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Rebecca Byerly

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Rebecca Byerly is a free-lance journalist, producer, and adventure athlete. Reporting for Al Jazeera English, CNN.com, National Geographic, and Voice of America, she has covered stories across the globe. This has included a 125-mile trek through the Libyan Desert, the Naadam Festival in Mongolia, and the struggles of the Cambodian Olympic Team in a post-war economy. The adventure stories she reports on put a focus on people in far-flung regions of the world whose voices would otherwise go unheard.

A 2007-2008 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, Rebecca worked in educational development in New Delhi, India.  While in India, she traveled to Kashmir to snowboard.  Mesmerized by the natural beauty she saw in the region, she was equally troubled by its growing environmental crisis. She vowed to one day return to Kashmir to report on these critical issues. Upon completion of her fellowship, Rebecca spent the summer of 2008 covering pre-Olympic features stories across Asia for CNN.com.  In one of her most recent assignments she organized and led the first American team to run in 125-mile ultramarathon in Libya.  Blogging from the desert via her iPhone for National Geographic, she also took video for Al Jazeera English, and finished the race.

A North Carolina native and alumnus of American University, in Washington, D.C., the focus of Rebecca's studies was in Peace and Conflict Resolution with a concentration in the Middle East and South Asia.  A 2004-2005 Boren National Security Scholar, she spent a year studying abroad in Cairo, Egypt and has worked in Afghanistan, Sudan, Palestine, Turkey, China, Mongolia, and Cambodia.

With partial support form the Pulitzer Center, Rebecca will spend the next six months reporting from Kashmir and other areas of India.  Dedicated to the promotion of education across the globe, Rebecca often shares her stories with young people in the US and abroad and plans to develop an education syllabus through the Pulitzer Center's Global Gateway.