Mariana Minaya
University of Maryland
Reporter, Montgomery County Bureau

I got a taste for immersing myself in other people’s worlds as a small child. My parents’ friends, South American intellectuals living in a troubled political era, would recount harrowing stories of their time spent in prisons or escaping military forces. Even when they thought the quiet seven-year-old girl wasn’t listening, I absorbed every word. Though the details of their stories have faded by now, the feeling of reliving those events through their recollections is vividly ingrained in my mind. I can experience it every time I report a story. I took my childhood passion to middle school, and I’ve been hooked on school newspapers since. This year I am editor in chief of the University of Maryland’s independent student daily, the Diamondback. In 2005, I interned on the Baltimore Sun’s health desk. The following summer, I worked on the Orlando Sentinel’s metro desk. I’ve covered crimes, features, elections and university administrators. I am fluent in Spanish, and I expect to earn a B.A. in print journalism from the University of Maryland in 2008.

Lindsay Minnema
Northwestern University
Assistant News Editor, News Desk

I am a chronic over-packer. Never was this more true than at the end of my semester abroad in fall 2005, when I found myself stuffing dozens of European newspapers into my luggage. I could not read the languages they were written in, but I loved those papers for their colors, photos, graphics and ads, and I was not about to leave any of them behind. Nothing makes me happier than a beautifully designed newspaper—except for maybe a suitcase containing four times as many shoes as I really need. A June 2007 graduate from Northwestern University with a bachelor of science in journalism, I double-majored in political science and minored in economics. I worked as a designer for the Daily Northwestern all four years of college. As design editor my senior year, I facilitated a redesign of the paper. I also served as art director of Northwestern's business school newspaper, the Merger. I have interned as a page designer for the Orlando Sentinel; as a political reporter for the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association, where I covered the state legislature; and as a business reporter for United Communications Group, a newsletter publisher based in Rockville. I hail from Mount Airy, Md.

Jonathan Mummolo
New York University, Georgetown University
Reporter, Loudoun County Bureau

I remember how hard my heart was pounding as I approached the metal detector. I was in line for admission to then-Gov. George Pataki’s invitation-only Manhattan reception following his successful reelection bid. I had no ticket, and—as a first-semester journalism student — no business being there. But five minutes later, with little more than a clean suit and a polite nod, I slipped through the cracks in the security system and was interviewing supporters in the hotel ballroom. I was hooked. It was a matter of days before I joined NYU’s student paper, Washington Square News, where I rose to investigations editor. While in New York, I completed news reporting internships at the New York Sun and Newsday, covering mostly crime and local politics. After graduating with degrees in history and journalism, and a minor in music, I enrolled in Georgetown’s MA program in American government and went on to work as an intern reporter at Newsweek magazine for nine months. While reporting for Newsweek in New York and Washington, I authored and contributed to stories on subjects ranging from entertainment and technology to stem cells and the Iraq war. Now, about to start an internship at The Post, my heart’s pounding once again—this time with a bit more confidence, and with no armed guards in my path.

Amy Orndorff
University of Maryland
Reporter, Prince William County Bureau

As a D.C. native interning for the New York Observer last summer, I felt nauseatingly self-conscious unsheathing my laminated Manhattan subway map to find the trendy parties I was expected to cover for the nightlife section. I spent the entire summer miscalling the West Side’s 1/2/3 train the “Red Line” after the D.C. Metro route that links my house near the Friendship Heights stop to my high school at Tenleytown, Georgetown Day School. By senior year in high school, I was editing the features section of The Argur Bit, the student newspaper. At Yale, I became a staff writer for the Arts & Entertainment section of the alternative weekly, the Yale Herald, in 2003 and served as editor last year. I currently serve as editor in chief for Yale’s creative newsmagazine, the New Journal, and I expect to graduate in May 2007. This year, I won second prize in the Atlantic Monthly’s Student Writing Contest for a New Journal article on corpse dissection at Yale Medical, a gruesome process I once explained to a socialite scarfing parfait at a Waldorf-Astoria gala I was covering for the Observer. Later that night, she pointed me toward 50th Street and explained that, though she always took a car, she thought there might be a 1/2/3 stop there.

Catherine Rampell
Princeton University
Writer, Editorial

This summer I am marrying my brother. Marrying him to someone, that is; I’m the makeshift rabbi at his upcoming wedding in Japan. While I know neither Japanese nor Hebrew, I do speak mamahuhu Chinese and un poquito de Spanish, and I’ll hopefully study shwaya Arabic this summer. Last summer I worked on the USA Today news desk, where I won a Hainer Award and became the first intern to write a cover story. In previous lives I’ve written and/or interned for NBC News & MSNBC.com (Beijing bureau), the Chicago Tribune, the Village Voice, National Public Radio, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gannett News Service and various others. At Princeton I’m an op-ed columnist for the Daily Princetonian and a research assistant for a New York Times columnist. I also write/act/choreograph for the Princeton Triangle Club, the nation’s oldest (and punniest) collegiate musical comedy troupe, for which I produced and co-wrote an off-Broadway show last year. My favorite paperweight is my recently completed senior thesis, which analyzed get-out-the-vote groups that target young people.

