POLITICO announces 2025 Class of POLITICO Fellows

Announcement from POLITICO's Editorial Director for Diversity and Culture John Yearwood, Senior Managing Editor Sudeep Reddy, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief Joe Schatz:

Hi all,

We’re thrilled to announce that Danny Nguyen and Cassandra Dumay will be joining us as 2025 POLITICO Fellows. Both journalists have distinguished themselves in reporting in Washington and elsewhere.

The POLITICO Fellows Program, among the most prestigious in the industry, trains young journalists in the fundamentals of covering politics, policy and power. The journalists rotate among various teams in the newsroom for one year and are then given the opportunity to apply for permanent positions with POLITICO if they successfully complete the program.

Since the program’s inception in 2020, fellows have had a major impact on POLITICO’s work. Their stories have been critical in our coverage of the 2024 presidential election, war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic, among so many others.

The program is part of POLITICO’s extensive commitment to train the next generation of journalists. In addition to fellows, POLITICO employs dozens of student interns each year and sponsors the POLITICO Journalism Institute, an intensive training program to advance diversity across the industry and support the next generation of journalists in covering politics and policy.

“The fellowship program is a great way to bring super-talented young people into our newsroom,” said John Yearwood, editorial director for diversity and culture. “We couldn’t be happier with the 2025 class. It includes impressive emerging journalists who are poised to make important contributions to our profession.”

Meet our new fellows:

Danny Nguyen most recently covered local and national politics and anchored a newsletter for The Baltimore Banner. He joined the Banner from The Washington Post, where he reported on social issues, transportation and major breaking news, including the Baltimore Bridge collapse and the Microsoft/Crowdstrike outage. He was also a freelance reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, where his reporting on California’s plans to scale back broadband service installations in low-income areas prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom to restore funding to a pandemic-era internet expansion program. The San Francisco native graduated from Vanderbilt University with a biology degree in 2022. When he’s not in the newsroom, you can usually find Danny weightlifting in the gym. He starts Feb. 4 on the Breaking News desk.

Cassandra Dumay has reported on her home state of Massachusetts for the Boston Globe — where she is currently a fellow with the investigative Spotlight team — as well as The MetroWest Daily News and Boston’s local NPR station, GBH. She is a senior at Boston University majoring in journalism with a minor in political science. She previously received fellowships from ProPublica’s Emerging Reporters Program, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting and the National Association of Black Journalists. She is a former president of Boston University’s Society of Professional Journalists. Cassandra, who recently returned from a summer study-abroad trip in Spain, interned with POLITICO’s transportation team last fall. She loves hot wings almost as much as she loves hot scoops. She’ll join us after graduation in June.

Please join us in congratulating them.