Meet the team

Jennifer Strong

CREATOR / HOST / EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Jennifer Strong is a reporting fellow with the Pulitzer Center and the creator of science and technology podcasts for public radio’s PRX, The Wall Street Journal, MIT Technology Review, ProPublica, and others. Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times and recognized by awards juries dozens of times, including six Webby and three Podcast Academy Award nominations. Her narrative podcasts about artificial intelligence were finalist selections at the New York Festivals for the last three years, winning bronze in 2024.

Jennifer is known for recording podcasts in usual places, including from inside an experimental fighter plane as it engaged in a dogfight with an artificial agent over the Pacific Ocean. That project was named a 2023 finalist for Podcast of the Year by The Drum Awards in London. She previously produced a business show for NPR, in the early 2000s, and reported on national security topics for PRI. She spent five years as an editor and anchor at NPR member station WAMU in Washington, DC, where she also trained as a field engineer.

Jennifer’s latest podcast, SHIFT, launched in 2023 with PRX. She’s been a keynote stage host and moderator at the MIT Media Lab, UN General Assembly, AI for Good Global Summit, The Future of Everything Festival, Web Summit and many other events worldwide. She has a graduate degree in journalism from American University.

Emma Cillekens

PRODUCER

Emma Cillekens worked with ProPublica on the Peabody, Polk and Goldsmith award-winning investigation Lost Mothers that was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She won an Emmy for a miniseries called Finding Sanctuary, and led the research and production of a climate series for WSJ’s The Future of Everything that won the New York Press Club for “Best Podcast” and was a contributor to the show's Webby Award. Cillekens has freelanced with MIT Technology Review, WNYC, NPR, BBC, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and Barron's Magazine. She's a graduate of New York University’s Studio 20, a leading master’s degree program in digital media innovation, and has both business and journalism degrees from the Queensland University of Technology. Cillekens’ latest project is a podcast about frontier technology and artificial intelligence, called SHIFT. She also consults on effective and authentic storytelling.

Meg Marco

Meg Marco has held senior editorial positions at ProPublica, The Wall Street Journal and WIRED, and is the host and co-executive producer of The Extortion Economy, an investigative podcast from ProPublica and MIT Technology Review.

At ProPublica her team’s work was honored with the 2021 National Magazine Award for Social Media, and she co-edited the coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

She is the author of Field Guide to the Apocalypse, a satirical guide to surviving the end of the world published by Simon & Schuster in 2005, well in advance of the actual end times.

Sonya Gurwitt

Sonya Gurwitt is a Brooklyn-based audio producer, editor, and writer. She is currently pursuing a masters degree at NYU’s journalism school, with a focus on audio production and reporting. She has worked as an editor on climate and economic policy publications for organizations such as the Roosevelt Institute and the Climate and Community Project. She was previously a circus artist...

Daniela Hernandez

Daniela Hernandez is a science and technology journalist who started covering AI in 2013, as the AI revolution was starting. Her journalistic work has taken her to Japan, Mexico, Australia, and Antarctica, where she reported on how researchers were testing robot prototypes for space exploration. In 2023, she was part of a scientific expedition to look for meteorites in Antarctica. Before that, she worked at The Wall Street Journal as a reporter and on-camera correspondent. Her work has appeared in WIRED, The Los Angeles Times, Science magazine, and NPR. She has a PhD in neurobiology and behavior from Columbia University and is currently working on her first book which focuses on the neuroscience of transformative experiences.

Garret Lang

SOUND DESIGNER / COMPOSER

Garret Lang is an audio producer, audio engineer, composer, and performer from Los Angeles. He currently works as a freelance podcast mixer, musician, and manages the Knobworld recording studio in Echo Park. He established himself as an audio producer while working on the award-winning show Marketplace from American Public Media. Over his 8 years with APM, his responsibilities ranged from recording interviews in studio and in the field, live-mixing shows for national and international audiences, and mixing and mastering content for the radio and web. Since then, he has worked extensively on the ESPN Daily Podcast, Inside Voice by Lake Bell and Pushkin Industries, as well as Curious Coincidence and other popular shows with NPR, Consumer Reports, and Crooked Media. Most recently, he worked on MIT Technology Review’s In Machines We Trust as the composer and mixer. In addition to his work in the podcast and radio arena, he is an accomplished bassist with many studio and live performance credits. In the fall of 2022, he with he toured with Grammy award-winner Madison Cunningham.

Niamh McAuliffe

INTERN

Niamh McAuliffe is a journalist, podcast editor, sound designer and copy-editor who has worked on multiple shows and books since graduating cum laude from Hunter College. In the summer of 2022 she received a Campus Consortium Reporting Fellowship from the Pulitzer Center where she reported on the role biogas plays in the brewing and distilling industries in Ireland.