Fernanda Santos has focused her career on elevating the stories of underrepresented and misrepresented communities. As editorial director of Futuro Media, she leads a talented newsroom that produces Latino USA, In the Thick and Latino Rebels, giving voice and space to the new American majority.
She is a professor of practice at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post and a writing coach in the Poynter Institute’s Power of Diverse Voices, a program focused on elevating the voices of journalists of color. She is also a co-writer of ¡Americano!, a musical based on the life of an Arizona Dreamer that ran Off-Broadway in the spring of 2022.
Fernanda got her start in journalism in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, her home country. She has reported in three languages across Latin America and the United States. She is a lifetime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and vice president of The Sauce Foundation, which honors her late husband’s memory by raising money for journalism scholarships and pancreatic cancer research. Her first book, “The Fire Line,” about 19 firefighters killed in one of the deadliest wildfires in the U.S., won a first-place award from the Western Writers of America in the nonfiction category. She is currently at work on a memoir.
