Saturday, February 27, 2021

Program News and Updates

Alumni Update: Ashton Songer

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Life hasn’t slowed down for Ashton Songer, a spring ’12 alumna of the program. She got married after graduation and is currently living in Atlanta, GA, with her husband, Thomas. See plans to spend the summer freelancing, traveling and networking with other photographers in Atlanta. Then it’s back to Morocco for their honeymoon!

“We’ll spend a few days in Italy and then hop over to the country where I still feel most free,” she said. “It’s the one part of my heart he’s never fully experienced.”

They plan to travel from the desert to the North, hitting all the “hotspots”, including a visit to the CCCL and a reunion with Badr.

Alumni Update: Kirsten Kortebein

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We recently caught up with Kirsten Kortebein, a spring ’12 alumna of the program, and are thrilled to report that she’s carved out a successful niche in Germany. She’s currently living in Berlin, where she does freelance photography work for NPR in Berlin and sports photography. This will likely be her home base for a while, but she plans to make a few trips to France this summer to photograph some ultramarathons.

By the time the 2016 Summer Olympics hit Brazil, Kortebein will be ready to compete for her place in the action – camera in hand.

Congrats on the Promotion, Badrdine!

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We are proud to share news of Badrdine Boulaid’s recent promotion to academic director with SIT Study Abroad. We are equally delighted to keep him on board as the MOJ Program Coordinator.

Boulaid has been working at the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning (CCCL), where our program is based, since 2005. His language skills and cross-cultural expertise, combined with his energy for journalism and local human rights issues, make him a great asset to our program.

Alumni Update: Karis Hustad

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I am happy to say, I have been chosen as a Fellow! So I will be headed to Hyderabad in July. Really thrilled for this opportunity. When I say I would not be here without your influence, I mean it. The Morocco program really pushed me out of my comfort zone in the best way and made me realize how important it is to empower young storytellers and local journalists, which is what I’ll be doing with this fellowship. And without that clip, I wouldn’t have made it to the Monitor, which has opened up so many possibilities.

Alumni Update: Jacob Axelrad

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I’ll be working in the Innovations department for The Christian Science Monitor this summer, which means I’ll be reporting mainly on new innovations and trends in technology and how that plays out around the world. However, I plan on trying my hands at many different kinds of stories while I’m at the Monitor.

On a separate note, I’ve received a student fellowship from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to do some more international journalism, which I’ll do in the fall after my summer internship concludes. After consulting with Maddy Crowell, I’ve decided to go to Ghana and plan on staying there as long as I can in order to sufficiently report my stories (the Pulitzer Center requires a series of articles, a photo slideshow, and a video documentary as part of the assignment).

MOJ student doc in Film Fest

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Willing to Break, the powerful story of a veiled Moroccan break dancer, will be featured in the Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival on April 14. American students Sutton Raphael and JP Keenan produced this doc with their Moroccan partner Loubna Fouzar. I will be present after the film to talk about our program and answer questions from the audience. With an annual attendance that exceeds 40,000, the MSP International Film Festival is known as the largest film event in the Upper Midwest. Very proud of our students!

Alumni Update: Kirsten Kortebein, Vemo Hang and Stacy Wheeler

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This past weekend MOJ Spring 2012 alumni Kirsten Kortebein, Vemo Hang and Stacy Wheeler met for drinks in Berlin to catch up and share some memories from Morocco. All three alumni are currently living in Europe.
Kirsten, whose recent projects include photographing the 2013 Marathon des Sables, has been living in Berlin for the past two months and doing freelance photography work. Vemo, who also lives in Berlin, is currently studying German and building her art portfolio while she applies to art masters programs. Stacy, who visited Berlin briefly to take the Foreign Service Officer Exam, is teaching English in a French public high school and plans to continue working internationally.

New Arrival

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We are thrilled to announce that Jad Boulaid (aka “little Badrdine”) arrived at exactly 10:00 on Saturday, November 23. This happy, healthy baby boy has black hair and brown eyes just like his dad,  weighs 3.800 kg. and is 56 cm. in height.

Jad’s mom is doing great, and his dad has not slept at all!

Alumni Update: Karis Hustad

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Hello all!

After I returned to chilly Chicago from balmy North Africa in January, I interned with Vocalo (a WBEZ–Chicago NPR affiliate– program focused on bringing public radio to a younger/more culturally diverse audience) and graduated in May from Loyola Chicago  with a degree in journalism, minor in sociology. Over the summer I waitressed and freelanced for the Chicago Tribune and ChicagoNow, and this fall I moved to Boston where I am interning at The Christian Science Monitor full time at least until May.

I think about Morocco all the time, and I’m happy to have reunited with some of my MOJ Fall ’12 people across the country since then!

Hello from Badrdine

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Badrdine Boulaid, MOJ Program Coordinator, is doing well and sends greetings to everyone. Badr is indeed about to be a BadrDAD in real life — the baby is due in December. Very exciting!

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