Neeta Satam on Photojournalism, Environmental Storytelling, and Building A Career Outside of the Traditional Newsroom

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Neeta Satam, a 2017 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow, will deliver a series of talks on photojournalism and environmental storytelling at Northwestern University on April 23 and 24, 2026.

On April 23, 2026, Satam will visit the university’s Evanston campus, where she will join the "Energy Reporting" course to present a talk titled "When the Water Stayed: Visual Stories from Loktak’s Edge." Satam will explore how to document the human impact of energy development and environmental injustice.

She will also visit the "Media and the Marginalized" course to discuss the ethics and aesthetics of environmental storytelling. During the luncheon lecture "Hustle & Byline: Building a Career Outside the Traditional Newsroom," she will share insights on building a freelance career with magazine students.

On April 24, 2026, Satam will visit the downtown Chicago campus. There, she will meet with students for informal portfolio reviews, engage Medill School of Journalism students in conversations on reporting on vulnerable communities, and present a talk titled "Slow Currents: Visual Storytelling of Climate Change in Zanskar" for photojournalism students.

Satam is an Indian photojournalist, educator, and National Geographic Explorer based between St. Louis and Mumbai.

A former environmental scientist, she brings years of scientific training into her journalism, grounding her work in both research and lived experience. Her long-form visual storytelling explores the intersections of environment, race, gender, capitalism, and cultural identity, focusing on how complex ecological crises shape communities and landscapes. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Nature Magazine, The Guardian, The Washington Post, NPR, Canary Media, and numerous other publications.

Satam was a 2024-2025 Ted Scripps Fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder and holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is an Associate Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and has served on its advisory board, as well as on the advisory board of Ocean Visuals.

Through her work as both a storyteller and educator, she aims to foster critical reflection, empathy, and engagement with some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time.