Taylyn Washington-Harmon, a senior in the Newhouse School, has been named a 2016 Google News Lab Fellow. She is one of eight winners chosen from over 1,800 applications.
Taylyn Washington-Harmon
The Google News Lab Fellowship offers students interested in journalism and technology the opportunity to spend the summer working at relevant organizations across the U.S. to gain valuable experience and make lifelong contacts and friends. Washington-Harmon, a senior magazine major from Chicago, will spend this summer at Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab following a week at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. At Nieman, she will work with the staff on writing, editing and web journalism innovation. “I look forward to learning more about journalism from a reporter’s angle and making news a more interactive and personal experience using digital and online innovations,” she says.
Washington-Harmon is founding editor-in-chief of SWEETEST, a women’s fashion and lifestyle website. A women’s studies minor, she is also enrolled in Newhouse’s fashion and beauty communications milestone and has styled and directed the program’s fashion show for the past two years.
She is the “From the Runway” and “Wardrobe Wednesday” columnist for The Daily Orange and has a show on WERW, where she plays music by women artists and discusses women’s issues. She is secretary of the Syracuse University chapter of Ed2010, a Newhouse Scholar, an Our Time Has Come Scholar and a member of the Syracuse University Beta Psi chapter of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Club. She has edited for Equal Time, Zipped and Renegade magazines. She held a communications internship at SEIU-Service Employees International Union and a public relations internship at Treetop Consulting, a boutique PR firm based in Chicago.
“My favorite thing about being a Newhouse student is the tremendous support from faculty,” she says. “They want nothing more than for their students to succeed in whatever they choose and take as many steps as necessary to ensure that. Without my professors’ encouragement, I probably would not have applied for the fellowship.” She says she is particularly thankful for support from Newhouse faculty and staff members Melissa Chessher, Dan Pacheco, Jim Shahin, Sean Branagan and Jon Glass, “and every single professor at SU that has pushed me to my limit and has helped me get to where I am today.”
After graduation this spring and the fellowship this summer, Washington-Harmon plans to continue working on SWEETEST and exploring digital media innovation.
