Kelly Calagna is a journalist with a proven background in strategic communication. Her long-standing passion is sustainability and the environment, and she loves when she gets to use her skills to address these pressing global issues.

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She has a degree in communication studies from UCLA and a master’s in science journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Kelly was a Comer Climate Scholar in graduate school, reporting on issues at the frontline of the world’s climate crisis. As a journalist, she has reported on stories that have taken her around the globe. She has reported on sea level rise and coastal erosion in Puerto Rico, the Zika virus in Texas, a NASA satellite launch in Florida and climate science research in China.

 

In 2017 Kelly spent the summer camping out with climate scientist on the Tibetan plateau to document their field season. Her dedication to her stories and the audiences engaging with them led her to be awarded Medill’s Harrington Award in Interactive Storytelling—the school’s highest honor.

 

Additionally, Kelly was a graduate intern at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, where she developed an internal television channel for NASA TV, produced videos, developed educational augmented reality experiences and aided multiple directorates in developing communications campaigns.

 

Kelly became a post-graduate fellow at Northwestern University’s Knight Lab where she worked on the design and implementation of an air quality monitoring project, called SensorGrid. The mission of the project was to keep communities better informed about their air quality by using data visualization to communicate this unseen health hazard. Kelly represented the project at an EPA deliberation on air quality standards and on a panel next to respected journalists with The New York Times and Bloomberg. She also facilitated a partnership between the lab and the local city government to forge a pathway to bring the project into the community.

 

Kelly’s passion for healthy communities and environmental protection was lit ablaze right after college and she has brought her passion for sustainable change into every position she has had since. In 2014, she interned at the African Lion Environmental Research Trust in Zimbabwe where she worked in conservation research. Shortly afterwards, she worked her way to becoming the managing editor of a Whole Foods-circulated sustainable lifestyle magazine. She designed, built and managed the daily online version of the magazine, overseeing its editors and contributors.

 

Kelly currently lives in Houston, TX, with her husband Harrison Scheer and their dog Marley. She is a public relations specialist at MD Anderson Cancer Center and contributing editor for Texas Climate News.

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Awards:

Harrington Award in Interactive Storytelling (2018)

 

Speaking Engagements:

Comer Climate Conference (2017): "Climate Science at 16,000 Feet"

IRE NICAR (2018): Lightning Talk on "Trump in the Age of Trump's EPA" and panelist on "Journalism Using Remote Sensing"

TeachX (2018): "SensorGrid: "A Tool for Learning, Teaching and Exploration"

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