T-Squared: Yuriko Schumacher joins The Texas Tribune’s data visuals team

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We’re excited to announce that Yuriko Schumacher will join The Texas Tribune’s data visuals team as a designer/developer. She will use her talents to elevate the presentation of our most impactful data journalism.

Yuriko will report to Chris Essig and work with the award-winning data visuals team, joining developer-journalists who use data to find and tell stories about Texas.

Yuriko, who is originally from Osaka, Japan, is a graduate of Osaka University, where she studied law. She started her career as a police reporter at The Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s second-largest newspaper. In the U.S., she worked as a news translator and recently graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from Northeastern University.

Yuriko said she transitioned to design and development to explore the ways that data can add depth and integrity to a story.

“I am eager to join The Texas Tribune’s news applications and graphics team because I see opportunities to tell important stories with data and graphics, making a meaningful impact with the skills I have,” she said.

We were impressed by Yuriko’s creative work as an intern at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where her immersive design skills helped readers explore the city’s architectural history and illustrated how late the city was in electing its first black mayor.

As part of a Global Observer project, she elegantly visualized peak bloom dates for Kyoto cherry blossoms since the year 812 by combining a pictogram with other visualization techniques.

Yuriko spent the summer interning on the graphics desk at The Wall Street Journal, where she reported on the burden of food price inflation on poorer countries.

We’re thrilled that Yuriko is joining us on Aug. 29 and moving to Texas later this year. In the meantime, you can follow her on Twitter.

The full program is now LIVE for the 2022 Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 22-24 in Austin. Explore the schedule of 100+ mind-expanding conversations coming to TribFest, including the inside track on the 2022 elections and the 2023 legislative session, the state of public and higher ed at this stage in the pandemic, why Texas suburbs are booming, why broadband access matters, the legacy of slavery, what really happened in Uvalde and so much more. See the program.