Staff & Contact
We’d love to hear from you.
Staff
Katelyn Polanco
Student Managing Editor
Katelyn Polanco is the Student Managing Editor for Harlem View. She is a first-generation Dominican-American student at The City College of New York pursuing a major in advertising and public relations and a minor in journalism. Katelyn earned an associate degree in digital marketing at Borough of Manhattan Community College. It gave her a comprehensive foundation in graphic and website design.
At The City College of New York, she found her passion for storytelling when she took an introductory journalism class. Katelyn grew up in a low-income community in the South Bronx where she shared the socio-economic challenges other residents face. She aims to become a voice for those whose stories often go unheard.
Natalie Moreno
Student Assistant Managing Editor
Natalie Moreno is an Assistant Managing Editor for Harlem View. undergraduate student at The City College of New York planning to pursue a double major in Journalism and Latin American Studies with a minor in English. She has taken part in a Federal Work-Study program working with the HIPE e-zine where she promotes high impact practices and engagement for students across CUNY campuses.
Natalie is a Puerto Rican/Dominican who was born and raised in New York where she spent most of her time between Washington Heights and the Bronx. While at The City College of New York she has found her voice through storytelling; primarily enjoying writing articles about local happenings, lifestyle/society, and pop culture as well as creative essays about her personal
Susannah Pittman
Student Assistant Managing Editor
Susannah is an Assistant Managing Editor at Harlem View. At the City College of New York, she double-majors in History and Anthropology and minors in Journalism.
Susannah is the first-mate aboard a schooner, sailing tourists around the Hudson river. She began her sailing and writing career as a content intern for Tall Ships America in 2019, where she documented her experiences as a then novice sailor, contributing written pieces to their blog platform. Her academic and sailing adventures have sparked an enduring interest in the intersection of maritime history and immigration studies.
As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Susannah researches the intertwined politics of immigration, climate change, and politics. She spent a semester abroad honing her french at SciencesPo, in France’s Champagne region—though she modestly claims to be a “mediocre” speaker. Her writing accolades include the 2017 “Best in Grade” award and Gold Medal for poetry from the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards, in addition to the 2024 Arthur Tiedemann Award for historical writing. She is currently a Dow Jones Fellow, learning the business side of journalism from industry experts.
A Yonkers, NY native, Susannah is passionate about metro news, politics, and student activism. Her diverse professional and academic interests converge in her role as an editor for Harlem View.
Annisha Singh
Annisha Singh became the student Assistant Managing Editor for Harlem View during the fall 2023 and spring 2024 semester.
Jennifer Garcia
Student Assistant Managing Editor
Jennifer Garcia is the student Assistant Managing Editor for Harlem View. She is a first-generation undergraduate at The City College of New York pursuing a major in business management and a minor in journalism. She is a two-time NBCU Academy Fellow where she has gotten the opportunity to intern with CNBC en Español as a production intern and is currently interning with NBC Sports as an Olympics research intern. As the student Assistant Managing Editor, Jennifer helps edit and publish student pieces.
Jennifer is Mexican-American, born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where she saw firsthand the socio-economic disparities of New York City. She is passionate about social issues and sharing minority voices through journalism. She enjoys writing, reading, and photography. On a regular day, you can find her exploring the city listening for new stories to share.
Barbara Nevins Taylor
Distinguished Lecturer, Journalism Program Director & Advisor to HarlemView
Barbara Nevins Taylor teaches Introduction to Journalism and TV Reporting and advises students.
Her investigative reporting at TV stations in New York, Atlanta, Kentucky and Alabama earned 22 Emmy Awards and more than 50 journalism awards and honors. Nevins Taylor graduated from The City College (1970) and loves sharing what she learned as a journalist with students.
During her TV career, Nevins Taylor pursued stories that made a difference in the lives of individuals and the community. Her reports earned praise, generated government action and helped send wrongdoers to prison. Long before the most recent financial crisis, Barbara exposed flaws in the mortgage lending and banking systems that led poor people into financial ruin.
On ConsumerMojo.com, which she founded in 2012, Nevins Taylor uses the latest digital storytelling techniques to serve a growing audience that needs reliable information about complicated issues.
Nevins Taylor has contributed to The New York Times Op-Ed page, writing about criminal justice, foster care and young people in New York City. Her writing has also focused on concerns of parents and women and has appeared in national magazines. Her book Beautiful Skin of Color, with doctors Jeanine Downie and Fran Cook-Bolden, published by ReganBooks, evolved from her television reports.
CCNY Alumni awarded her the prestigious Townsend Harris medal for career achievement and she is also in the Communications Alumni Group’s Hall of Fame. She wants her students to get there, too.
Linda Villarosa
Journalism Professor And Website Founder
Linda Villarosa founded HarlemFocus, which became Harlem View. She is the former journalism program director, a valued journalism professor, a journalist-in-residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. Her most recent story in 2020, “Pollution is Killing Black Americans. This Community Fought Back,” links decades of environmental pollution and neglect to deadly health conditions of Black Americans. She also wrote, “Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death-Crisis?” It ran on the cover of the Magazine in April 2018. It examines the effects of race, racism and health-care inequality on infant and maternal mortality and was nominated for a National Magazine Award.
Her cover story “America’s Hidden HIV Epidemic,” about HIV/AIDS among black gay and bisexual men in the South, ran in June 2017. That article was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award and was honored by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists’ Association for excellence in journalism.
Formerly, Linda was the health editor of The New York Times and executive editor of Essence Magazine. She has written dozens of articles for the Times, including three award-winning stories published on the newspaper’s front page. In Essence, her article “Coming Out,” written with her mother, remains one of the most responded-to in the history of the magazine, and her 2013 profile of New York City’s first lady Chirlane McCray was picked up by 50 other media outlets. Her Essence story “Pride & Prejudice,” about LGBTQ activism in Africa, was nominated for a 2016 GLAAD Media Award.
Linda is the chair of the board of the Feminist Press and has written or co-written a number of books. She is the author of “Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being,” and her novel “Passing for Black” was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. She is working on a new book, “Under the Skin: Race, Inequality and the Health of a Nation,” to be published by Doubleday.
A graduate of the University of Colorado and the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, Linda spent a year at the Harvard School of Public Health as a journalism fellow.
Karen Loew
Helped Create HarlemView.
Karen Loew is a journalist and urbanist in New York City. While teaching journalism classes to undergraduates at City College of CUNY, she and the CCNY Journalism Program brought HarlemView to life. She was the Associate Editor at The Forward and the Editor-in-Chief at CityLimits.org. Her writing and reporting have been published in Citylab, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Next City and elsewhere.
Rich Prior
Website Creator
Designer Rich Prior and his team (City College Alumni, BFA in Electronic Design and Multimedia) created the Harlem View site and launched it in Spring 2019.