By True Lyons ’16 and Grace Jickling ’16

Last week, Grace and I got the opportunity to sit down and speak with Alex Berg ’01, an alumna of Greene Street Friends School, a journalist for The Huffington Post, an activist, professional roller-derby player, and part of Girls Write Now.

Alex is a woman of many interests and talents. We talked to her about her work, her interests as well as her experience at Greene Street Friends School. We asked her about what experiences and morals she brought along with her into her later years ands what she found valuable. She said that the biggest thing she took from her Greene Street Friends experience was to value all different members of the school community and outside communities in life.

Alex does pieces on LGBT issues, as well as pieces on racial, and social justice for The Huffington Post and so learning to value every life and see difference at the same time has been very helpful to her for getting involved as a writer, a community member, and an activist. We asked her how she got to working with The Huffington Post. Alex said that she was studying digital journalism for a long time [at Cornell and then Columbia University]. She loved storytelling and she soon went into video, to tell stories there. A lot of her work is video interviews and discussions around LGBT issues and racial issues. Specifically, she has created some really great pieces on issues of white feminism as well as bisexual awareness. She says, “I identify as an LGBT+ person, and my boss thought it would be great to bring personal experience to the story. It helps that I grew up in a family that values social justice.”

On top of writing about all of these important topics, Alex also is part of a project called Girls Write Now. Girls Write Now is a mentoring program based in New York City that pairs young female writers with journalists to become better writers and to expand their ideas and talents. Currently, Alex has a mentee that she has been mentoring for the past five years. She says, “You really need to be nurturing young women writers because girls are taught you always have to be nice or polite; you have to nurture their voices. “ Getting to talk with Alex was an awesome experience and we are so happy that we got to talk to someone doing what they love and what is important to them. It is also awesome to see change being made by a Greene Street Friends alumna.

To read Alex's recent work for The Huffington Post, click here.

Alex will be coming to Greene Street Friends School to speak with the eighth grade class in the spring.