Biography

Linsay Rousseau Burnett is a freelance journalist based out of Berkeley, Calif. and second year student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She is the graduate assistant for the Investigative Reporting Program, overseen by Lowell Bergman, and has worked as a production associate and associate producer for PBS Frontline.

She was one of four Carnegie Fellows chosen to work with the Brian Ross Investigative Reporting Unit at ABC News Headquarters in New York for the summer of 2009. Following a three month investigation, their story about child labor in American agriculture was broadcast on the show Nightline on 30 October 2009. Shorter versions aired on Good Morning America and World News with Charles Gibson and a followup story aired on Democracy Now!

Prior to attending Berkeley, she served as a public affairs sergeant for the U.S. Army’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), working as a journalist, photographer and videographer. She spent a year in the northern Iraq province of Kirkuk documenting and reporting on combat and humanitarian operations.

While in the Army, Linsay co-founded the Appeal for Redress, which worked to educate service members on their rights and called for an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. The Appeal was the recipient of the 2007 Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, presented by the Institute for Policy Studies. She currently serves as a board member for the San Francisco-based veterans support organization Swords to Plowshares.

Prior to the Army, she was the chief fundraiser for the Ralph Nader 2004 Presidential Exploratory Committee. She worked as a field organizing intern for Amnesty International and served on Amnesty’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Planning Committee. She graduated from the College of William and Mary with a BA in sociology and minor in anthropology and was elected Student Assembly President her senior year.

Linsay is also an accomplished musician and thespian, having been involved in numerous collegiate, military and community based theater productions, orchestras and choirs. She is a skilled piano, flute and piccolo player, auxiliary percussionist, conductor, director and choreographer. As a singer she has been formally trained in opera, jazz, and musical theater. She has co-produced and provided vocal support for two albums by singer/songwriter Peter Maybarduk.

She has a diverse journalistic tool-set focusing on investigative reporting, long form, feature and narrative writing, radio, photography, column writing, editing, multimedia, and documentary.

Her subject areas of interest include, but are not limited to, mental health, veteran and military affairs, women’s issues, international affairs, human and civil rights, immigration, music and the arts, politics, wage and poverty, law enforcement, environment and agriculture.