The supplement provides awardees with $465 for metro transportation to be put on a SmarTrip Card and $35 for NAHJ student membership dues (worth $500 total).

Alexandra Marquez is a junior journalism and anthropology major at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a Silver Spring, MD, native who always dreamed of reporting in D.C. and covering one of the three branches of national government. This semester, she had the opportunity to do so at the McClatchy D.C. Bureau. Alexandra covers various congressional and national news for McClatchy, with a focus on covering the Texas congressional delegation for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She’s previously written for The Diamondback in College Park and Washington Gardener Magazine in Silver Spring.

Alexandra is grateful and honored to receive the Charlie Ericksen Internship Supplement and to be recognized by NAHJ D.C. for her work as a Latina student in journalism, a field where Hispanic people are underrepresented. She’s excited to work with NAHJ in the future and to inspire others to pursue the valuable career of journalism.

Alexandra’s parents are from El Salvador and Ukraine and she speaks three languages – Russian, Spanish and English. Her passion for journalism began when she joined her high school newspaper and began covering issues important to the Silver Spring community, like Board of Education initiatives, new demographic trends in the school district and opportunity gaps between students of different socio-economic backgrounds. When Alexandra’s not reading, writing or listening to the news, she’s probably playing with her two cats.