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Stephanie Nolen
Former StaffCorrespondentLatin America Bureau ChiefMexico City, Mexico

Area of Expertise

Social exclusion and inequality in Africa, South Asia and Latin America

Stephanie Nolen was The Globe and Mail’s Latin America Bureau Chief.

After years as a roving correspondent that included coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Stephanie moved to Johannesburg in 2003 to open a new bureau for The Globe, to report on what she believed was the world’s biggest uncovered story, Africa’s AIDS pandemic. She won four National Newspaper Awards for her work in Africa, for coverage of AIDS and for stories on the wars and humanitarian crises in Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone.

Her book 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa won the 2007 PEN “Courage” Award and was nominated for the 2007 Governor-General’s Award for Non-Fiction. A national bestseller in Canada, it has been published in nine countries and six languages. While in Africa, she also won the Markwell Media Award from the International Society of Political Psychologists, for her “combination of creative brilliance, humanitarian compassion, personal courage, and the relentless pursuit of truth.”

In 2008, she moved to New Delhi, to open a Globe bureau there. She’s won seven National Newspaper Award, including one for coverage of India’s crisis of child malnutrition in her first year there. Working across South Asia, she has also reported on issues including the final days of the Tamil Tigers and the civil war in Sri Lanka; and humanitarian crises in Pakistan stemming from natural disasters and the rise of Islamist extremism.

In 2013, she opened The Globe’s bureau in Rio de Janeiro from which she covers Latin America. She has reported on the child migrants crisis in Central America, environmental devastation in the Amazon, and Colombia’s peace process.

Before joining the Globe in 1998, she was based in the Middle East and wrote for publications including Newsweek and the Independent of London. Stephanie is also the author of Promised the Moon: the Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race (Penguin, 2002) and Shakespeare’s Face (Random House, 2002), which has been published in seven countries to date.

She holds a Bachelor of Journalism (Honours) from the University of King’s College in Halifax and a Master of Science in development economics from the London School of Economics in England. She has been recognized with honorary doctorates in civil laws from King’s (2009) and Guelph University (2010). Her coverage of caste and gender issues in India won the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, presented for “work that generates and sustains public trust in the media and impacts the lives of people.”

She lives with her partner and their two children in Mexico City.

Education

Bachelor of Journalism (Hons), University of King’s College

Master of Science, Development Studies, The London School of Economics

Honours & Awards

Honorary Doctorate of Civil Laws, University of Calgary 2018

Amnesty International Media Award, 2015, for coverage of child migrants from Central America

National Magazine Award, 2014, for coverage of Barrick Gold’s failed investment at Pascua-Lama

Honorary Doctorate of Civil Laws, University of Victoria, 2014

Ramnath Goenka Award for the Best Foreign Correspondent Covering India, 2013

National Newspaper Award for International Reporting, 2012, for coverage of caste and gender in India

Honorary Doctorate of Civil Laws, University of Guelph, 2012

National Newspaper Award for Arts and Entertainment Reporting, 2011

Amnesty International Media Award, 2011, for reporting on the political rise of marginalized women in India

National Newspaper Award for Explanatory Journalism, 2009, for reporting on India's crisis of child malnutrition

Honorary Doctorate of Civil Laws, University of King's College, 2009

National Newspaper Award for Explanatory Journalism, 2007, for reporting on low-cost public health interventions in the developing world

Languages spoken

Portuguese, French, Spanish. I was once pretty fluent in Arabic and reasonable at Hindi, and I spent a long, fruitless time learning isiZulu.

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