Maggie Messitt is National Director for Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. She has worked as a journalist, editor, and social entrepreneur inside underserved communities in rural South Africa and the American Midwest. In South Africa, she was the editor/publisher of an award-winning community newspaper and the founding director of a nonprofit focused on training women journalists inside the former Apartheid-era homelands of Lebowa & Gazankulu. In the United States, Messitt spearheaded the launch of Wisconsin Public Television’s first digital engagement site and managed multimedia storytelling projects aimed at localizing national issues. She also joined forces with the Writers in Prisons Project, the WI Department of Corrections, and UW—Madison’s MFA program to launch nonfiction workshops for minimum/medium security prisoners. Messitt is the author of The Rainy Season, longlisted for the 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. She currently splits her time between the RFA offices in Brooklyn and her home in the Rust Belt.