Renée Rigdon
Ohio University
Graphic Artist, News Art

My first and only brush with journalism thus far came when I was a junior in high school. I was the copy editor for the school newspaper, and the editor in chief was a student whose debut story told the tale of her bad haircut and the resulting emotional turmoil. In college my interest in the sciences took me on quite a different path. As an undergraduate, I majored in math and meteorology at Ohio University and even served as associate director for the Scalia Laboratory for Atmospheric Analysis, the university’s student-run weather lab. Along the way, I acquired quite a bit of experience with mapping and geographic information systems. Realizing that my true interests were in cartography, I decided to stay at OU to pursue a graduate degree. My experience mainly lies in thematic, relief, and animated/interactive mapping, and my particular focus these past few years has been mapping the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons. Currently, I have a graduate assistantship at ILGARD, a local government institution, where I edit and maintain the OU campus map. Despite my limited experience in the field of journalism, I look forward to bringing my cartographic skills and passion for maps to The Post.

Ethan Robinson
University of Montana at Missoula
Copy Editor, Metro

I was born in a small town in Montana, raised in a small town in Northern California, attend a small college in a huge state that has only one area code, and have worked as a copy editor at my campus newspaper for three semesters and as a Dow Jones copy editing intern at the Los Angeles Times for 10 weeks last summer. I moved a lot when I was younger, but until I started college I had never lived in an actual town, but always several miles on the outskirts of one. I was 14 or 15 when we finally got satellite TV, and before that, the exciting moment of my days came when my stepdad got home from work with a copy of the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat in his lunch box. Probably since middle school I knew I wanted to work at a newspaper. I thought I wanted to write stories, but in college I’ve learned that I actually wanted to be the person who reads stories and helps to make them better. Reading the news still excites me, and writing a good one-column headline or catching a "who/whom" error gives me all the joy I need in a day.

Marianne Seregi
Graphic Artist, News Art
Northwestern University

I am a Kansas native with an affinity for graphic novels and shoddy sports teams, the Royals, the Chiefs and even the Jayhawks (when they play UCLA). This summer will be my second at The Post – I couldn’t pass up the chance to see Tom Wilkinson’s farmhouse again. Working with the News Art team last year revolutionized how I saw visual journalism. For me, it’s the perfect integration of my traditional journalism education and my love for design. This June I will graduate from Northwestern University with a bachelor of science in journalism. In addition to coming to The Post, I completed design and graphic internships at the Kansas City Star, the Charlotte Observer and Stars and Stripes. I’ve also worked for Abroad View, a national study-abroad magazine, and the Daily Northwestern. What have I most enjoyed about being a college senior going into graphic arts? The fact that doodling is not only accepted but also encouraged.

Stephen Stromberg
Writer, Editorial
Harvard University

I have been writing editorials on and off for the past six years, so forgive my brevity. I grew up in L.A. I went to college in Boston. Then graduate school in England. Over the past year working in Editorial I have happily covered everything from the Supreme Court to the Chesapeake Bay’s stock of menhaden (a small, oily fish harvested en masse off the Virginia coast). Before the Post, I wrote for the Los Angeles Times editorial page, the paper’s Sunday Current section and Salon.com. I also speak Russian.

Megan Voelkel
Samford University
Copy Editor, Style & Features

My mother wanted me to become a doctor. My father hoped I’d go to law school. To the nurse and the accountant, journalism didn’t seem “practical” for a girl from a small town in Mississippi. To their slightly stubborn daughter, who wrote her eighth grade career paper on the thrills of being an editor, a life of deadlines and column inches fits perfectly. By senior year of high school, I was a veteran editor of a 400-page, award-winning yearbook and the class valedictorian. At Samford University, where I received a journalism degree in December, I spent my junior year as editor in chief of the student newspaper, the Samford Crimson. During the summer of 2005, I was at Mississippi Magazine, writing quirky features on everything from birdhouse architecture to barcode specialists. Last summer, as the first recipient of the Timothy S. Robinson fellowship, I spent two weeks in TV Week, Sunday Source and Home at The Post before covering health, food and fitness as an editorial intern at Cooking Light magazine. I also attended the 2006 Bloomberg College Editors’ Leadership Workshop at Columbia University and was named College Journalist of the Year at this year's Southeast Journalism Conference. Outside of the newsroom, I’m an avid tennis fan and volunteer literacy tutor.

