Odette Yousef
Odette Yousef is a WBEZ reporter covering immigration, race and class.
Since joining the station in 2010, Odette has covered a range of stories including local and state efforts around immigration policy, DREAMers and the impact of travel bans on Muslim-Americans and refugees. She has also delved into the reality of homelessness in Chicago, with stories about tent cities and the disappearance of affordable housing on the North Side. In 2016, Odette was part of a team at WBEZ to win a National Edward R. Murrow Award for best Continuing Coverage of how local officials in Puerto Rico were sending drug addicts to unlicensed therapy groups in Chicago, with false promises of professional treatment.
Odette’s coverage includes enterprise and data reporting, and she has contributed to NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, PRI’s The World and WNYC’s The Takeaway. In 2015, she served as president of the Chicago Headline Club, which is the largest chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Prior to joining WBEZ, Odette was a reporter at WABE FM in Atlanta.
Odette received a B.A. in Economics and East Asian Studies from Harvard University.
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The pandemic may be dealing a final blow to one industry: dry cleaning. The past year's work-in-sweats norm has accelerated the decline of this mom-and-pop, and mostly immigrant industry.
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Latino and immigrant groups in Chicago say that the electronic gang database is inaccurate, that there is no way for people to remove their names and that it's leading to some deportations.
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There's a lot of attention on boys and young men involved in gun violence because they do most of the shooting, and are most of the victims. But girls and young women are also drawn into gangs, sometimes as enablers or transporters of guns.
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Wheaton College, an Evangelical school outside of Chicago, has been roiled by questions about Christianity's posture toward Islam and academic freedom at religious schools. An associate professor who vowed recently to wear a headscarf in solidarity with Muslims was suspended from her job this week. The college says it's not because of the headscarf, but because of theological questions raised by a Facebook post in which she cited Pope Francis's recent statement that Muslims and Christians worship the same God.
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Odette Yousef of WBEZ reports on the debate in Illinois, trying to determine the answer to one important question: What makes ride-share services different from taxis?