Birgit Rieck

Background

About Birgit Rieck

Director, Moment Institute Middle East Fellows (MIMEF)Founder, The Bromley OfficeBoard Member (treasurer), ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)Advisory Board Member, Take The Lead’s “50 Women Can Change the World in Journalism”Birgit Rieck is the director of MIMEF, a fellowship for and with journalists covering and wanting to cover the Middle East.Birgit founded The Bromley Office in September 2019. There, she provides strategic planning for specific projects in the world of continued education programs and journalism and she continues her English/German translation service (incl. Sütterlin writing).Until September 2019, she was Associate Director at Wallace House (University of Michigan) where she managed daily activities including seminars, workshops, field trips and international news tours for the Knight-Wallace Fellowships, a program for experienced journalists. Birgit came to Wallace House in to manage the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists and plan outreach events for the Knight-Wallace Fellowship program and moved over to the fellowship program in May 2004.Before coming to Michigan, Birgit studied Anthropology with a concentration on Latin America (minors in English and American Literature) at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn (Germany). She was awarded a Master's Degree in Cultural Anthropology (concentration on Africa) with minors in Education and English Literature from Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz (Germany) after conducting fieldwork in Uganda and Rome (Italy). She also completed a two-year management training with InterContinental Hotels Group in London (England).Birgit was a reporter and program host for Stadtradio Karlsruhe, one of the first privately owned radio stations in Germany. There, she covered the Federal Court of Justice, the U.S. Smiley Barracks and the (then) first-league soccer club Karlsruhe SC and hosted a weekly program about contemporary literature and music.Birgit is a longtime current member of IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors), ONA (Online News Association), JAWS (Journalism and Women Symposium) and SEJ (Society of Environmental Journalists) and a lifetime member of IJA/NAJA (Indigenous Journalists Association/Native American Journalism Association). For over fifteen years, she was also a member of NABJ, NAHJ and AAJA (Journalism Associations of Black, Hispanic and Asian American Journalists).