Our Team

Sabīne is a media literacy curriculum and tool developer, as well as a journalist with nine years of experience in the media industry.

Previously, Sabīne was a Program Engagement Coordinator in the U.S. Department of State program “Media Literacy in the Baltics” administered by IREX. She coordinated the content creation of an online course VeryVerified.eu and blended learning lessons in five languages used by thousands of learners in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Prior to that, she worked as a disinformation reporter and a fact-checker.

Throughout her career, Sabīne has worked for online and print media, as well as public radio and TV in Latvia. She got her master’s degree in the Erasmus Mundus Journalism program at Aarhus University and the University of Amsterdam and spent a semester at the University of California, Berkeley as a student researcher.

Contact Sabine

Marcy coordinates News Decoder’s network of professional journalists and works with students in the schools network on stories they pitch to News Decoder. She is professor emeritus at Cal Poly Humboldt in California where she taught journalism for more than 15 years.
Marcy is the author of “Investigative Reporting: from premise to publication” and was awarded the James Madison Freedom of Information Award in 2018 by the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

For a decade, Marcy wrote a popular column on media for The North Coast Journal in Northern California, which in 2015 was named Best Column for mid-sized newspapers from the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association.

For her teaching, the California Journalism Education Coalition named her California Journalism Educator of the Year in 2010.

As a journalist, she covered technology and finance for thestreet.com, legal affairs for the San Francisco Daily Journal and international trade for the San Francisco Business Times.

She has a master’s degree from the Columbia Journalism School and a B.A. in political science from Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Contact Marcy

Maria joined News Decoder in July 2021 managing operations and partnerships. An ardent believer in the values of global citizenship, she’s worked in experiential education, youth media and cultural diplomacy for nearly 20 years and has facilitated cross-border exchanges for hundreds of youth and professionals from more than 100 countries.

Previously, Maria served in the Peace Corps in Tbilisi, Georgia, where she worked with a civil society NGO on fundraising, digital storytelling and youth citizen journalism projects. As Vice President of WorldChicago, a partner of the U.S. State Department, Maria convened local and global leaders to share knowledge and build connections, and founded Youth Diplomats to offer substantive global experiences for teens. She also held positions at Street-Level Youth Media and the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum.

A former Jeopardy! contestant, Maria has collaborated as illustrator on three published books — “Art Hiding in New York”, “Art Hiding in Paris”, and the recently-published “I’m Not Your Muse” — and is working on her fourth. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Chicago.

Contact Maria

Amina is an Australian journalist with a passion for learning through storytelling and a burning interest in the complicated relationship between humans and the environment. With a tendency towards cross-border work, she has worked as a media analyst for U.S-based company NewsGuard, a tutor in Communicating Sustainability for the University of Tasmania and a proofreader and writer for Danish and Swiss companies. She has also worked as a news reporter, a long-form journalist, a yoga teacher and a private music tutor. She holds a master’s degree from Aarhus University, the Danish School of Media and Journalism and Charles University in the Czech Republic through the Erasmus Mundus Journalism program.

Contact Amina

Cathal is an educator, linguist and creative with a particular interest in international development, global citizenship and the arts. Irish, raised in Brussels and now based in Madrid, he has lived and worked in Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Uganda and Vietnam.

He has an undergraduate degree in Human Geography from the University of Leeds, a master’s in Development and Emergency Practice from Oxford Brookes University and a diploma in Commercial Music Production from TMS/BIMM London. Cathal has worked as a teacher, events organizer, trip coordinator and in various capacities for NGOs. He co-founded Studio Shpops and Conscious Youth and coordinated Global Sound Movement’s award-winning pilot project trip to Uganda recording folk instruments in their natural environments.

Contact Cathal

Christian Henry is an executive recruiter within the education and nonprofit practice at Conley Search. He co-founded the high school study-abroad program The Island School as a science teacher before serving in business officer and fundraising roles. He has previously consulted on marketing strategies to engage public and independent schools with enrichment programming. He is on the board of several nonprofit educational organizations including the Centre for Ocean Research and Education, Beacon Hill Seminars and a Cambridge, Massachusetts public elementary school.

Faith Abiodun is Executive Director of United World Colleges International. Previously he was Executive Director at Future Africa, a public sector leadership organization, and Collaborative Impact Director at Catalyst 2030, a coalition of the world’s leading social enterprises working to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. He is a strategic leadership consultant, international affairs analyst, writer and speaker.

Nelson Graves is the former president of Nouvelles-Découvertes and founder of News Decoder. An experienced educator and administrator, he has taught and worked on three continents. He was a correspondent, bureau chief and regional managing editor at Reuters, holding posts in Washington, Paris, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Milan and Tokyo. He later served as admissions director at Johns Hopkins University’s graduate program in international relations in Europe, and has worked with schools around the world.

Audrey Chapuis, the Executive Director of the American Library in Paris since 2018, has worked in libraries for over twenty years, including posts at Widener Library in the Harvard College Library system and the Pritzker Legal Research Center at the Northwestern University School of Law, where she managed the Access Services Department. She received a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois in 2006 and an Executive MBA from HEC Paris in 2022 with a specialization in digital transformation. Before becoming Executive Director of the American Library, she served as its Deputy Director, Assistant Director of Institutional Advancement, and Reference and Collections Librarian. She also sits on the Board of the Marymount International School. She is a passionate advocate for digital literacy, open access in scholarly publishing and community building through cultural programming.

Martha Clement Rochford is a PR and communications consultant who has held leadership roles in nonprofit, professional services, government and international organizations. Rochford earned a bachelor’s in English from St. Lawrence University and master’s in Public Communication from The American University in Washington, DC. Informed by her years living and working in Europe and Asia, writing for a global audience and serving as an adjunct professor, Rochford views global citizenship, journalistic skills and media literacy as essential competencies for the next generation.

Carlos Rubio is an international journalist who has lived and worked in 15 countries on five continents. He has held senior positions in the newsroom and in the field, both in print and broadcast media. Rubio was Australia correspondent for the Spanish news agency EFE and a news editor with Al Jazeera English in Qatar and with Euronews in Lyon. Rubio has four degrees — in journalism, development studies, refugee studies and Asian politics — from universities in London, Sydney and Madrid. He currently teaches at journalism schools in France.

Betty Wong was global managing editor of Reuters from 2008-2011, with 29 years of experience at the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. She covered white collar crime on Wall Street from Ivan Boesky to Michael Milken in the 1980s, led U.S. corporate news coverage from the dot com bubble to rubble and was global equities editor for Reuters.