Before joining the WTOP team as a weekend writer and editor in February 2017, Jennifer Ortiz completed a fellowship with Washingtonian where she fact-checked the monthly print magazine. Her favorite project at Washingtonian was hiking the length of Rock Creek Park in a day for an in-depth service package.

Jennifer studied journalism paired with a French minor at Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina. After spending a semester at the Washington Journalism Center and completing an internship with Street Sense, a bimonthly newspaper covering homelessness and poverty in the District, she knew she wanted to return to D.C. upon graduating. It worked out.

Jennifer is currently a student at the Newseum Institute’s Religious Freedom Center, where she is studying how religion and religious freedom has shaped American public life.

Jennifer is originally from Union City, New Jersey, and lived in Gastonia, North Carolina, before moving to D.C. Thanks to her Guatemalan parents, she is fluent in Spanish.

Jennifer can be reached at jortiz@wtop.com