Online Program Enrolling Now - Seton Hall - United Nations Institute for Training and Research
Online Program Enrolling Now - Seton Hall - United Nations Institute for Training and Research

BLUE SMOKE: A monthly column, from PassBlue and UNA–UK, spotlighting senior appointments at the UN

Our Team
Advisory Board and Speakers Bureau

Our advisory board consists of journalists, marketing specialists and general UN experts: Irwin Arieff,  Jeff Laurenti, Nina Lahoud, Susan Manuel, Anne Marie Riccitelli and Stephen Schlesinger. Our board members and freelance reporters and editors (see below) are available as part of our speakers bureau on women’s rights, the UN and foreign affairs. (To inquire, please send an email to passblue1@gmail.com.)

Editors and Primary Contributors
  • PassBlue’s editor, Dulcie Leimbach, worked for more than 20 years as an editor and writer for The New York Times, including working on numerous news desks, the Sunday Magazine and the editorial/op-ed page. Her journalism career began at The Rocky Mountain News in Denver; from there she moved back east to New York, soon working for The Times as a fact-checker and then as an editor and writer. She founded PassBlue in 2011 with Barbara Crossette (see below); together they have grown the news site to attract tens of thousands of subscribers and social media followers across the world, in every major English-speaking city, starting with New York and Washington. Leimbach has reported from the UN, Europe and West Africa on mostly women’s issues for PassBlue. She also taught journalism at Hofstra University.
  • Barbara Crossette, PassBlue’s senior contributing editor and writer, has decades of experience as a journalist, including as the UN bureau chief for The New York Times from 1994-2001 and as chief correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia, winning numerous awards along the way for her work. For PassBlue, Crossette has concentrated on women’s reproductive and sexual health rights, the India-Kashmir conflict, Myanmar and other major geopolitical matters.
  • Irwin Arieff, who covered the UN, the White House and the US State Department for Reuters, is a senior consulting writer who originated our Nikki Haley Watch column and reports about the US-UN relationship.
  • Deborah Baldwin edits our stories, having accrued decades of experience working at The New York Times, among other publications. She has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and a B.S. in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania. (She and Arieff together write PassBlue’s UN Eats column.)
  • John Penney, webmaster and photographer, is a graduate of Boston University’s School of Fine Arts. He worked as a commercial photographer for BN.com for two decades. He created PassBlue’s design.
  • Damilola Banjo is a staff reporter for PassBlue. She has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. in communications and language arts from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She has worked as a producer for NPR’s WAFE station in Charlotte, N.C.; for the BBC as an investigative journalist; and as a staff investigative reporter for Sahara Reporters Media.
  • Laura Kirkpatrick, a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism, handles PassBlue’s Facebook account and is a writer/reporter.
  • Dawn Clancy is a freelance reporter who regularly contributes to PassBlue. Based in New York City, she focuses on international conflict and security and diplomacy. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, she has written for The Washington Post and HuffPost. 
  • Clair MacDougall is a freelance reporter based in Burkina Faso who has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She reports regularly for PassBlue on security and peacekeeping issues in the Sahel region of Africa. Her 2020 story on the first official death of a UN peacekeeper from Covid-19, published by PassBlue and The Daily Beast, was awarded a prize in the transparency, crime and corruption category of the annual International Center for Journalists contest.
  • Maurizio Guerrero is an award-winning freelance reporter who covers primarily immigration, migration and other Latin American-minded topics for numerous publications. For PassBlue, he has also covered a range of UN-related scandals, some of them resulting in top stories for 2021.

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Online Program Enrolling Now - Seton Hall - United Nations Institute for Training and Research

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