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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"We can all finally celebrate. The whole country together," says Opal Lee, 94, who has been working for years to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
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"The whole reason I wanted to go back to the fields with my parents is because I wouldn't have the degree and the diploma if it wasn't for them," says Jennifer Rocha, recent graduate of UC San Diego.
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The blood-sucking critters are capable of thriving along the West Coast, according to new research, though experts don't exactly know how they're picking up the bacterium that causes the illness.
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Emma Coronel Aispuro faced charges of conspiring to distribute drugs into the U.S. from Mexico and laundering the profits. Investigators say she helped stage her husband's tunnel escape from prison.
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The linchpin to retrieving $2.3 million, half the company's payment, was gaining access to the private key linked to the attacker's Bitcoin account. Here's how authorities may have gotten it.
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The Justice Department says it has seized bitcoins worth millions of dollars that were part of what Colonial Pipeline paid to get control of its systems back from hackers.
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Doughnut came first, but donut wasn't far behind. Now, whether it's glazed or jelly-filled, experts say either spelling is equally acceptable.
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Video of the terrifying encounter in a Southern California backyard shows Hailey Morinico using both hands to push the bear off a wall and break up the bear vs. dog confrontation.
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COVID cases are down, half of the country is at least partially vaccinated and the wanderlust has struck. But the rebound could also mean new challenges for your getaway. Here's how to avoid them.
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Although they're still a statistical anomaly, one explanation for the latest uptick in killings is that with the COVID-19 pandemic, perpetrators have had time to plan their attacks, one expert says.