Julia Deng is an all-platform, all-terrain reporter with a passion for advocacy journalism and resourceful storytelling. She has a decade of experience writing, shooting and editing stories for television, radio, print and digital news outlets. Julia has walked through tear gas to document social justice protests and waded through oil patch sludge to secure exclusives. Her stories have led to swift corrective action at public agencies, school districts, companies and a public utility.
As communications director for the Los Angeles County Business Federation, widely known as "BizFed," Julia leads a communications operation serving staff and 235 business organization members representing 420,000 employers. Her around-the-clock news alerts and rapid-fire responses to local, state and federal policy developments have helped drive advocacy victories tied to housing, homelessness, pandemic recovery, education, health care, energy, water and transportation. Op-eds and letters to editors penned by Julia for BizFed members have appeared in CalMatters, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News and The Wall Street Journal.
During her time at WISH-TV in Indianapolis, Julia led coverage of regional and national stories for Nexstar stations, spotlighting humanity and hope in the wake of deadly tornadoes and delivering hours of live field reports following the Dayton mass shooting in 2019. As a member of WISH-TV's investigative unit, Julia tracked the rise of violent extremist groups, identified gaps in eviction protection and uncovered an issue in Indiana's unemployment insurance system that caused payment delays for more than 20,000 people.
Julia is proudest of her stories that have opened hearts and minds, and righted wrongs. After she aired a story about a kindergarten student's "lunch shaming" ordeal, school administrators suspended the district's cold sandwich policy. Her reporting in Indianapolis also prompted a public utility to acknowledge and address a mistake that left a local couple without running water for 20 months.
During her time at KWES-TV in Texas, Julia spent months researching local hospital records and aired a series of stories about alleged medication errors at Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, the region's only full-service hospital. She tracked down and interviewed whistleblowers who claimed they were fired for speaking out about dosage mistakes that could have killed patients, then tracked down and spoke with those patients about how they were silenced.
Julia is at home in newsrooms and courtrooms. In 2015, her coverage of a weekslong murder trial in Sierra Blanca was featured in National Geographic's "Badlands" series. She made case developments come alive for viewers by introducing new characters daily: relatives watching with bated breath, a courtroom artist sketching the unfolding drama and attorneys struggling to connect with jurors. She reported from the front lines of numerous legal battles in Texas, including a Union Pacific negligence case stemming from a deadly parade float accident.
Julia credits her internships with shaping her news philosophy and storytelling techniques. She worked closely with NBC News producers and correspondents during college, contributing to NBC Nightly News, TODAY Show, NBCNews.com and NBC Latino stories. She received Assistant Producer credit for Dateline NBC's 2012 season premiere, "The Plot Thickens." At CBS Los Angeles, she field produced DWP and Caltrans investigations for reporter David Goldstein, conducting dusk-to-dawn stakeouts and shooting footage on hidden cameras to expose corruption.
Julia was awarded the Leslie Miller Scholarship in 2013 for her "commitment to telling stories that make a positive and meaningful difference." She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California, where she double-majored in journalism and political science. She was executive producer of USC's award-winning Annenberg TV News. Fight on!