Mercy Orengo is the editorial associate with WRI's Global Restoration Initiative. She previously worked as a journalist in both Africa and the United States where she covered a range of topics including climate change and human interest stories.

She is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School; and recently completed her post-doctoral fellowship at the Columbia Journalism Review – a publication of Columbia University that monitors and reports on global media trends. She was also selected for the 2022/2023 Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism Fellowship at Colorado University where she worked on projects on how to effectively communicate environmental stories to various audiences.

In 2022, Mercy was a Nieman Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, learning how to report on vulnerable communities in the digital age.

Mercy is obsessed with puzzles and word games. In her free time, she is constantly begging her friends to play scrabble with her.