Leah Clapman

Leah Clapman is the Executive Director of PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs (SRL), the public media journalism training program in high schools across the country. Leah was part of the team that built the NewsHour’s first website, and as Managing Editor of the Online NewsHour, went on to focus on education, exploring her specific passion: how teachers use current events and how students consume and create content.

Under her leadership, Student Reporting Labs has won numerous awards, including Tellys and the Edward R Murrow best television network podcast award for On Our Minds. SRL covers education by supporting student journalists through video production and storytelling curriculum, training events like the Summer and Winter Student Academies, internships at local PBS stations, opportunities to produce stories for collaborative content projects and rapid response call-outs from the newsroom to gather youth perspectives on issues that affect the lives of young people.

Leah graduated from Princeton University and resides in Washington, DC with her husband, an American History teacher, two kids, two cats and one lovely dog who sounds scary when the mail arrives during zoom meetings.