Michaela Herbst is a is an award-winning journalist. She received her master’s degree in data journalism from Stanford University. She was previously a data journalist at The Associated Press. She believes visual journalism is the key to telling thought provoking and engaging broadcast stories. Most recently at The Associated Press, Herbst earned an honorable mention for building a database tracking 100 years of AP All-America college football players, using Python and graphics to visualize three-time honorees. It reached thousands of AP customers worldwide, more importantly, it helped readers connect with AP’s mission which is to advance the power of facts.

She also investigated the potential impact of Congress cutting HUD’s HOME program which provides affordable housing to low income Americans and received an honorable mention. During the horrific Texas floods, she contributed to a timeline which uncovered that it took six hours for city officials to send out an alert to residents warning them to seek higher ground.

Herbst have experience in broadcast videos, data-driven multimedia projects and social video production. While at Stanford, she created a vertical video about DevWeek, which is the largest independent developer exploration conference in Silicon Valley. She reported on Hillary Clinton’s book tour in San Francisco in podcast form. Herbst also created broadcast packages on the Women’s Conference featuring Simon Biles and March for Life rally.  She worked in collaboration with The Washington Post to implement natural language processing models to their Pulitzer-Prize winning fatal force police shooting database. She also bring skills in data analytics, Python, broadcast journalism, editing and visualization.