Meet the Professors

Saeed Ahmed is the VP of News for Digital Platforms at the AP. He leads the news organization’s efforts to deepen engagement with audiences on site, social and other emerging platforms — and bring AP’s world class journalism to more people, in more modern ways.

Prior to that, he was the head of digital journalism at the BBC, tasked with conceiving and executing on a strategy to radically grow audience, impact and commercial revenue in North America. 

Ahmed also served as the director of digital news at NPR and he led CNN’s content diversity initiative.

Ian Urbina is the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington D.C. that produces investigative stories about human rights, environment and labor concerns on the two thirds of the planet covered by water.

Before founding The Outlaw Ocean Project, Urbina spent roughly 17 years as a staff reporter for The New York Times. He has received various journalism awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, two George Polk Awards and an Emmy. Several of his investigations have also been converted into major motion pictures.

Chris Megerian is a White House reporter at the Associated Press. He previously worked for the Los Angeles Times in Washington and California, covering the Russia investigation, the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, natural disasters and political campaigns. He also covered crime and politics at the Star-Ledger in New Jersey.

He is originally from the Boston area and he graduated from Emory University in Atlanta. He has taught political journalism and campaign journalism at Georgetown. 

Paul Albergo (he/him) joined Georgetown’s adjunct faculty in 2020 and has taught Intro to Journalism, The Media Industry, Media Careers, and Covering Big Money Battles. Until June 2022, Paul served as executive editor for Bloomberg Industry Group , where he oversaw the company’s newsroom. He started with the company, in 1986 as a reporter and over his 36 years edited and managed a variety of teams across the newsroom. He is a member of the board of the American Society of Business Publishers and Editors  and an adjunct associate professor in the American University School of Communication. 

Emma Lacey-Bordeaux is the Senior Director for Standards and Practices for CNN. In her decade plus at the company, she’s produced award winning and groundbreaking reports including on incarcerated men studying feminism as a means of rehabilitation. Her work has been recognized with serval Emmy and Peabodys wins among other notable awards. 

Emma started her career in journalism as the News Director of her college radio station. Prior to that, she dabbled in politics working on statewide and local races before falling in love with journalism. At CNN she’s played a variety of roles- researcher, reporter, producer, editor (the youngest ever to hold that role), and now as a senior leader wrestling with big ethical questions for CNN’s journalists around the world. 

Paul Elie is a senior fellow in Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker.

He is the author of two books, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage” (2003) and “Reinventing Bach: Music, Technology, and the Search for Transcendence” (2012), both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists, as well as dozens of essays, articles, reviews, and prefaces — for The New York Times and its Book Review and Sunday magazine, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and Commonweal, as well as The New Yorker.

His third book, “The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s,” will be published in May 2025.

Bhumika Tharoor is managing editor at The Atlantic. She was previously with CNN and The Washington Post. Bhumika has her MBA from Georgetown University and lives in Washington, DC with her husband and daughter. 

Joan Niesen is a freelance writer, with her reporting found in The New York Times, Washingtonian and the Guardian, among other outlets. Before that, she was the NFL Editor for The Washington Post.

Her work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, online publications and podcasts over the course of her decade-long career. Niesen, a GU alum, also worked as a staff writer at Sports Illustrated, where she covered everything from football and hockey to golf to women’s basketball.