Zack Quaintance, a native of the Chicago suburbs, graduated in May 2007 from Southern Illinois University with a degree in journalism and a minor in Spanish. As a student, he interned at the Journal Star in Peoria, Ill., where he wrote general assignment stories and covered the police beat. He also worked at Southern Illinois University's student newspaper for two years before taking a job as assistant editor of a pair of weekly papers in a rural southern Illinois community. Quaintance, who has traveled to Mexico several times with a migrant worker he met while employed in a restaurant, hopes to work as a reporter in Latin America. After Poynter, he hopes to write news in an area where he can continue to learn Spanish. He has written freelance pieces for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and suburban Chicago's Northwest Herald and Kane County Chronicle.