IJNR Hires New Program Associate

Dear friends of IJNR,

I’m writing today with great news: Francisco Ramírez Pinedo has joined IJNR’s staff as a Program Associate! In this role, Francisco’s main duty will be to help Director of Programs Adam Hinterthuer envision, plan and conduct our in-person and virtual programs. He’ll also provide logistical support, as well as tech advice to those of us on staff who are a little, well, older more life-experienced.

We first met Francisco as a Fellow of our 2022 Reporting on Water Workshop, a partnership with the Uproot Project. Later he applied for a contract Program Assistant position, assuring us in his LOI that he is qualified to “lift one end of a full beverage cooler.” Thankfully, Francisco’s skill set transcends physical strength by a large margin, which he demonstrated while assisting on our Great Lakes Energy program earlier this year. He’s currently working with Adam on upcoming programs, including our Water Infrastructure Workshop (August 2024) and the Critical Minerals Institute (October 2024), so don’t be surprised to see Francisco on an IJNR bus near you!

Francisco is a life-long Chicago resident, where he has been a contributing editor to Southside Weekly since 2019, as well as a Reporting Fellow for City Bureau. Much of his journalistic work has been centered on social justice and the environment, and his perspective will be invaluable to our work.

“I grew up in one of Chicago's southeast side communities that was dealing with the environmental fallout of the closure of the steel mills,” Francisco said. “My neighborhood has been an area of concern since the late '80s and there always seems to be a new industry that wants to create more pollution here. The environment and environmental policy have always hit close to home for me. I'm so happy that with IJNR, I'm able to enhance the human element to our programming — something I believe often gets overlooked in environmental reporting."

As a team, we’re super excited to have Francisco on board!

Onward,
Dave