Sequoia Carrillo
Sequoia Carrillo is an education reporter for NPR. She covers K-12 policy and regularly reports on issues like school segregation and infrastructure challenges for the network. Recently, she led a series of stories on the impacts of fentanyl in schools.
She's also spent the past few years learning the ins and outs of the student loan system and hearing borrowers' stories. Her reporting on joint consolidation loans, a type of student loan that chained couples together even in cases of divorce and abuse, helped propel a fix into law.
She regularly reports on Indigenous communities and identity – from her own family's story to the legacies of federal Indian boarding schools. In 2023, she received a grant from the Center for Investigative Journalism to look into questions around tribal land ownership. The reporting ended up on Throughline and won Best Coverage of Indigenous Communities at the 2024 Indigenous Media Awards. Her work has appeared on numerous NPR podcasts including Code Switch, Up First, the NPR Politics Podcast and Life Kit.
From 2020-2022, she managed the Student Podcast Challenge, an initiative to get younger voices on the airwaves. She still travels around the country with the contest to hear students' stories.
Prior to covering education at NPR, she started as an intern on the How I Built This team where she learned how to cut tape, wrangle guests and write out 100 questions before every interview.
Her life before NPR involved working as a historical tour guide in Charlottesville, Virginia and briefly sorting mail at a Hollywood talent agency.
Carrillo holds a bachelor's degree in history and media studies from the University of Virginia and a master's in journalism from Georgetown University. For the academic year 2024-2025 she will be reporting on the barriers to higher education for Indigenous students as a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University.
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Teens and young adults have a growing problem with sports betting and gaming. How can parents talk to their kids about gambling before it becomes a problem?
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Teens and young adults have a growing problem with sports betting and gaming. How can parents talk to their kids about gambling before it becomes a problem?
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The explosion of online gambling and sports betting, as well as the advertising behind it, is attracting a growing number of young people, most of them boys. -
Keeping students off their devices is the new norm in many schools. We talked to students and educators at one Kentucky school to see how it's working. -
The Child Care and Development Fund sends money to states to help make child care more affordable for low-income families. Allegations of fraud in Minnesota have put the program under scrutiny. -
More students than ever went to class without their cell phones in 2025. Researchers, teachers and students look back on attempts to build phone-free learning spaces this year.
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About 5.5 million borrowers are currently in default. They haven't risked wage garnishment since the beginning of the pandemic, when policymakers paused the practice. -
Researchers are examining whether a decline in reading and math scores over the last decade is related to the widespread use of smartphones by young people. -
A month-long moot court program in New York City lets students prosecute — and defend — cases, offering real-world lessons in how government works. -
The Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee to accompany each H1-B visa. The fee could wreak havoc on rural school districts that rely on them to bring in teachers.
