Sumi is a freelance reporter, writer, editor, and news anchor living and working in Berlin for the last 13 years. Sumi is currently a senior news anchor at DW News (Deutsche Welle), Germany’s international broadcaster. Sumi reports on Germany for various international publications, including The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Global Post, Newsweek, PRI, and USA Today. She served as an editor at the Berlin Policy Journal, Germany’s premiere English-language foreign affairs magazine, and host of the show Studio Berlin at KCRW Berlin.
She regularly moderates panels and conferences both in Germany and the US. Sumi is an alumna of the Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship program and part of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network. In addition to her native English, she speaks fluent German and Spanish, and conversational Tamil.
Statement Sumi Somaskanda:
What has the pandemic taught us about tackling inequality?
Covid-19 has triggered sweeping change in our lives, from at work to at home. We have witnessed global travel upended, businesses forced to shut down, parents and children juggling the new challenge of working and schooling from home, and public health bodies in dense cities scrambling to better protect residents.
Most crucially, the pandemic has dramatically magnified underlying inequalities – the gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged, or between the Global North and Global South. And then there is the economic fallout: jobs lost, residents evicted, and essential workers forced to risk their health to provide services. Black and brown communities have been disproportionately affected.
I’m convinced of one thing: nowhere can these inequalities be better tackled and remedied than in our cities. But how can global cities band together to share lessons learned on closing these gaps and building more resilient urban centers?