Serginho Roosblad Wins Prestigious Overseas Press Club Award

Serginho Roosblad Wins Prestigious OPC Foundation Award

NEW YORK CITY (March 6, 2017) — Serginho Roosblad, a graduate student at the US-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, was awarded an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar Award at the Foundation’s 2017 Annual Scholar Awards Luncheon held at the Yale Club in New York City. Rebecca Blumenstein, deputy managing editor of the New York Times, was the keynote speaker. Roosblad was among 15 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 175 applicants from 50 different colleges and universities.

Roosblad was the recipient of the Harper’s Magazine Scholarship in memory of I.F. Stone. He received the award from Rick MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s. A multimedia journalist, Serginho has already reported from a dozen African and European countries. A native of the Netherlands and the son of Dutch Caribbean immigrants, he intends to return to Uganda to film a documentary on climate change. In his winning essay, he wrote about the legacy of Uganda’s brutal past. With degrees from both Dutch and South African universities, he speaks Dutch, English and Sranangtongo with a basic understanding of Kiswahili and German.

The award winners were also honored with a reception at Reuters the night before the luncheon, hosted by the Reuters’ senior staff. On Saturday they received risk management and situational awareness training from Global Journalist Security at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. They also met privately with editors and freelance journalists in a special breakfast held the morning of the awards presentation and at a post-luncheon panel.

The OPC Foundation is the nation’s largest and most visible scholarship program encouraging aspiring journalists to pursue careers as international correspondents. Media organizations at the luncheon included AP, Bloomberg, CBS News, GroundTruth Project, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal.

For more information on the OPC Foundation and its scholarship/fellowship program, see http://www.overseaspressclubfoundation.org/.

Contact: Jane Reilly 201-819-2639, foundation@opcofamerica.org

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