Deepa Fernandes

Deepa Fernandes is a journalist with a focus on radio journalism. She has been one of the hosts of NPR's Here and Now. Before that, she hosted the WBAI radio program Wakeup Call and the nationally syndicated Pacifica radio news show Free Speech Radio News on the politically independent, anti-war Pacifica Radio Network. Fernandes has worked as a freelance producer for, among others, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Pacifica Radio. Fernandes began her career in journalism in Sydney, Australia, working as a daily news reader at 2SER and then producing a news magazine and radio show about Asia and the Pacific region. She then moved to Latin America, where she worked on a 26-part radio documentary series on indigenous communities in Ecuador. From there she went to Cuba to work as a daily features producer at Radio Havana Cuba. She told Goodman that she "got into secondary inspection rooms around the country, because I had to, because I was coming in the country and I was processed through there."

Seeing a dearth of reporters of color, low-income reporters, and reporters outside the mainstream, she founded a youth media training program in New York City's public schools, which grew into a national media training organization, People's Production House.

In 2012, Fernandes was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University. In 2013 Fernandes joined the staff of NPR member station KPCC in Pasadena, California, where she covered a newly established beat on Early Childhood Development. In 2017, she began working as a freelance journalist from around the world for public radio shows, through a reporting fellowship at Pacific Oaks College.

In 2017, SoCal Connected, a series at KCET that Fernandes reported for, won an Emmy Award.

While living in Los Angeles, Fernandes joined the Los Angeles Press Club board and helped found the Foot In The Door fellowship program for new reporters from communities that are most often excluded from journalism. At the end of April 2025, she stepped down from Here & Now to accept a fellowship in behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Her sister, Sujatha, is an assistant professor of sociology at Queens College in New York City.