Our advisory board consists of journalists, marketing specialists and prominent UN experts: Nina Lahoud, Anne Marie Riccitelli and Stephen Schlesinger. Our board members and freelance reporters and editors (see below) are available as part of our speakers bureau on women’s rights, the UN and foreign affairs. (To inquire, please send an email to passblue1@gmail.com.)

• PassBlue’s award-winning editor/reporter, Dulcie Leimbach, has reported for PassBlue from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Previously, she worked for more than 20 years as an editor and writer for The New York Times, including for the Sunday Magazine and the editorial/op-ed page. Her journalism career began at The Rocky Mountain News in Denver; from there she worked for The Times as a fact-checker and eventually as an editor and writer. She founded PassBlue in 2011 with Barbara Crossette (see below); together they have grown the news site to attract tens of thousands of subscribers and social media followers from across the world, in every major English-speaking city, starting with New York and Washington. Leimbach has also taught journalism at Hofstra University.
• Barbara Crossette (retired), PassBlue’s senior contributing editor and writer, has decades of experience as a journalist, including as the UN bureau chief for The New York Times from 1994-2001 and as chief correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia, winning numerous awards along the way for her work. For PassBlue, Crossette has concentrated on women’s reproductive and sexual health rights, the India-Kashmir conflict, Myanmar and other major geopolitical matters.
• Irwin Arieff (retired), who covered the UN, the White House and the US State Department for Reuters, is a senior consulting writer who originated our Nikki Haley Watch column and reports about the US-UN relationship.

• John Penney, managing editor, webmaster and photographer, is a graduate of Boston University’s School of Fine Arts. He worked as a commercial photographer for BN.com for two decades. He created PassBlue’s design.
• Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue. She has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. in communications and language arts from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She has worked as a producer for NPR’s WAFE station in Charlotte, N.C.; for the BBC as an investigative journalist; and as a staff investigative reporter for Sahara Reporters Media.

• Maria Luisa Gambale, regular contributor covering gender equality/women’s rights issues as well as financing for developing/global South topics and small states. Reported on the UN’s biodiversity conference in Riyadh and the UN climate conference in Azerbaijan, both in 2024. Graduate of Harvard University.

• Laura Kirkpatrick, a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism, is a journalist who has covered international relations, policy, including feminist foreign policy, politics and media for PassBlue, Gannett Publications, think tanks and other media outlets. A talnted social media expert, Laura handles PassBlue’s Meta, IG and LinkedIn accounts.
• Arthur Bassas, producer of PassBlue’s weekly summary and general reporter. Graduate of St. Andrews University, with a degree in international relations and terrorism.