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Hi! My name's Feini (sometimes known as Steph), and I use they/them pronouns. I'm a Philadelphia-based journalist and community organizer working at the intersection of science, health, environment, technology, and social justice.
Currently I work with
As a storyteller I'm interested in exploring the intersections of science, power, and justice; centering perspectives not traditionally heard in science journalism; and expanding our definitions of "science" and "scientist." My organizing work is about supporting people's self-determination when it comes to meeting their health needs and connecting with their food and environment. I value subjective knowledge and lived experience.
Previously I worked as a reporter and producer for The Pulse, a public radio show about the people and places at the heart of health and science. Before that, I was a contributor to the The New York Times's Trilobites column, where I mostly covered genetics, evolution, and ecology. My work has also appeared in Popular Science, Scientific American, Quanta Magazine, TED, Audubon, and Motherboard, among other publications.
I love to make stop-motion animations like this, this, and this one, and dream of someday creating a traveling puppet show.
In 2017, I was a science-journalist-in-residence at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin, where I studied the ways knowledge- and science-driven economies can exacerbate inequality. I spent much of 2016 in one of China's biggest knowledge hubs, Shenzhen. There, I worked for a 3D printing start-up and a college consulting agency, learning about the city's tech scene and trend of sending students abroad against a backdrop of widening social stratification.
From 2014 to 2016 I lived in New York, doing a string of internships and earning a graduate degree in journalism from New York University. Before that, I worked for an arts and environmental education nonprofit, managed a couple book campaigns, and wrote and produced multimedia for the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Brown University's Swearer Center for Public Service.
I have a B.Sc. in environmental science from Brown. As an undergrad I did a lot of marine ecology research, from monitoring ghost crabs on a Marine Corps base in North Carolina to studying mangrove harvesting in a community of Bajau sea nomads in Indonesia. I did my thesis on the knotty relationship between fishing, herbivorous crabs, and carbon capture in Cape Cod salt marshes.
Before college, I edited my high school's literary magazine and was really into AP Bio. Before that, I picked dandelions during recess and tore through books while dangling off furniture in precarious positions. I was born and spent my early childhood in Philadelphia, hanging out and watching a lot of Chinese satellite TV with my grandparents. To this day I have a somewhat geriatric predilection for slowness and simplicity, which I'm constantly trying to balance with being a voracious learner in an ever-quickening and evolving world.
Currently I work with
- Fishadelphia, a student-run community seafood program in Philadelphia
- Creative Resilience Collective, a health justice collective that uses art, design, research, technology, storytelling, and legal aid to improve access to self-determined mental health care in Philadelphia
- Free Radicals, an activist collective dedicated to creating a more socially just, equitable, and accountable science
As a storyteller I'm interested in exploring the intersections of science, power, and justice; centering perspectives not traditionally heard in science journalism; and expanding our definitions of "science" and "scientist." My organizing work is about supporting people's self-determination when it comes to meeting their health needs and connecting with their food and environment. I value subjective knowledge and lived experience.
Previously I worked as a reporter and producer for The Pulse, a public radio show about the people and places at the heart of health and science. Before that, I was a contributor to the The New York Times's Trilobites column, where I mostly covered genetics, evolution, and ecology. My work has also appeared in Popular Science, Scientific American, Quanta Magazine, TED, Audubon, and Motherboard, among other publications.
I love to make stop-motion animations like this, this, and this one, and dream of someday creating a traveling puppet show.
In 2017, I was a science-journalist-in-residence at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin, where I studied the ways knowledge- and science-driven economies can exacerbate inequality. I spent much of 2016 in one of China's biggest knowledge hubs, Shenzhen. There, I worked for a 3D printing start-up and a college consulting agency, learning about the city's tech scene and trend of sending students abroad against a backdrop of widening social stratification.
From 2014 to 2016 I lived in New York, doing a string of internships and earning a graduate degree in journalism from New York University. Before that, I worked for an arts and environmental education nonprofit, managed a couple book campaigns, and wrote and produced multimedia for the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Brown University's Swearer Center for Public Service.
I have a B.Sc. in environmental science from Brown. As an undergrad I did a lot of marine ecology research, from monitoring ghost crabs on a Marine Corps base in North Carolina to studying mangrove harvesting in a community of Bajau sea nomads in Indonesia. I did my thesis on the knotty relationship between fishing, herbivorous crabs, and carbon capture in Cape Cod salt marshes.
Before college, I edited my high school's literary magazine and was really into AP Bio. Before that, I picked dandelions during recess and tore through books while dangling off furniture in precarious positions. I was born and spent my early childhood in Philadelphia, hanging out and watching a lot of Chinese satellite TV with my grandparents. To this day I have a somewhat geriatric predilection for slowness and simplicity, which I'm constantly trying to balance with being a voracious learner in an ever-quickening and evolving world.