regularly appear in the Miami Herald and Houston Chronicle. Her work has also appeared in Time, Audubon Magazine, Mother Jones, Ms. and the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and Washington Post. Her reports from the region have aired on National Public Radio, CBS News, Radio Pacifica and Voice of America.
From 1996 - 1997, Elton was a reporter and researcher at The New Republic in Washington, DC. Prior to that, she was a reporter covering the environment, courts and crime at The Silver City Sun News in Silver City, New Mexico. In 1995, Elton was based at the International Relations Center (then called the Inter-Hemispheric Resource Center) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she researched and wrote on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.
Elton has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Middlebury College.
2005 IWMF Fellowship Winner
Yu Ning
Yu Ning, a senior financial reporter at Caijing magazine in Beijing since 2001, is the winner of the 2005 IWMF International Fellowship for Women Journalists. Yu has covered the ups and downs of China’s financial markets, including many of the financial scandals that have had a profound impact on the country’s economy and society.
She said that she applied for the IWMF fellowship to increase her professional skill. “Along with the Chinese economy, Chinese journalism is also embarking on an internationalized path. Mid-career training programs are opening my eyes to fresh perspectives, higher professional standards and sounder practices,” said Yu, who will be spending her four-month fellowship at the San Francisco Chronicle. “I yearn for more opportunities of this kind for the purpose of further honing my own professional skills and providing Caijing’s readers with better work.”
Prior to joining Caijing magazine, Yu was a reporter and deputy editor of the finance desk for China Business Weekly from 1997 - 2000. She began her journalism career at Life Style newspaper in Beijing, where she covered large private enterprise and industry before being promoted to managing editor.
Yu holds a bachelor’s degree in Chinese literature from Beijing Normal University. After teaching in Beijing from 1991 – 1992, she decided to become a journalist and taught herself about China’s financial markets and economy. In September 2004, Yu won the Laura Cha scholarship for an internship at the Financial Times’ headquarters in Hong Kong.
2004 IWMF Fellowship Winners
Diana Zulu 
Diana Zulu is sports editor at the Zambia Daily Mail in Lusaka, Zambia, the first woman to hold that position. She began as a general assignment reporter in 1993 at the Daily Mail, where she has also worked as a business reporter and assistant sports editor.
Zulu, who during her IWMF Fellowship at the Boston Herald will focus on coverage of health issues, has also covered health in Zambia. “From the time I joined the media ten years ago, I noted that health reporting is not given the attention that it deserves,” she says. “Zambian media institutions do not have established health desks to specifically cover health issues. I am a strong activist and advocate of health issues.”
Zulu is a board member of the Eastern and Southern African Women’s Media Network; network chairperson for Zambian Journalists Against AIDS; and a member of the Health Development Network, which was created to help journalists who report on health issues.
She received her diploma in journalism from the Africa Literature Center in Zambia in 1992. She was a Harry Briton Fellow in Newspaper Journalism, sponsored by the Commonwealth Press Union in the United Kingdom, and received a diploma in online research and publishing from the University of Stockholm in Sweden. In 1998, Zulu attended the Carole Simpson’s Leadership Institute, which is sponsored by the African Women’s Media Foundation, a project of the International Women’s Media Foundation.
Gbemisola Olujobi
Gbemisola Olujobi is an assistant editor at the Guardian in Lagos, Nigeria, in charge of the Life and Style section. One of the few women employed at her newspaper, Olujobi is a champion for women both inside and outside of her publication. “My job as a journalist for the last 17 years has put me in the vanguard of [the struggle to get Nigerian women into the socio-political mainstream],” she says. “The journalist, as a catalyst for social change and a purveyor of new ideas cannot be in a better position.” Olujobi will spend her fellowship at the San Francisco Chronicle, where she will pay particular attention to coverage of women’s issues.
Olujobi began at the Guardian in 1994 as a senior correspondent. She has also been employed by Vanguard Newspapers (1989 – 1993), Coastal Publishing Company (1985-1989) and the Nigerian Television Authority (1984 – 1985) as both an editor and a reporter.
Olujobi received her bachelor’s degree in English with honors from the University of IFE, ILE – IFE, Nigeria. In 2000, Olujobi attended the Carole Simpson Leadership Institute, which is sponsored by the African Women’s Media Foundation, a project of the International Women’s Media Foundation.
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