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She told us via Zoom how she got from her hometown of Belmopan to DC and what the fellowship will enable her to do:

Cherisse Halsall, Won Kaplan Fellowship at ABC News
"Ultimately, I think that I won at the process because I was able to put my finger on the political pulse of the country. I told NBC News that Donald Trump was going to win because young men were voting for him as a protest vote at some kind of crossroads between aspiration and frustration with the system."

"And that has proven somewhat prophetic in the way this US election worked out. And so that's how I beat out the competition. What it will enable me to do is to go and be an intern at ABC News, which means I will be a field producer."

"I will be behind the scenes at all times. So I'm not reporting, I'm not ..... I am supporting reporters and anchors and I'm learning to do research at the network level, which will hopefully enable me to break some major stories."

"And it's a really exciting time to do this because President Trump and I start our new jobs on the exact same day. And I'm hoping that the chaos that ensues around him generally will give me a lot to do."

"I have to learn a lot about Capitol Hill, what the rhythms of Capitol Hill is, chasing down on any given day, whatever senator or a House member is involved with that, whatever the reaction of that day is."

"So if it was today, it would have been, why can't transgender women use the bathroom on Capitol Hill, but it could be any number of places. So I'm really going there to learn how to be a political reporter."

"And we all know based on Jules Vasquez's career that to do politics is to rise to the top really quickly. And so politics is what I'm after. Coming from a capital where we were exposed to the arguments, the theater of what the House of Representatives is in Belmopan there's a familiarity with the theater that is going to occur at the Capitol in the US. It may be on a much larger scale and these people may have more power, but it's the same power struggle. It's the same stakes about how are we going to feed our people? And for me, coming from such a small place where honestly, I don't know that anybody ever thought that I could really do anything at certain points in my life."

"It's quite humbling to understand that I'm going to have one of the most important roles I think a person can have, which is to bear witness to the government whose actions influence most of global politics."

Cherisse will get a $10,000 dollar stipend while the fellowship will grant her a full-time, paid position at ABC News. She is currently an anchor, reporter and producer at the University of Missouri's NBC affiliate, KOMU-TV.