Simona Raetz, a German native, joined ICIJ as membership coordinator in November 2009. Before joining the Center, she worked at Hedrick Smith Productions, a PBS Frontline affiliate, where she worked in production research and as an associate producer. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a degree in political science. Her senior year she wrote a thesis examining how societal rules and traditional practices facilitate the spread of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, for which she received departmental honors. Raetz was a staff writer for her college newspaper, The Corsair, and interned at a local newspaper in Germany.