Raquel Reichard is an award-winning journalist, editor and scholar living in Orlando, Fla.
Currently a freelance writer, her reporting on Latinx politics, culture, identity and music has been published in the New York Times, Teen Vogue, Rolling Stone, the Fader, Vibe, Remezcla, Bustle, The Independent, Cosmopolitan, Mic, Latina magazine, mitú and more. In 2016, she picked up an Excellence in Media Award from Planned Parenthood for her reporting on the state of reproductive health care for Latinas in Central Florida, and in 2018 she earned a Leadership Award from the Juvenile Law Center for her contribution to Teen Vogue's "Kids Incarcerated" series. Also in 2018, Raquel had two essays, one on rape culture and the other on state violence against Latinas, appear in the anthology "Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA" edited by Iris Morales, while her comic "Resistance," about the fight and efforts of Puerto Ricans post-Hurricane Maria, was featured in the anthology "RICANSTRUCTION" produced by Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez.
Prior to going freelance, she was an editor at Fierce, a digital platform for Latinas by mitú, the largest media site for millennial Latinxs; the politics & culture editor at Latina magazine, the longest-running publication for U.S. Latinas; an editorial assistant at Mic; and the social media manager at Everyday Feminism.
Along with writing, she has also helped produce segments for MSNBC's Krystal Clear and episodes for Mic's award-winning Flip the Script. Additionally, Raquel has designed charts and graphics for multiple books published by ABC-CLIO and appeared on HuffPost Live, BBC and Vox's Divided States of Women.
In her former life as a social media strategist, Raquel hosted nationally trending Twitter chats, spearheaded multiple social media campaigns and trained teams on how to best write engaging social media copy and use social media tools. Under her leadership, Raquel helped several news outlets and feminist organizations increase followers by the thousands. She has provided social media services for MSNBC's Krystal Clear, Vox's Liz Plank, Everyday Feminism, Stop Street Harassment and more.
Raquel has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Central Florida and a master's degree from New York University's Gallatin School, where she studied the intersection of race, gender and new media. Her research interests include: platform-specific journalism; the construction of Latinxs in journalism's new media landscape; the Puerto Rican diaspora in Orlando, Fla.; and the Latina body as a site of state violence and oppression.
A proud NuyoFloRican chonga, Raquel was born in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, spent her childhood in her parents' beautiful homeland of Puerto Rico and was raised in Orlando, Fla.
