Covering COVID-19 and Indigenous Issues with Reporter Jourdan Bennett-Begaye G'16

Jourdan Bennett-Begaye G’16 serves as managing editor of Indian Country Today, a national multimedia news publication covering Indigenous issues, including the COVID-19 global health pandemic. With a background in public health, Bennett-Begaye created a real-time COVID-19 database that tracked the number of cases, tests, vaccinations and deaths among Native American communities, the first database of its kind to benefit Indigenous people. Bennett-Begaye discusses her work developing this invaluable database, how COVID-19 impacted Native American communities differently, the culture of mistrust around the vaccine on reservations, why she transitioned from being an athletic trainer to a journalist, how she discovered a strong Native American support system on Syracuse University's campus, her social activist roots and more.