Vanessa Romo
Vanessa Romo is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She covers breaking news on a wide range of topics, weighing in daily on everything from immigration and the treatment of migrant children, to a war-crimes trial where a witness claimed he was the actual killer, to an alleged sex cult. She has also covered the occasional cat-clinging-to-the-hood-of-a-car story.
Before her stint on the News Desk, Romo spent the early months of the Trump Administration on the Washington Desk covering stories about culture and politics – the voting habits of the post-millennial generation, the rise of Maxine Waters as a septuagenarian pop culture icon and DACA quinceañeras as Trump protests.
In 2016, she was at the core of the team that launched and produced The New York Times' first political podcast, The Run-Up with Michael Barbaro. Prior to that, Romo was a Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University's School of Journalism where she began working on a radio documentary about a pilot program in Los Angeles teaching black and Latino students to code switch.
Romo has also traveled extensively through the Member station world in California and Washington. As the education reporter at Southern California Public Radio, she covered the region's K-12 school districts and higher education institutions and won the Education Writers Association first place award as well as a Regional Edward R. Murrow for Hard News Reporting.
Before that, she covered business and labor for Member station KNKX, keeping an eye on global companies including Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft.
A Los Angeles native, she is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University, where she received a degree in history. She also earned a master's degree in Journalism from NYU. She loves all things camaron-based.
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Tucked into the woods of Pleasantville, N.Y., lies Usonia — a cooperative community created in part by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. One resident is 101 years old.
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An inside look at the infighting of a Brooklyn co-op where members are debating whether to ban Israeli goods because of the war in Gaza.
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Edith Edmunds, who is 99 years old, the art of quilt making is inextricably linked to the Black struggle for freedom. That's why she plans to be sewing Thursday on Juneteenth. -
NPR wants to know how you feel about celebrating Juneteenth at this moment in history -
Families of people who were detained by ICE in immigration raids say they haven't been able to make contact with their loved ones or even find out where many of them are being held. -
Divorce lawyers know certain times of the year are much busier than others. They and researchers have found seasonal patterns around divorce filings. -
Under the Biden administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule barring medical debt from appearing on credit reports. Now, the agency is siding with the credit industry groups suing to have the rule vacated. -
Hundreds of thousands of Velella velella, more commonly known as by-the-wind-sailors, are drifting onto the coastline. Beachcombers say they look like "blue diamonds strewn across the beach." -
For days, police say, Samuel Patrick Groft cruised through the streets of Los Angeles on his bicycle, single-handedly chopping down about a dozen city trees with an electric chainsaw in three different neighborhoods. -
Rain, thunderstorms and gray skies over large swaths of the path of totality are threatening to block views. Here's how to make the most of the rare event.
