Alumni Spotlight

When Emily Palmer arrived at TDS in fifth grade in 2002, it was clear that she was a special student – bright, inquisitive, compassionate, and determined. She tackled projects with intense focus and her own creative flair, even dressing up as George Washington to convince her classmates to visit Washington, DC, and Monticello for their Great Fifth Grade Adventure trip.

More than anything else, she loved reading and writing.

After graduating from TDS in 2006, Emily carried her talents to Jordan HS and then UNC, where she double-majored in journalism and global studies with a minor in creative writing. The Columbia School of Journalism drew her to New York City for a Master’s degree with a specialization in investigative reporting. She began her career at the New York Times as a fact checker in 2015, but soon transitioned to freelance crime reporting, eventually providing daily courtroom reports for the high-profile trials of El Chapo, Anna Delvey, and R. Kelly. In 2023, Emily accepted a position as a senior staff writer at People magazine, earning six covers in less than a year and a half. Today, Emily has embarked upon a new endeavor: a non-profit called Next PAGE Workshop. Inspired by the stories of young people she encountered through her reporting, she launched Next PAGE in 2025 to offer trauma-informed creative writing workshops to incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated youth. Through this work, she has found a passion for teaching and investing in the lives of young people.

At the New York Times, you covered a variety of cases. Tell us about some of those projects and the impact they had on you.

Because I speak Spanish, I was sent to cover El Chapo’s trial in Brooklyn. While there, I met his wife, Emma Coronel, in the courthouse bathroom and eventually profiled her. She invited me to Mexico to see where she grew up. That reporting took me deep into rural Durango, where cartel members served as de facto law enforcement. I was driven through the mountains by a Twitter follower who got drunk behind the wheel, nearly drove us off a cliff and was ultimately pulled back onto the road by armed cartel members. It was one of the most surreal reporting trips of my career. I later published that story in ELLE.

How did Next PAGE come to be? How do you feel about this first year?

I’ve probably learned more this year than in any other year of my life.

We see unprocessed trauma everywhere: in our relationships, our communities, and certainly in crime. Many of my students have experienced child abuse, domestic violence, educational disruption, incarceration, or some combination of the above. When a fight breaks out, it’s rarely about what just happened. More often, people are reacting to experiences that happened months or years earlier and were never fully processed.

Launching Next PAGE has reinforced something I came to believe as a reporter: the issue isn’t that we don’t know what helps young people. It’s that we’re often unwilling to invest in those things consistently. When people ask whether creative writing can really make a difference, I think they’re asking the wrong question. The better question is: what happens when a young person finally becomes engaged in learning, finds language for their experiences and begins to imagine a different future? We already know those things matter. The challenge isn’t discovering the solution. It’s choosing to prioritize it.

How did you get started running? What role does it play in your life?

I started running with the cross-country team at TDS in the sixth grade. When I began working at The New York Times, I joined a run club and have been a consistent runner ever since. It’s where I do some of my best thinking, work through difficult reporting and, more recently, process the transition from journalism to running a nonprofit.

I’ve now run nine marathons since 2019. I started with New York City and have also run World Majors marathons in Boston, Berlin and London. In 2025 I ran the New York City Marathon (for the sixth time), this time leading my own Next PAGE team to raise crucial funds to launch the first pilot program. Running and writing have always been the primary ways in which I have processed my life, so it felt fitting that one would help bring the other to life.

Do you have plans to write a book? If so, can you share anything about it?

Yes! Drafting Justice is a reported memoir that revisits some of the country’s most recognizable criminal cases of the past decade—from El Chapo’s wife to Anna Delvey—while also uncovering little-known stories, like that of a fourteen-year-old sentenced for killing another child on a Brooklyn basketball court, to ask what justice is actually designed to accomplish, and for whom. Ultimately, Drafting Justice is a book about bearing witness: how a decade spent documenting the worst days of other people’s lives transformed my understanding of crime, punishment, forgiveness and what we really mean when we say we want justice.

What are your fondest memories of TDS?

I started at TDS in fifth grade, and some of my favorite memories are from that year – especially the Great Fifth Grade Adventure: going to Mount Vernon and then the Orioles game in the pouring rain.

Which teachers were particularly influential in your time at TDS?

Ms. Tedeschi, Mr. Sikes and Mr. Wilmington immediately come to mind. Ms. Tedeschi had the most beautiful handwriting. Whenever my students complain that they can’t read mine (because it’s terrible), I think of her. Some of my favorite memories are from her class.

Mr. Sikes was always saying “work smarter not harder.” I’m still working on that. He also taught us all how to peel a banana (from the tip, not the stem). That has saved me a lot of time while running marathons.

I also loved the Latin and Greek root words Mr. Wilmington had us study at the beginning of Language Arts. In fact, I borrowed that idea for the Next PAGE curriculum.

Looking back, those are the lessons from TDS that stayed with me: not just facts I learned, but ways of thinking that I still use today, both in my own life and in my classroom. Good teachers don’t just pass along information; they give students tools they can use to keep exploring.

What advice would you give current TDS students?

Observe, observe, observe. If you’re open to it, you can learn something from everyone. We live in a vibrant and colorful world, but how much of it you see depends on how closely you look.

Anything else would you like to say?

One thing I’ve come to believe—both as a reporter and now as a teacher—is that stories change us. Humans naturally make sense of life through stories. Writing offers a way to organize experiences into language. I’ve seen young people who said they had never been able to describe their emotions begin to find words for them. I’ve watched students who believed they hated writing ask to stay after class to keep working in their journals.

Ultimately, I think that’s true far beyond the classroom. We all live by the stories we tell ourselves: about who we are, what we’ve survived and what we’re capable of becoming. If there’s one hope I have for Next PAGE, my reporting and my upcoming book, it’s that they encourage people to tell truer stories about themselves and about one another.