Erik German is one of GlobalPost’s senior correspondents in Brazil, based in Rio de Janeiro. He has also reported from North Africa and South Asia for GlobalPost. Before signing on with GlobalPost, German spent four years as a staff writer for the New York newspaper Newsday, reporting on local, state and national politics. He was assigned to the Albany statehouse during the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer and covered Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential primary. Working alongside his wife and fellow correspondent Solana Pyne, he wrote a series of stories on the economic collapse of Zimbabwe in 2006 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. German lived in Prague and wrote for the Prague Post, covering news and politics, as well as the riots during the IMF/World Bank meetings in September 2000. He has a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University. Before becoming a journalist, he was employed variously as a bartender, construction laborer and high school teacher. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris as an exchange student and graduated from Yale with a philosophy degree, about which he has no illusions.