Bloomberg’s Laya named Nieman Fellow

Patricia Laya, the Venezuela bureau chief for Bloomberg News, has been named a Nieman Fellow.

She will study Venezuela’s economic, sociopolitical and health crises as tools of oppression and how the country’s authoritarian government has benefitted from a population subdued by hunger, misery and disease.

Laya has been based in Venezuela since 2017. She was previously in Washington as an economics reporter.

Laya started working in Bloomberg in 2012 and has since worked out of the New York office covering emerging markets, one year in Madrid covering Spanish oil and gas companies, and three years in Mexico City covering billionaire Carlos Slim and the Latin American telecommunications and media industry.

During her time in Mexico, Laya had several exclusive interviews with the media-shy Slim and broke major news, such as Slim’s intentions to double his stake in the New York Times, as well as an investigative piece that led to the cancellation of multi-million dollar contracts in Mexico’s state energy producer.

She is a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate.

See all of the Nieman Fellows here.