Elisheva Weiss
Columbia University
Copy Editor, Financial

I was supposed to go to law school. That had always been the plan — even after I sold my soul to the Columbia Daily Spectator. Even after I became Spec’s head copy editor, wrote the Spec style guide, dozed on the filthy office couch more times than I’d like to admit and watched many sunrises from the grimy window of the Spectator office. I grew up on Long Island and spent a year studying in Jerusalem before entering Columbia University. My time at Columbia has been marked by my experience on the undergraduate paper more than by the classes I’ve taken for my major in political science and the creative writing program. As head copy editor, I compiled an in-house style guide, built a copy staff and taught the entire newspaper staff basic style rules. But it wasn’t until I spent a summer copy editing — at the Washington Times — that I realized I wanted to dedicate myself to commas and em dashes. At some point between when I first walked into the Spectator office as a first-year student and when I started contemplating filling out law school applications, I fell in love with journalism. My grandmother is still hoping I’ll change my mind, but I’m sold.

Steven Yanda
Marquette University
Reporter, Sports

The most important thing Bill Norton did for my budding career in journalism was to laugh at me. Okay, it was more of a chuckle, but the effect stood nonetheless. From my sophomore year to my senior year of high school in Kansas City, Mo., I wrote for Norton in a section of the FYI department of the Kansas City Star known as TeenStar. Norton had introduced me to the writings of Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith, and upon reading the material, I informed him I would one day be better than Smith. He chuckled. Then he realized I was serious and has tried to help me on my journey ever since. I spent two summers stringing for the Star’s Sports department and have covered sports for the Marquette Tribune at Marquette University for the past two years. In the spring of 2008, I will graduate with a major in journalism and a minor in sociology. I have reported on a variety of sports, but most enjoy depicting the different personalities that pervade those sports. I am nowhere near Smith’s level yet, but that still is my goal. Norton probably still chuckles when he recalls what I told him that day. I’m hoping to change that.

Xiyun Yang
Brown University
Reporter, Financial

I’ve never been one for convention, so halfway through college I took some time off and moved to Tunisia. I learned French and a little Arabic and taught English (badly), but my best time there was spent traveling and collecting stories. It was then that I realized there was nothing else I’d rather do. I was born in Beijing but raised in Chicago, and wanderlust set in sometime in between. I am fluent in Chinese and French, with aspirations, if only pale, towards Spanish. I’ve interned with the Dow Jones Newswires offices in Brussels and the Chicago Tribune in Beijing, and I have written stories for the Providence Journal, the South China Morning Post and the Wall Street Journal. I have an insatiable passion for food and write a food column for an English monthly in Beijing. I will be graduating in May 2007 from Brown, double majoring in comparative literature and international relations.

Matt Zapotsky
Ohio University
Reporter, Southern Maryland Bureau

A junior journalism major at Ohio University, I have worked at four different newspapers, including my college publication. At the Columbus Dispatch last summer, I helped monitor the police beat and reported mostly on fatal shootings, fires and car crashes. I also covered a variety of general news topics — everything from a ferret beauty pageant to a mayoral press conference on environmentally friendly homes. My most notable stories at the Dispatch were two crime-related enterprise pieces — one analyzing about 100 narcotics search warrants and the other examining why homicide witnesses in Columbus typically refused to cooperate. Before my work at the Dispatch, I served as an editorial intern at the weekly Toledo Free Press. My marquee story there looked at the possibility of workers’ stress being a factor in two shootings at the Toledo Jeep plant. At the Post, the daily, student-run newspaper at Ohio University, I have served as both an editor and reporter, but I find myself most happy covering breaking news and digging through public records for investigative pieces. My most notable story at The Post looked at records showing the Athens city law director might have a conflict of interest in owning local properties. I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where my dad is a photographer at the Toledo Blade and my mom is in a management position at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center. In the limited free time that pursuing a career in journalism allows, I enjoy cooking.

Joshua Zumbrun
Georgetown University
Reporter, Style

I’m from Indiana, where the Zumbruns have been farming since the mid-1800s. Farmers have a certain sensibility I find lacking in city folk. From experience I can tell you that pigs, for example, are mean, nasty animals. They deserve to be eaten. I always wanted to be a writer. At 8 or 9, I wrote a story about animals taking over the farm, and the nasty pigs were their leaders. I came up with this idea completely on my own and was crushed to learn that this story had already been written. After high school, I left for Europe. I spent the next year living out of my backpack. I talked a Web site, gapyear.com, into letting me write a blog, but of course, nobody called them blogs back then. I didn’t get paid, but when I came through London they gave me free beer. At 18 it was the coolest job possible. I applied to Georgetown from an Internet cafe in Barcelona. And after more traveling and six months in the former Soviet Union teaching English, I returned stateside to study international economics. Somewhere along the line my major switched to the college newspaper. The Post hired me at the end of my junior year to fill out the lottery numbers. Eventually they trusted me enough to do the weather map on the back of Metro. I got reams of useful advice, such as: “You’ll never become a reporter at the Post, you should apply to the Suburban Missoula Alternative Weekly,” or “Newspapers are dead, kid.” But I got a lot of encouragement too, and figured it could never be as devastating as learning about Orwell’s “Animal Farm." So I stuck it out and freelanced when I could. So far, so good.