An experienced educator and journalist, Marcy Burstiner will become News Decoder’s Educational News Director and help lead our nonprofit forward.

She loves mentoring. She’s a teacher, journalist and published author who understands nonprofits and startups. She is Marcy Burstiner, News Decoder’s new Educational News Director.

Burstiner will assume this critical role at our nonprofit starting on September 1, progressively assuming responsibilities handled by founder Nelson Graves, who will help ensure a successful transition and who remains president of News Decoder’s board of directors.

Burstiner emerged from a global search as an exceptional candidate combining years of experience teaching, mentoring and reporting. As the editorial face of News Decoder, the Educational News Director mentors students from our 23 partner schools to build journalistic skills and works with our professional correspondents who publish on our news site.

Burstiner stands out for her passion for teaching young people, her entrepreneurial spirit and unbending commitment to global citizenship and journalistic integrity.

“What News Decoder does is exactly in line with what I am most passionate about — connecting the public service mission of journalism to help guide our next generation of journalists and civic leaders,” Burstiner said.

“Many of the problems we face today cross national borders. Young people need to see how the problems around them are connected globally and look towards global solutions.”

Burstiner is an experienced educator and journalist.

For the past 18 years, Burstiner has been a journalism professor at Cal Poly Humboldt in California.

She is also a volunteer projects editor at Local News Matters, a nonprofit newsroom in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she coaches interns on enterprise stories.

Her publications include a textbook, “Investigative Reporting: From premise to publication,” offering advanced reporting methods geared to undergraduate university students.

Before teaching, she led a global team of tech journalists as associate managing editor of TheDeal.com, a web publication and magazine that covered high finance.

She was also a senior writer for TheStreet.com and a reporter for the San Francisco Daily Journal.

A U.S. citizen, she currently divides her time between Ireland and the United States.

“One of the things that sets News Decoder apart is our focus on teaching students to think like journalists to better understand the world and grow as global citizens, and we do so with an all-star lineup,” Managing Director Maria Krasinski said.

“As both an admired educator and accomplished journalist, Marcy will only strengthen our programs and deepen our impact as the new Educational News Director. I could not be happier to have her join the team.”

(Nelson Graves is the founder of News Decoder.)