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Twenty years of running toward the story
Joseph Hammond’s career began at ringside — a boxing writer who learned early that access is earned in person. The instinct never changed; only the arenas did. In 2011 it put him in Cairo for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as the Arab Spring remade the Middle East. In 2013 it put him in the eastern Congo, embedded with the M23 rebellion — among the last journalists inside before United Nations forces broke the group.
Between the frontlines came the fellowships: a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship with the government of Malawi (2014–15), the Penn Kemble Democracy Forum at the National Endowment for Democracy, the African Union’s iDove program on countering violent extremism, and an Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders cohort in Rabat. The Pulitzer Center funded his reporting on Christian nationalism after the January 6 Capitol attack, published during his years covering Islam for Religion News Service — the beat that produced his internationally picked-up scoop that Princess Diana had contemplated converting to Islam.
And always, boxing. He has covered championship fights on three continents — including Fury–Usyk in Riyadh in 2024, the first undisputed heavyweight title fight in 24 years — and interviewed Julio César Chávez, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Gennady Golovkin, Oscar De La Hoya, and Bernard Hopkins for KO On SI, Sports Illustrated’s boxing vertical.
The founder chapter
In 2025 Hammond co-founded the Creative Economy Forum with Taiwo Meghoma, convening its inaugural edition at Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy, and its second in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2026 — a gathering where fashion, film, media, and the arts meet trade and investment. As Co-President of the Creative Economy Initiative, he now builds the kind of institution he spent two decades covering.
Off the record
A native of Long Beach, California, Hammond holds a master’s degree in Middle East and African history from California State University, Long Beach, and is an alumnus and research associate of the Centre for Islamic and West Asian Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. He speaks enough Spanish and Arabic to discuss boxing — which, he’ll tell you, is the only test of fluency that matters.