**Alessandra Corrêa (Brazil), AFPC-USA Professional Excellence Awardee 2022.**

Alessandra Corrêa is a journalist with three decades of experience, currently based in Washington, D.C., where she is a Contributing Correspondent for the BBC Brazilian Service, part of the BBC World Service. She is a Professional Excellence Awardee from the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents (AFPC-USA). In over ten years as an international correspondent in the United States, she has traveled extensively throughout the country, covering politics, economics, international relations and current affairs. Many of her stories focus on immigration, criminal justice reform, reproductive rights and economic and social disparities. Alessandra has covered seven American elections, including the midterms in 2022, the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the reconstruction of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, the impacts of the 2008 global financial crisis and how immigration laws affect communities in states along the border. Prior to becoming a correspondent in the United States, she worked for four years as a reporter at the BBC Brazilian Service newsroom in São Paulo (Brazil). Before that, she was the Editor of the Agribusiness section of Zero Hora, the main newspaper in Southern Brazil, and a reporter and Assistant Editor at Correio do Povo newspaper.

Alessandra Corrêa from Brazil received her award from George Svigos, Executive Director of Communications, GM International, during the Annual Foreign Press Awards Ceremony on December 15, 2022, in New York.

You have been selected as one of the Professional Excellence Awardees for 2022-2023 by the Association and Club of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA. How does that make you feel, and what message do you want to share with the community of foreign correspondents in the US?

I am so happy and honored. To have my work recognized by other foreign correspondents, who do the same kind of job and know all the challenges we face, really means a lot to me.

What do you see as essential in the role that the Association and Club of Foreign Press Correspondents play in support of the community of foreign journalists in America?

Being a correspondent is such a privilege. But it also can be a lonely job. So, the fact that the Association and Club of Foreign Press Correspondents offer us this community where we can exchange ideas with other journalists from around the world, who are here doing the same job, is very important. It can be a forum for us to learn from each other, to find out different perspectives, and also to exchange some practical advice.

What do you consider to be the most challenging aspect of your job as a US-based foreign correspondent?

The same goes for correspondents in other parts of the world, but one of the challenges is being able to filter all the noise and focus on what really is important, the stories that are meaningful, and to tell them in a fair and accurate way. Also, it is important to find the balance between understanding and learning more about this country while, at the same time, continuing to let yourself be surprised and touched by the stories you cover, and to never assume you already know everything about a subject just because you covered it before. One of the things that make our job as correspondents different from that of other journalists is the way we see the country and the stories we cover as foreigners. And we should always try to keep that critical eye and that outside perspective, even after living here for years.

What is the best way for a foreign journalist to succeed as a US correspondent?

I think one of the things that are really important to succeed is being able to work independently. You’re not always going to be able to count on the infrastructure of a newsroom, so you have to be comfortable working alone. You also have to develop good sources, and not only in the obvious places, like the government or the diplomatic corps, but also at other levels, diverse sources that can help you better understand the different aspects of the subjects you are covering. And you should study the country, always keep learning about its history, about the way the government works, about the culture, the social changes, and what people are thinking and talking about. To try to have this deeper understanding of the country, because that will translate into better stories, more informative, with more context.

What has been the most challenging or complex story you have covered from the US as a foreign journalist?

I started my job as a US Correspondent in 2010, based in DC, and from here I cover not only the rest of the country, but also other parts of Latin America. In December of that year I went to Haiti for a special multimedia series on how the country was recovering, one year after the devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people. It was a very difficult moment for Haiti. More than 1 million people were still displaced and living in tents. The infrastructure was still in shambles, and there were protests on the streets. There was also a cholera outbreak that, at that time, had already killed almost 4,000 people. The outbreak was made worse by the terrible conditions in the tent cities, where in most cases there was no electricity or drinkable water. I spent a week there, and this was a story that really impacted me. It was very challenging both in terms of logistics, but also to witness all the suffering and try to tell the stories of these people, many of which were tired of talking to journalists and having little help, in a respectful and meaningful way.

What criteria do you use to select the stories you think are worthwhile to cover?

When I first started as a US Correspondent, most of my job was to cover hard news, so many of my stories involved politics, economics and bilateral relations. Now I’m more focused on feature stories. I have a few areas that I really like to cover, like criminal justice reform, reproductive rights, immigration. But, no matter what the subject is, what I always look for are stories that go beyond just hard news, that show aspects of this country that are not so known or so obvious to my audience in Brazil. It can be a story about how a specific government decision or measure impacts ordinary people. Or trying to explain how it fits into the broader historical context. I like to show what’s happening not only in the big coastal cities, but also in small communities in the middle of the country, to show the problems and hopes and views of the people living there, to tell their stories. I think my job as a correspondent is to interpret what happens here in the US to my audience, help them put it into context and see how it might relate or not to what’s happening back at home. To try to help them understand this country, which is so big, so diverse and so complex.

What would you have done differently if you had started your career in journalism?

Journalism now is very different from when I started. My first job right after graduating from Journalism School, in the 90s, was at a regional newspaper in the South of Brazil. At that time, my job as a reporter was to interview people, get their stories right, and then write the text. We had producers, photographers, drivers, all these other professionals that were doing the other parts of the work to bring the story together. Nowadays you are expected to do everything by yourself, including publishing in text, audio, video, social media. So it’s important to learn how to do all those other things. But I think the core remains the same, the responsibilities we have, to be accurate, to be fair, to keep the powerful in check and to give a voice to the powerless. I wouldn’t want any other job.