I am a freelance journalist based in France. My last salaried position was senior editor for climate change at international news agency Agence France Presse (AFP). My last assignment at AFP was the development and execution of a suite of climate change training courses for journalists. Before that, I was a climate & evnironment correspondent from 2007 through 2023. Armed with degrees in Chinese studies (UCSC, Princeton), I worked in Beijing from 1985 through the dramatic events of June 1989, first as a stringer for the Wall Street Journal and then as Beijing bureau chief for Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. Subsequently, as a freelance investigative reporter based in New York, I explored cult-based social movements in China, along with the nexus of organized crime and “people smuggling” from China to the US and Europe. In 1995 I moved to Paris and joined AFP, where I oversaw the creation of award-winning data-driven platforms following a stint in the agency’s graphics service. From 2007 through 2011, I was a science and environment correspondent. After developing news apps on the model of AFP's "e-diplomacy hub" in partnership with Twitter, I resumed that beat ahead of the Paris COP21 climate change summit in 2015. In 2021, I was the third recipient of the Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication, won in other years by the BBC's Matt McGrath, The Guardian, and the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert. As a teacher during two decades at the Institut Français de Presse (IFP), I saw dozens of students embark on journalism careers in France, the US, China and elsewhere. From 2019 to 2023, I taught a Masters-level course at three J-schools -- IFP, CFJ and SciencesPo -- on climate change and how to report on it. In 2016, with funding from the UN Foundation, I wrote and presented a 10-part video training series for journalists on climate change. I edited a book on Cambodia in the late 1980s, and have written for academic publications on China’s internal news media, and Chinese emigration during the 1990s. I have also developed and run media-training courses for UN organizations. I was born at 314 ppm.
