Life After Graduation: Claire Healy `21 Translates Passion to Purpose
By Nina Prenosil
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Claire Healy `21 is currently an Esserman Investigative Fellow at The Miami Herald, as well as a 2024 Pulitzer Finalist for her work on “Searching for Maura,” an illustrated investigation into the death of a Filipino woman at the 1904 World’s Fair completed in her recent role as a newsroom copy aide at The Washington Post. While at UMass, Healy majored in political science and completed a minor in Arabic. Although much of her college experience was marked by the pandemic, she remained invested in campus organizations such as The Massachusetts Daily Collegian and Sisters on the Runway. I spoke with Healy about how her Honors College education, experience abroad, and campus involvement prepared her for her current career.
Laying a Foundation in Journalism
At the beginning of Healy’s collegiate career, she began working as a communications assistant for the Honors College, and continued this job up until graduation. She expressed that it was a wonderful experience as an aspiring journalist, because she was able to continually strengthen her writing and interviewing skills.
Healy also gained journalistic experience during her time at the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, where she eventually worked as an assistant news editor. “Student journalism is an incredibly important part of our country, an important part of journalism, and for a lot of people how they got started.” For Healy, it is where her passions were realized.
“I learned a lot from my colleagues at the Collegian. I learned a great deal from just the exercise of writing. I really feel in journalism nothing will teach you more than going through the motions… actually putting together a story and interviewing people, and at the Collegian you get to do that constantly,” she added.
Igniting Research Through Personal Interests
During her four years at UMass, Healy also spent time living and learning in both Jordan and Cuba. It was these experiences abroad that inspired her to create an Honors Thesis that bridges the gap between young people in different countries and their ability to connect and work together. With the help of professors Paul Musgrave and Razvan Sibii, Healy launched The Open, which is a digital international magazine in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The purpose of The Open is to allow for cross-cultural collaboration through bilingualism and collaboration on the arts and news articles. Healy worked with her friends in Cuba at the University of Havana and her friends at the University of Jordan to create content for the magazine, translate articles, and share their differing pandemic experiences. Healy’s Honors Thesis is still accessible online at The Open.
When starting your Honors Thesis, Healy shared that she thinks it is best to approach it as something that will add to your life.
“This is the end of your experience at UMass and you have the opportunity to focus on something you’re extremely passionate about and carry whatever you focus on with you into the next phase of your life.”
In Healy’s opinion, at the end of the day your Honors Thesis should be for you, as it is a chance to focus deeply on a subject that you care a great deal about.
Healy also spoke to her Honors education as a whole and how she still uses the information she learned in her work as a journalist.
“When I look back, there are classes that I’ll still quote or use or I find myself thinking about them when I’m writing an article about a different subject.”
Healy referenced a time when she was writing an article about an activist in Egypt who is creating a platform to make sex education available in Arabic. During this time she noticed herself looking back to a seminar she took with Professor Traci Parker called Love and Marriage, and she was using what she learned in that class to better understand the subject matter for her article.
“You just never know when those electives are going to be relevant to something you’re doing in the future. Especially in journalism… where you have to adapt to a lot of different subjects and be able to cover them,” Healy said.
Healy's work on the illustrated story "Searching for Maura" earned her a spot as a 2024 Pulitzer Finalist. She described it as “a story about the 1904 World’s Fair, about death, about grief, about people today who are trying to right the wrongs of the past.” The work of activist Janna Añonuevo Langholz prompted the Post to investigate the Smithsonian’s brain collection. Healy spent two years working on this project with investigative reporter Nicole Dungca. Over thecourse of their research, Healy and Dungca found that over a century the Smithsonian Institution gathered more than 280 brains from then-recently deceased people, all the while the communities and families of these individuals are unaware of their whereabouts. The Smithsonian still holds about 250 of the brains in their archives today. Once Healy and her colleagues had concluded their research, they published their findings in The Washington Post’s first-ever illustrated investigation and first-ever article translated into Filipino.
Today, Healy is several years post-graduation and is incredibly grateful that she is able to pursue her passions as a journalist. She shared that life after graduation can be intimidating but to keep faith in yourself and your abilities.
“Give yourself grace and patience, because it can take awhile but you’re never behind.”
Featuring
Nina Prenosil
Nina Prenosil is a communications assistant in Commonwealth Honors College.
