My name is Erica Schlaikjer, the media relations and online engagement coordinator for EMBARQ – The WRI Center for Sustainable Transport, a nonprofit initiative of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank in Washington, D.C.

Since December 2008, I have been working with the Information & Innovation team to help create, edit and manage multimedia content for EMBARQ’s international network of websites, and I also serve as Managing Editor of EMBARQ’s blog, www.TheCityFix.com, which explores sustainable solutions to the problems of urban mobility.

I am a Class of 2007 graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill., where I double-majored in journalism and international studies. Previously, I held several magazine internships at local, national and international publications, including The Chicago Reporter, Crain’s Chicago Business and National Geographic. In school, I served as the editor-at-large for Abroad View magazine, a student-run, nonprofit magazine about global education and study abroad.

In 2008, I studied Mandarin for three months at the Chinese Culture University in Taipei, Taiwan, thanks to the Taiwan Ministry of Education’s Huayu Enrichment Scholarship for Chinese language training. I also worked as a freelance reporter for Taiwan Business TOPICS, a monthly magazine published by the American Chamber of Commerce.

In February 2007, I was honored with a foundational scholarship from the Overseas Press Club, and I hope to pursue a career in international journalism – in whatever form that may take (hence my dream job title: “benevolent media creator.”)

As a college junior, in the fall of 2005, I withdrew from school for three months to live in Shanghai, China, where I interned at Shanghai Talk, an English-language city living magazine. I also pursued an independent research project, courtesy of the Medill-sponsored Eric Lund Global Research & Reporting Grant, focusing on China’s Internet youth culture. While working and living abroad, I traveled to Hangzhou, Suzhou, Beijing and Nanjing.

I was born in Fairfax, Va., and subsequently moved around the world as the daughter of a U.S. Foreign Service father and aboriginal Taiwanese mother. I have lived in Guangzhou, China; Taipei, Taiwan; Beijing; Geneva; Hong Kong; and Germantown, Md., where I attended public high school. Following my college graduation, I briefly settled down in Chicago, but quickly re-located back “home” to the Washington, D.C. area, to pursue my interest in the environmental nonprofit sector.

I am currently plotting my next move – geographically, professionally and personally.

See my profile on LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/eschlaikjer

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