Jhesset Thrina Enano is a journalist from Manila, Philippines. She is currently a reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a major daily English-language newspaper in her country. Her reporting focuses on the environment and natural resources, zeroing in on issues such as climate change, wildlife trafficking, and natural disasters. Recently, she has produced in-depth reports that looked into the illegal wildlife trade in the Philippines, the impact of climate change on the mental health of Filipinos, and the state of air pollution in Metro Manila. In 2018, she was the lone Filipino recipient of a reporting fellowship from international group Climate Tracker, where she reported on the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Katowice, Poland. Beyond her environment stories, she has also extensively reported on human rights, criminal justice, and local governance. Her series on the survivors of martial law in the Philippines was a finalist for best investigative report category of the 40th Catholic Mass Media Awards in 2018. In 2017, her story on an after-school center providing free classical music instruction to impoverished children who live near a garbage dump was recognized as an outstanding published feature article in the 14th Lasallian Scholarum Awards. She has received reporting grants and fellowships from different organizations, most notably the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network. Beyond being a full-time journalist, she teaches and gives lectures and seminars on news and feature writing, investigative journalism and environment reporting to fellow journalists, students, educators, and researchers across the Philippines. She has a journalism degree from the University of the Philippines, where she graduated magna cum laude. She also studied journalism in the University of Mississippi as a recipient of a year-long Global Undergraduate Exchange Program scholarship under the US State Department.

Image credits: Luis Adrian Hidalgo