New projects for NCR

In the last few months, we have welcomed a few people to our NCR staff. In September, we announced that NCR was the recipient of a Conrad N. Hilton Foundation grant to expand our coverage of women religious across the globe. Since then, we have been building a team here in Kansas City, Mo., to shepherd that project. The full team came on board in January.

Leading the group as managing editor for the Global Sisters project is Mary Lou Nolan, a former assistant managing editor for features, travel editor and assistant city editor for The Kansas City Star. Nolan brings a wealth of experience editing the work of others as well as some good reporting chops herself. Tracy Abeln is assistant managing editor for the project. Some of you may know Abeln from her work as executive assistant for the editorial team, a post she held for two years. Before Abeln joined NCR, she edited a community weekly in northeast Kansas City and an arts magazine. Abeln and Nolan's job is twofold: finding experienced reporters who can write about women religious and building up a network of women religious who can write about their own projects and experiences.

Franciscan Sr. Jan Cebula, who recently left leadership of the Clinton, Iowa, Franciscans, has been working since November as a project liaison, establishing and nurturing relationships between the NCR project and sisters in North America. Presentation Sr. Joyce Meyer is also a project liaison. She will be working with sisters and women's communities in the global South.

Colleen Dunne, an NCR Bertelsen intern since August, rounds out the Global Sisters team. You've probably read some of Dunne's work already in the news pages of NCR. She will now focus her reporting on the sisters project.

By late March, we hope to roll out a brand new website featuring all the work of the Global Sisters project, including news about and by women religious. Until then, you can see our initial reports on the NCR website at NCRonline.org/channel/sisters-stories.