Noelle Swan brings 15+ years journalism experience to her work as a journalism coach, management consultant, and collaborative facilitator. As a coach, she helps individual journalists and science writers navigate career transitions and big projects. As a consultant, she helps newsroom managers cultivate supportive and inclusive working environments that inspire excellence. And as a collaborative facilitator, she helps disparate teams transform friction into collective momentum.

In addition to her individual coaching and consulting work, Noelle manages the Civic Science Media initiative at the Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media. In this role, she supports a cohort of innovative collaborative projects that bring journalists, scientists, and community members together to explore the ways that science intersects with society. Each project is different, but all offer avenues of trust-building between communities and the institutions that serve them.

Before moving into journalism support, Noelle spent more than 15 years on the frontlines of news production as a reporter, editor, and newsroom leader. She most recently served as Editor of the Weekly magazine at The Christian Science Monitor, becoming a trusted leader known for streamlining workflows, improving communication, and fostering a supportive work environment.

In her 12 years at The Christian Science Monitor, Noelle rose from intern to trusted member of the editorial leadership team. In her most recent role, she led the legacy media outlet’s flagship print publication for five years. Under her direction, the Weekly’s 2023 special edition on the reparations debate won first prize from the New England News & Press Association for Overall Design and Presentation. A year later, the Weekly’s 80-page expanded edition, which focused on young people working toward climate solutions around the world, sold out its initial expanded print run while boosting paid subscriptions and spawning a series of community events.

Prior to helming the Weekly, Noelle led the CSM’s science, technology, and environment coverage as the paper’s first female science editor. Her goal for the section was focused: challenge the notion that science belongs solely to an educated elite while helping readers to see themselves as members of local and global ecosystems. But her approach to that work was flexible and widely varied. She launched the first Science & Nature page in the Weekly magazine, featuring reported news stories alongside periodic features highlighting science experiments for children and opportunities to participate in citizen science projects. She coached text reporters through experiments with video, audio, and even comic-based storytelling. She represented CSM at conferences, sitting on and moderating panels. And she secured $250,000 in grant funds supporting climate and environmental coverage.

Her leadership on the science desk earned her an invitation from the Editor to spend a year sitting on the management team, with the expressed goal of helping him to identify and root out gender disparities in the newsroom. That work soon grew to focus more broadly on underrepresented groups. She recruited a team of colleagues to collaborate on diversity efforts, including a thorough review of the current stylebook, a gender-diversity source audit, and an occasional speaker series for staff. When the Editor launched an official DEI committee in 2021, Noelle helped to steer that group as well. These efforts brought meaningful change to hiring and recruiting practices and – crucially – helped to diversify what had been an almost entirely white staff.

Prior to joining the Monitor, she worked as a freelance reporter, writing about science education for Science magazine and the Association for the Advancement of Science, contributing science and other news reports to National Public Radio affiliates in Delaware and Utah, and reporting on social services and poverty for Spare Change News. In 2012, she won first prize from both the National Federation of Press Women and the Delaware Press Association for science and technology writing for two stories written for Delaware Public Media, “Fort Delaware joins battle to protect bat population” and “UD apiary research aims to take sting out of nationwide bee colony collapse.”

Noelle serves on the steering committee of the New England Science Writers, is an active member of the Online News Association, and is a graduate of ONA’s Women’s Leadership Accelerator. She volunteers as a coach for women in journalism through the website Digital Women Leaders.

Prior to becoming a journalist, Noelle taught preschool for 12 years. As a teacher, she coached parents through the many challenges that arise in early childhood. She was known for incorporating science and the natural world into lesson plans and routines, ultimately creating a Wooded Classroom workshop for other teachers.

About halfway through her teaching career, Noelle enrolled in night school at Harvard University, carrying a half-time course load for six years while teaching full-time during the day. She graduated cum laude from Harvard University Extension School in 2010, earning a Bachelor of Liberal Arts concentrated in natural sciences and environmental management.