Erika Beras
Erika Beras (she/her) is a reporter and host for NPR's Planet Money podcast.
Prior to joining the team in 2021 she spent four years as a reporter at Marketplace.
As a freelancer, she was a regular contributor to Scientific American podcasts and filed stories for NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Latino USA. She also contributed to PRI's The World, the BBC and Monocle 24 Radio and wrote stories for National Geographic and NewYorker.com.
Before that, she spent a decade as a staff reporter for NPR Member station WESA and at The Miami Herald.
Her reporting has taken her places as varied as The Democratic Republic of Congo, Switzerland and Erie, Pennsylvania.
She has been awarded grants, fellowships and awards from Radio Television Digital News Association, National Association of Science Writers, The International Center for Journalists, the International Women's Media Foundation, The Center for Health Reporting, The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, Third Coast International Audio Festival and others.
Beras is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer and a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. A native Spanish speaker, she grew up in New York City and lives in Pittsburgh.
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Michael Twitty wants credit given to the enslaved African-Americans who were part of Southern cuisine's creation. So he goes to places like Monticello to cook meals slaves would have eaten.
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They're trying to rebuild their lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo — and one way to start is by learning capoeira, a Brazilian martial art.
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While the country is renowned for its high-quality Arabica Bourbon beans, both cost and culture have kept Rwandans from imbibing one of their top cash crops. The government wants to that to change.
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Whenever artist Vanessa German worked on her porch, kids asked if they could help. Now, in a neighborhood struggling with poverty and crime, she's created a place where they can make art of their own.
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Two new pieces of legislation aim to offer improvements to the lives of the nearly 15,000 foster children in Pennsylvania. Act 75 of 2015 and House Bill…
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A filmmaker has created a way to make Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece home, Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, accessible to those with physical limitations.
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One Pittsburgh middle school teacher is giving his black students a valuable education in social studies — and life.
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The groundbreaking ambulance service was created in the 1960s as the city struggled with racial tensions and poor medical transport. It trained African-American men to provide crucial emergency care.
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The PBS program Daniel Tiger's Neighborhoodis bringing the legacy of Fred Rogers to a new generation of children.
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Lots of airports have retail. The largest blueberry producer in Georgia is at an airport. And in Pittsburgh, Consol Energy will begin extracting gas underneath the airport — even under the runways.