When I was six, I took a screwdriver and dug a hole the size of a fist in my bedroom wall. It took me weeks to break through the bricks. My parents asked why I did it. I answered as if it was obvious: “I wanted to know what the wall was made of.” That curiosity and discipline of verification drove me to journalism.
Thess is a freelance journalist who hails from Madrid, Spain. She has lived in seven countries in the past ten years and recently moved back from London to her home city.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Copenhagen Post, Are We Europe, The Local, or Newtral.
In 2023, the International Sports Press Association – AIPS, in a year with record submissions (over 1,800), listed Thess among the TOP 10 for Young Reporters in Broadcasting.
Two years earlier, she had graduated with an Erasmus MA in Journalism, Media, and Globalisation: War and Conflict at Swansea University. The MA began at Aarhus University, the DMJX, and the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
During her time in Berkeley, she reported data on California’s response to Covid 19 for The New York Times as part of an NYT – Berkeley initiative. On June 24th, her first piece at the NYT was published.
After graduating high school in the U.S., she got her bachelor’s degree in Bilingual Journalism with additional training in Law at Carlos III University of Madrid, which included a year abroad at the University of Richmond in Virginia. She also has a post-grad degree in Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism.
In 2018, she was one of five chosen from her country to attend, as a fully-funded scholar, the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Summer Program.
At 16 years old, she began writing for a political magazine in Madrid. Today, her writings have been published in national newspapers in the U.S., Spain, and Denmark and in pan-European magazines.
She reports in Spanish and English and can speak some German.
Thess Mostoles 