40 Under 40: Molly Samuel
Molly Samuel, 37, is a reporter at WABE.
Molly Samuel is a reporter at WABE, where she covers the environment. She tries to immerse listeners in stories about water, energy, wildlife, climate change, and conservation, bringing them to places they haven’t been and introducing them to ideas or voices they haven’t heard.
She’s a member of NPR’s national collaborative energy and environment team, and her stories regularly air nationally on “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and “Marketplace.”
Samuel has won awards for her reporting on coal ash, crude oil, sea level rise and stargazing and has been a fellow with Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the Metcalf Institute, and a journalist-in-resident at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
“The Jewish traditions of curiosity, asking a lot of questions, and then asking some more, are pretty deeply ingrained in me,” Samuel said. “The same goes for tikkun olam, working towards a better world. Whatever that means to you, it makes sense to me as an environment reporter.”
In addition to reporting, Samuel mentors young journalists at Vox Teen Communications in Atlanta (She was honored with the “Volunteer Superhero” award in 2017), at Next Generation Radio, and through the Society of Environmental Journalists mentorship program. Samuel grew up in Atlanta. She joined WABE in 2014, returning to Atlanta 14 years after moving away.
She says it has been interesting being a reporter in the city where she grew up, running into people who know her or her big family either through synagogue, school, her siblings or her parents. She lives with her husband, two dogs, and a slowly expanding garden.
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