Deepa Fernandes

Deepa Fernandes is a mother of two, a yogi, an immigrant twice in her life, and claims citizenship to three countries. She is the San Francisco Chronicle’s Immigration Correspondent and Senior Newsroom Advisor on Race and Equity. Deepa began her journalism career at her college radio station in Sydney and at age 21 ended up in Ecuador working with an Indigenous filmmaker on a 26-part documentary series about the Ecuador’s first peoples, filmed in very remote parts of the country. From there, Deepa worked extensively in Latin America, including a year in Cuba, and years of reporting from Mexico, Peru and Guatemala. Deepa has worked in community and public radio in New York City and Los Angeles. She founded and ran a nonprofit news and journalism training organization, People’s Production House, aimed at diversifying the field. Deepa has also authored a book on immigration. In 2007, she received an MA from Columbia’s J school, and in 2011 she was a JSK Knight fellow at Stanford. She was named the LA Press Club’s Radio Reporter of the Year in 2017, 2018 and 2019.