Marie Barraud has always been surrounded by stacks of newspapers. She decided to become a journalist at age 11, when the Berlin Wall fell. Somewhat compulsively, she clipped, sorted and filed everything she could read on the topic in little notebooks. Her parents bought her a subscription to the Journal des Enfants and later to Courrier International, and took her to live in Toronto for two years. When she returned to Paris for secondary school, she had been won over by North American teaching methods and chose to attend an international high school. Later, she continued her studies in England. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Canterbury, with an emphasis on Italy (where she spent a year), followed by a master’s degree in international journalism from the City University of London. After internships at well-respected British papers, she took a job at Ecofinance, a French magazine specializing in Africa, and headed off to explore that part of the world, criss-crossing the continent as she followed her stories. “It was an amazing experience,” she says. She was also introduced to agricultural issues there. However, the paper ended publication. Barraud quickly transformed herself into a freelancer, but ran up against the challenge of selling her articles. France didn’t want her? OK, then: she moved to Korea and became a correspondent for La Croix, Challenges and RFI, but didn’t like living there. She refocused and set her sights on Indonesia, where she will move in December of 2006. She plans to continue reporting and developing new outlets in the English-language press and, in particular, wants to cover rice cultivation.

AGE: 28 I PASSIONS: hiking, independent travel and deep-sea diving. I PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE:: to always move forward. I GOALS: to become a great journalist and have a happy life. I FAVOURITE PUBLICATIONS: Fair, Elle and The Guardian.