Aurora Almendral is an award-winning journalist. She writes for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic Magazine, and is currently an international news editor at NBC News. She was previously a senior reporter at Quartz, covering economic disruption in the wake of the pandemic, with a focus on supply chains, labor, and the climate economy.
From 2013–2022, Aurora was based in Manila and Bangkok. She now lives in London.
Aurora has reported on conflict, corruption, disaster, climate change, human trafficking, migration, business, politics, crime and culture. She was among the first international journalists in the Philippines to cover then-president Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody anti-drug campaign that saw thousands of people executed by national police, and went on to produce expansive work on the subject, from the fervent support for the president, to the spectacles of execution and the raw reality of grief. In the Philippines, her work has taken her crocodile hunting in distant jungle islands, onboard a 432-foot cargo ship and into the world’s most crowded jails, as well as the back rooms of power while investigating the murky borderlands between business and politics in an authoritarian regime.
She has covered loneliness in Tokyo, the new far right in Texas and Florida, Ethiopian domestic workers in Lebanon, camels and poetry in Somalia, terrorism and grief in Sri Lanka, hope and despair on the US-Mexico border, and suicide in Thailand. She is a native English speaker, and speaks Spanish, Moroccan Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, French and Filipino.
She has worked on assignment for The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, FRONTLINE PBS, The Nikkei Asian Review, National Geographic Magazine, BBC World Service, PRI’s The World, NPR, VICE News, and as a contract producer-reporter for NBC News. She was previously the Manila reporter for Next City Magazine’s Resilient Cities project.
Aurora has been interviewed for her work by the BBC, NPR, The World, and The Los Angeles Review Books, among others, and has delivered talks at universities, symposiums and conferences.
Awards and recognition:
Hillman Prize for investigative journalism, 2024
John Barlow Martin award for magazine journalism, 2024
NIHCM Foundation for investigative and general reporting, 2024
Human Rights Press Award for explanatory feature writing, 2020, 2021
Overseas Press Club of America Award for international reporting, 2018
Pictures of the Year International Award for documentary journalism, 2018
National Headliner Award for online video, 2018
Human Rights Press Award for television and video, 2018
Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for audio news documentary, 2017
GroundTruth Climate Change Reporting Fellow, 2016
Association of Independents in Radio New Voice Scholar, 2013
Feet in Two Worlds Reporting Fellow, 2013
Aurora graduated magna cum laude in economics and anthropology. She was a Fulbright scholar to Spain and Morocco. Before becoming a journalist, she worked in socioeconomic development at the United Nations and at a startup in New York. She was raised in the Bay Area, California.
Security training and certifications:
HEFAT certified, March 2019, GJS Security/NBC News
Reporting in Crisis Zones, October 2018, The Dart Center/Columbia Journalism School
First Aid training, June 2018, Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues (RISC)
