West Coast Bureau Chief
Lillian Mongeau
Lillian Mongeau is the West Coast Bureau Chief. Her future as a writer was not a forgone conclusion, according to her first grade teacher, Miss. Gill. "I would like to see her put more effort into her writing," Gill wrote on Lillian's first term report card. Also, "Practice math facts to 10... She should know them without using her fingers." While Lillian still often uses her fingers to add (Common Core says it's OK), she has gone on to win several awards for her writing. Most notably, she was a 2017 Livingston Award for Young Journalists finalist for her series on public preschool in the United States. Lillian was also awarded a special citation from the Education Writers Association for a feature in The Dallas Morning News on returning to South Texas, where she'd served as a Teach For America teacher, to see her former students graduate high school. Her work for The Hechinger Report has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Christian Science Monitor among other publications. Lillian is an alumna of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Barnard College at Columbia University. When she's not reading the news or a novel, she likes to ski, quilt and run.
