Originally from Chile and a former journalist, Claudia Strong is now in her 20th year teaching graphic design and writing to emerging designers, photographers and filmmakers at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in New York. She also serves as curator of communications, design and exhibitions for The Alexia, a center at the Newhouse School that supports documentary visual storytellers around the world through grants, scholarships, fellowships and other programs.
In what has turned out to be a delightfully circuitous and varied communications career, Strong began as a newspaper editor after earning a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, then moved to the visuals side of the newsroom to help launch the paper’s digital design era before eventually entering the freelance world and, later, academia.
While on sabbatical from Newhouse in 2023, she served as an inaugural visiting scholar with the VII Foundation at its photographic academy in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she unexpectedly unlocked a new level in her career: curation and exhibition design. Since then, she has produced numerous national and international exhibitions to present and promote meaningful photographic storytelling, including at the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, France, as well as in festivals and galleries in China, Croatia, Serbia, Lithuania and the United States. The exhibits have featured topics such as migrants and fashion, the people and forgotten places along a dying Balkan river, life in a post-Soviet republic, a photographer coming to grips with her Muslim/Catholic heritage, and numerous other significant bodies of work. She is currently working on an ambitious but still-under-wraps multi-site exhibition about autism with stories and images captured by a renowned and prolific American documentary photographer.
Fluent in Spanish and adventure, she embraces all sorts of exciting exploits around the world with her husband and their trusty just-say-yes attitude.
Originally from Chile and a former journalist, Claudia Strong is now in her 20th year teaching graphic design and writing to emerging designers, photographers and filmmakers at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in New York. She also serves as curator of communications, design and exhibitions for The Alexia, a center at the Newhouse School that supports documentary visual storytellers around the world through grants, scholarships, fellowships and other programs.
In what has turned out to be a delightfully circuitous and varied communications career, Strong began as a newspaper editor after earning a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, then moved to the visuals side of the newsroom to help launch the paper’s digital design era before eventually entering the freelance world and, later, academia.
While on sabbatical from Newhouse in 2023, she served as an inaugural visiting scholar with the VII Foundation at its photographic academy in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she unexpectedly unlocked a new level in her career: curation and exhibition design. Since then, she has produced numerous national and international exhibitions to present and promote meaningful photographic storytelling, including at the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, France, as well as in festivals and galleries in China, Croatia, Serbia, Lithuania and the United States. The exhibits have featured topics such as migrants and fashion, the people and forgotten places along a dying Balkan river, life in a post-Soviet republic, a photographer coming to grips with her Muslim/Catholic heritage, and numerous other significant documentary projects. She is currently working on an ambitious but still-under-wraps multi-site exhibition about autism with stories and images captured by a renowned and prolific American documentary photographer.
Fluent in Spanish and adventure, she embraces all sorts of exciting exploits around the world with her husband and their trusty just-say-yes attitude.