Leif Taranta

It begins with a question: How did you get here? That’s what the Middlebury Fellows in Narrative Journalism have been asking their peers for more than a decade.

Founded in the fall of 2008 by Sue Halpern and Matt Jennings, the fellowship program has employed highly motivated and intellectually curious students to craft digital portraits of the Middlebury student body. In 2019, fellows Alexandra Burns, Nicole Pollack, Yvette Shi, and Maria Jose Carrera did just that.

And like in previous years, the question—”How did you get here?”—remained the same; the answers, however, are another story.

Here’s the story of Leif Taranta ‘20.5.