Eastern Santa Cruz County, AZ

Jesse Vad

Jesse Vad covers eastern Santa Cruz County for Nogales International, a local publication in southern Arizona. Previously, Vad worked as a reporting intern for SJV Water, a nonprofit online publication focused on water coverage in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where he covered all things water including agriculture, climate change and policy. Vad is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s class of 2020 where he specialized in visual journalism. He and his peers were finalists in the EPPY Awards for their pandemic coverage in the South Bronx. Vad has also worked as a remote reporting intern for The Jakarta Post where he covered Covid-19’s impact abroad. He was awarded the 2020 Correspondents Fund Scholar title from the J-School for his work with The Jakarta Post. As a freelancer, Vad’s work has appeared in NBC News, Gothamist, The Times-Standard and more. Before coming to journalism, Vad was an elementary school teacher. Over summer breaks, he worked on his own storytelling projects in New Orleans, Tajikistan and China.

Nogales International

The Nogales International is the paper of record in Santa Cruz County, a county the size of Rhode Island on the U.S.-Mexico border with a population of around 47,000. The local culture and economy are closely tied to Mexico, and the International’s mission is to shine a spotlight on the community’s unique bicultural identity as well as the particular challenges it faces. The International has been publishing since 1925. Our content is exclusively local, meaning it is directly connected to Santa Cruz County or our twin city of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.