Jelena Đukić Pejić has been a journalist for 23 years, based in Nis, Serbia. From the very beginning, she has been interested in the story of an ordinary people from both perspectives - how the environment, politics, economy and nature affects a person, but also how a person affects his environment.

At first, she was a TV journalist, but when she switched to radio, she fell in love with that medium. As everything became online, Jelena specialized in reportage, but with very pronounced visual attributes. This "forced" her to improve her journalistic skills, so she started learning about photography and video. Today, she has been a freelancer for 10 years with articles, photos and video reports published in DW, and numerous radio contributions to WDR Radio. Also, she became a media trainer and consultant for the needs of DWA. She also founded the Media Research Center portal, where she and her colleagues are additionally dedicated to their stories.

Jelena is an editor in MRC and enjoys working with young journalists. Her focus is people, but through all other phenomena. Among them is ecology, which she writes about very often, since Serbia is still undeveloped country in terms of environmental awareness. She is especially proud of the story about the mine in Majdanpek and the destruction of the environment around this small town by the owner of the mine, the Chinese company ZiJin. Apart from analyzing the data and spending some time with the residents who guarded the only remaining symbol of that city, the Starica mountain, Jelena managed to get a statement from the owner of the company, which no media in Serbia has ever managed before. For this article, Jelena received an award for special contribution to media reporting on ecology at the Environmental Documentary Film Festival in Serbia.