Alva French is a Video Journalist at Quartz/Atlantic Media who earned an MA in Journalism with a concentration in International Reporting from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She was selected by her peers to be the student speaker at the Class of 2011’s graduation ceremony alongside The New Yorker’s David Remnick. See her speech here.

Born in Paris, Alva is a dual national of France/EU and the US, bilingual and attended public schools in Washington Heights, NYC and Albany, NY.

She has an undergraduate degree from New York University and worked in online marketing for Elektra Records and Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Alva is producing and directing a documentary on her maternal grandparents, Tria and Dan, a married interracial couple who escaped the US in 1949 to start a family and pursue careers in the arts in France. Tria was a friend and literary agent to James Baldwin, as well as co-founder, with Shelley Roitman, of the Paris-based production company Shelltrie Productions/Enterprises Unlimited. In 2014, Tria was posthumously recognized as a vital contributor to the 1964 founding of Democrats Abroad.

Alva’s journalism work has been published by BuzzFeed News, Reuters.tv, The New York Daily News, Newyorker.com, WNYC.org, The Associated Press, NBC News, and the Huffington Post.

Feel free to follow her on Twitter.

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Updated May 2018