Deepa Fernandes, is an award-winning journalist who has reported from a dozen countries, from Peru to Cuba to East Timor. Fernandes has reported from inside rebel-controlled prisons during a Haitian coup, slum villages in Mumbai, and immigration jails across the U.S. Most recently Fernandes was the Early Childhood correspondent at Southern California Public Radio, KPCC. She won numerous awards for her reporting on children aged 0-5.
Deepa has been named L.A. Press Club’s Radio Journalist of the Year for 2017, 2018 & 2019. She has also won an Emmy for her TV reporting. In 2012 Deepa was a Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University and she has an MA from Columbia University. She authored a book on immigration in 2007, Targeted, published by Seven Stories Press. In 2001, Deepa founded People’s Production House, aimed at diversifying the press corps and the range of voices heard in the media.
Currently, Fernandes is a fellow at Pacific Oaks College and goles regularly for KCET’s SoCal Connected, PRI’s The World, KCRW, KPCC, and KQED. Her work can also be heard on NPR, Marketplace, the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She is married to multi-media journalist, Matt Rogers, and they are raising two spirited small children in Los Angeles.
Deepa is the founder and co-chair of the LA Press Club’s Foot in the Door program, mentoring young journalists to improve diversity in journalism.