My story

With a childhood in the USA, adolescence and student years in the Netherland and working life in Mexico City – I have become increasingly tri-cultural. I studied philosophy in Nijmegen in the Netherlands and since my arrival in Mexico City in 1999 I have been fascinated by the concept of the megacity as a unique expression of the particular moment in human history.

On arrival in Mexico I became a journalist. Unlike most foreign correspondents I came up through the local, Spanish language, press – allowing me to get to know Mexico as a political, economic and cultural system with the finest Mexican editors as teachers. I won the 2010 Walter Reuter prize for journalism for coverage of climate change.

In the early 2000s I started going to Mexico City’s legendary freejazz club Jazzorca, which led to me development as a musician and cultural organizer. I have organized several festivals as well as approximately 170 experimental music concerts and have seen up close how Mexico City’s avant-garde cultural scene has grown in stature, quality, quantity and word-wide projection. I have had the privilege of touring Europe twice with neo-tropical music band La Redada, as well as playing with various of Mexico City’s finest musicians in different formats on flute and saxophone. I also initiated an artistic project regarding communal memory regarding the edge of the Island Tenochtitlan, which in a way was once the original edge of Mexico City in 2019.

In this time I have also taken up documentary photography of urban edges as well as collaborating on various urban projects with the great Mexican photographer Gustavo Graf. I have also worked in documentary filmmaking and writing fiction, as well as writing a few academic articles on cities.

I currently work as a journalist covering financial news in Mexico.