In the context of International Women's Day, the Santiago Center has recognized three Chilean and three Peruvian noteworthy Columbia alumnae for their professional development and contribution to society.
Sonia Goldenberg, JRN’80, is a renowned Peruvian journalist, documentary filmmaker and author. After graduating from Columbia Journalism School, she worked for news magazine Caretas and for América Televisión. For her television reporting she received the National Journalism Award in 1984 and became a correspondent in Lima, New York and Washington for Univisión News.
She also has ample international experience, having worked as Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the New York based watchdog that monitors press freedom and attacks against journalists around the world, as well as in the United Nations in New York and Haiti, as Information Officer in the Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary General and the United Nations Development Program. She has monitored abuses against journalists in Haiti for MICIVIH, a human rights mission organized by the Organization of American States, and worked with the United Nations after the coup against President Jean Baptiste Aristide. She was an electoral observer in El Salvador and Information Officer for Unicef in Haiti. She was designated Goodwill Ambassador in the fight against tuberculosis by the World Health Organization.
Sonia has produced and directed award-winning documentaries on social and political issues: she received the New Journalism Prize in 2005 from the Journalism Foundation created by Gabriel García Marquez for her documentary “Memories of Paradise.” She won Best Foreign Documentary in 2016 from Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto and Artistic Vision Award from Big Sky Film Festival in Montana for her documentary “Following Kina.” She is the author of “Decidamos el Futuro” (1985), “Reportaje al Perú Anónimo” (1989), and co-author of “El Código García” (2021). She is currently a columnist for The New York Times.
