Lauren Phillips is The Coast’s Education Reporter, a position created in September 2023 with support from the
Local Journalism Initiative. Lauren is a graduate of the journalism program at the University of King’s College, and has written on education and sports at Dal News and Saint Mary's Athletics for over two years. She won gold in the Canadian online publishing awards in the academic Best Multicultural Story category for her work on "Kwe’ Eskasoni," in May 2022, and assisted the journalism academic partners of Looking Out For Each Other (LOFEO), a project that started with the media guidelines on how to report responsibly on missing Indigenous people. Lauren assisted in researching recommendations for family and friends of missing Indigenous people to help them understand how media works and how to communicate effectively with reporters.