Vanessa Botelho, associate professor of Broadcast Journalism, and Lam Thuy Vo, associate professor of Data Journalism, have been named Tow Professors for the 2024-2026 academic years.
The Tow Professorship, established by the Tow Foundation in 2014, supports the research projects of two faculty members at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY who have shown a strong commitment to innovation, teaching, and leadership.
“Lam and Vanessa are exceptional journalists and educators, beloved by their students and respected by everyone in our community. Our school is lucky to have them and proud to support their work,” said Dean Graciela Mochkofsky. “We are so grateful to the Tow Foundation for their continued support and partnership.”
Botelho is an Emmy Award-winning television news executive producer with three decades of experience in broadcast journalism. She is completing a Master’s degree in Biography and Memoir at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Her research interests — which have led her to the Oxford Centre for Life Writing as a visiting scholar — focus on Anglo-Indian identity and diaspora, exploring how this group navigates their cultural and social positions both in post-colonial India and beyond. A recipient of a Leon Levy Center for Biography scholarship, she is writing a historical memoir centered on her family’s migration from Calcutta, India, to New York City in the late 1970s.
“Being able to use my many years of journalism experience to work on a project that tells the story of Anglo-Indians and their place in post-colonial India and the wider world, is important to me,” said Botelho. “My historical memoir is one that straddles two worlds and addresses exclusion, adaptation and belonging. It’s an honor to get the Tow Foundation’s support to expand my research on a project that I believe will broaden the narrative on the immigrant experience in America.”
Thuy Vo’s work focuses on coupling data analysis with on-the-record reporting to understand how systematic issues affect individuals. She’s presently an investigative reporter with the independent outlet Documented. Her current research, which started as a project for The Markup, explores misinformation and deepfakes within immigrant communities, with a focus on Vietnamese people in the U.S. Earlier this summer, Thuy Vo won the inaugural 2024 AAJA-Medill Innovator Award for the project, titled “Languages of Misinformation.” Her work also includes educational workshops on misinformation and AI, and highlights critical issues faced by AAPI communities.
“Doing investigative stories and engagement journalism about misinformation in immigrant communities has been an incredible experience,” said Thuy Vo. “It’s allowed me to experiment with different ways of finding stories and of distributing our work. In many ways, this project has helped me really interrogate traditional editorial processes. I’m so excited to get the support to continue to work on it.”
Previous recipients of Tow Professorships at the Newmark J-School include Kovie Biakolo, director of the Arts and Culture Reporting Program; Kalli Anderson, director of Audio Journalism; Emily Laber-Warren, director of the Health & Science Reporting Program; Alia Malek, head of the International Reporting Program; former Associate Professor Lisa Armstrong; Graciela Mochkofsky, now dean, then executive director of the Center for Community Media and head of the Bilingual Journalism Program; former Associate Professor Bob Sacha; Yoruba Richen, director of the Documentary Program and Associate Professor of Race and Identity; and investigative journalist and digital media strategist Miguel Paz.
The Tow Foundation, established in 1988 by Leonard and Claire Tow, funds projects that promote transformative experiences and collaborative ventures in fields where there are opportunities for breakthroughs, reform and benefits for underserved populations. Investments focus on the support of innovative programs and system reform in the fields of youth and adult criminal justice, medicine and public health, higher education, journalism and culture. The Foundation has helped create similar programs for professors at CUNY’s Brooklyn College and Barnard College.