About

Maddie Bender is a science, public health, and technology journalist.

Reporting, writing, fact-checking, and audio producing are all within my wheelhouse. My work has appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, STAT, Scientific American, VICE, Smithsonian Magazine, Men’s Health, Popular Science, Inverse, and other outlets, and it has been recognized by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and national radio. I was a 2021 AAAS Mass Media Fellow and the 2020 winner of New York Times columnist Nick Kristof’s annual win-a-trip-contest for students.

I hold an MPH from the Yale School of Public Health (2021), where I concentrated in microbial disease epidemiology. Prior to that, I received undergraduate degrees in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Classics from Yale (2020). Over summers, I interned for CNN Health, Aledade, and Wow in the World, the NPR science podcast for kids.

I live in Honolulu, HI. In my free time, I play online chess and teach introductory pole dance classes.

Mentorship

I care deeply about mentoring people in the early stages of their science writing journey. Landing an internship, pitching freelance stories, and developing a portfolio can be incredibly opaque processes — I want to help, particularly if you are anything like me and get icked out by “networking.” So seriously, get in touch if you want to talk about journalism. I will do my best to help you or connect you with someone who can!