Irene Caselli

Irene Caselli is the founder of The First 1,000 Days, a fully reader-supported newsletter that covers early childhood. A native of Naples, Italy, she has lived in a dozen countries around Europe and the Americas. After working for a decade as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, in 2019 she became the First 1,000 Days correspondent for The Correspondent, a transnational member-funded journalism site. When The Correspondent shut down in December 2020, she launched her own newsletter. Irene has been awarded fellowships by the IWMF, the European Journalism Centre and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. She speaks six languages, and is now learning Greek.

Her first paycheck: “I had just turned 18 and I got a job at a fish and chips in Scotland, where I was studying. I was earning a few pounds an hour to stand long shifts, well into the night, to my fellow students. I came out of my job smelling like a fried fish myself, but those paychecks gave me a huge sense of freedom.”