Carmen Valeria Escobar is a Shifting Democracies Fellow at Global Press Journal, based in El Salvador. She has reported widely on politics in El Salvador and Central America. Her work has been featured in prominent national and international outlets, including The Washington Post, El País, Wired, and El Faro.

Carmen is best known for her coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic when she exposed the Salvadoran government’s lack of a coherent health strategy and the dissemination of false data regarding water resources and corruption within the Ministry of Health. Her innovative approach led to the development of a verification chatbot, earning her team the Google Innovation Project Award in 2021.

Carmen has been recognized as a fellow by the International Women’s Media Foundation and was named one of the top 10 journalists under 30 by the Thomson Foundation’s Young Journalist Award.