Welcome to Jennifer Brody’s portfolio. I’m a Chicago-based writer covering arts & entertainment and health trends. I also blog about travel and specialize in social media content.
Welcome to Jennifer Brody’s portfolio. I’m a Chicago-based writer covering arts & entertainment and health trends. I also blog about travel and specialize in social media content.
Welcome to my world. Much like a painter, I write with bold strokes and vivid color to bring stories to life. This site contains the fruits of my labor; my most memorable interviews and best written work. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed producing them!
Avid Reader:
As a kid, I wondered what it would be like to become an astronaut or a biogeneticist. As luck would have it, neither math nor science proved to be my forte. Instead, I became an avid reader, devouring books from all genres–mystery, romance, science fiction. During my middle school years, I was a top book reporter. Consuming 100 books in one year, I was like roadrunner sprinting past my classmates to the finish line.
Blossoming Writer at U of I
My writing didn’t blossom until my freshman year of college. I became an Edmund J. James Scholar and took honors English seminars at the University of Illinois. I got my first taste of deadline pressure, and the ego boost of having a byline while covering the environment beat for the Daily Illini. From there, I worked for a small suburban paper and eventually made it to the big leagues.
The Journalism Years
Just before the dot.com boom, I joined the Pioneer Press (now part of the Chicago Tribune Media Group) as a full-time staff writer where I covered education, local politics and suburban lifestyle stories. Writing five to seven stories per week, I honed my craft—interviewing, fact-checking, following news tips, cultivating relationships with sources and deadline writing—alongside veteran reporters and editors.
During my five years as a journalist, I the world became my classroom. I wrote about a street kid who became a streetwise attorney, a mother struggling to raise a preschooler with cystic fibrosis, the first female firefighter hired by one Northwest suburban fire department, and a family flower business still thriving after four generations. I even traveled to Norway, met with the Norwegian Parliament, international journalists, and and leaders of Norway’s Jewish community to discuss the failure of the Oslo Accords as well as the country’s restitution to Holocaust survivors . I returned home with a wealth of stories about what I had seen and published a long-form feature on what I had seen and learned from my experiences.