By Allie Harrison, Ward Melville High School
Yennifer Soriano, Hempstead High School
and Isabella Davis, Sacred Heart Academy
Since its establishment 18 years ago, the Robert W. Greene Summer Institute for High School Journalists has produced many successful alumni — from journalists at Newsday and other media outlets to lawyers and teachers. Some of its alumni reconnected on campus on Thursday, July 30, to share their stories at the inaugural Greene Team Alumni Social.
Kaitlyn Horn was a member of the Greene Team in 2023. As a Ward Melville High School student, she was an editor of her school’s newspaper. She now attends Fordham University, majoring in International Political Economy, with plans to go to law school. Although she is pursuing a career outside of journalism, she said the Greene program was still beneficial and helped her to handle criticism.
“I think everyone who’s brought here is told they’re a good writer all their life,” she said. “Then you get put in a room with people who are just going to tell you exactly how wrong you are about everything. It was humbling, but it also actually gave me things that I still remember to this day.”
Arielle Martinez, who spent her childhood in Baldwin, attended the Greene Summer Institute in 2011. She attended Stony Brook University in part because of her wonderful experience on the Greene Team. She already knew some of the professors and liked the journalism program. “In a lot of ways, the Greene Team just kind of set me on the trajectory for the rest of my life,” she said.
Martinez now works at Newsday as a data reporter on the investigations team. Besides writing her own stories, she provides other reporters with the statistics they need.
“Part of the reason why I wanted to be a journalist was because I basically wanted to be able to get paid to learn new things,” Martinez said. “And that’s essentially what I do. I learn new things and then I tell other people about it.”
Brook Lynn DaSilva participated in the Greene program during the COVID year of 2022, when part of the program was online and the other part on-campus. The Smithtown native now attends SUNY Plattsburgh, where she is majoring in broadcast journalism and communications.
“One memory I have of the Greene program was going to the film festival. That was super fun. We also got to go to the Ducks game and see them behind-the-scenes,” DaSilva said. “One of my favorite parts was going to the actual editing studio and being able to make my very own first news package and use all that high tech equipment.”
DaSilva also learned the stress and deadlines that come with journalism. “There’s stressful days, and sometimes things are easier to get done than others. And you can’t give up on what you’re working on.”
Divina Boko lives in Philadelphia, where she is a rising senior at Drexel University majoring in journalism. She plans to pursue a career in fashion journalism. She recounted the lessons she learned while attending the Greene Summer Institute in 2023: writing scripts, using a camera, and developing an understanding of what it takes to become a journalist.
Boko said that her passion for writing began with nightly diary entries as a child. She added that writing makes her feel “on top of the world.”
The Greene Team faculty said this was just the first of many more alumni reunions to come.
