Alexandra Heal named 2023 Stern-Bryan Fellow at The Washington Post

For the past two years, Alex has been a reporter on the visual storytelling team at the Financial Times, where she has investigated Russia’s missteps in Ukraine, tech waste at big data centers and the economic pressures in Britain that are pushing women into sex work, among other topics. She also co-designed and researched the FT’s award-winning Climate Game.

Before that, she was a reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, where at age 26 she won the Paul Foot Award, Britain’s top prize for investigative reporting, for her series on police failures to address domestic abuse by officers. Her reporting led British regulators to review police procedures nationwide. She also investigated soya- and beef-driven deforestation in Brazil in collaboration with the Guardian and Repórter Brasil.

Alex is skilled at working with Python and geospatial software, speaks French and is earning an MBA online. She got her start freelancing for BBC News in Brussels and Paris while completing a master’s degree in investigative journalism at City University of London.

The Stern-Bryan Fellowship brings a young British journalist to work at The Post for three months each year. It was established in 1979 by then-Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee following the death of his close friend Larry Stern, a top newsroom editor who had a fascination for all things British. In 2020, it was named the Stern-Bryan Fellowship to also honor the late Felicity Bryan, who was one of Britain’s leading literary agents and a driving force behind the fellowship.

Alex, who has not yet explored much of the United States, is hoping to lodge datelines in California, Alaska and Kentucky’s Appalachia region, among other places.

Please join us in welcoming her when she arrives later this month to work with the National desk, helping cover major news developments across the country and the 2024 campaign.