Jamaal Abdul-Alim, senior staff writer at Diverse, covers federal higher education policy, student financial aid, and a variety of other topics. He began his career in journalism as a crime reporter in his hometown of Milwaukee, where he worked for the old Milwaukee Sentinel and later the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is a former Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan ('08); and a former Spencer Journalism Fellow at Columbia University ('14)' and a 2017 Education Writers Association Reporting Fellow. Jamaal also writes about chess and was named the 2013 "Chess Journalist of the Year." You can often find him at one of the chess tables in DuPont Circle, the famed chess hub of Washington, DC.