About

Sandra Sadek is an award-winning freelance journalist and photographer based in New York City.

Sadek is a former Report for America Corps Member, during which she spent two years covering housing insecurity and economic development for the Fort Worth Report in North Texas. Her work highlighting barriers to affordable housing and a controversial city economic incentive package earned her recognition from the Housing Narrative Lab, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Texas Managing Editors’ Association.

A first-generation American, Sadek has always looked to help others make sense of big international stories and translate them for a local audience. While working in Texas, she produced a series of features highlighting the resettlement of Ukrainian refugees and how locals mobilized to support soldiers on the front lines. She interviewed an Afghan women’s rights activist about her new life in the States, highlighted a local PAC’s efforts to raise awareness about human rights violations in Pakistan, and examined how Texas politics have hindered free speech when it comes to speaking out on the Israel-Gaza war.

Sadek graduated from Texas State University with a major in journalism and a minor in international relations. As a student, she was an active member of the campus’s award-winning Model Arab League chapter. She also worked as a reporter and then an editor at the student newspaper, The University Star, where she covered how the campus became a partisan battleground following the first election of President Donald Trump, Beto’s Texas Senate stop in San Marcos, and the possible impact of the Supreme Court’s DACA reversal on the majority Hispanic student body. During her undergraduate studies, Sadek’s published research explored the U.S. role in the Yemen civil war, especially when it came to providing weapons to Saudi Arabia and Western media’s self-censorship in its coverage of the 2006 Lebanon War.

She is fluent in English and French, and conversational in Arabic and Spanish. She has lived all over the world, including Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. Sadek is currently pursuing a master’s in journalism, focused on international and visual reporting, at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.