Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton

Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton is an award-winning reporter at The Denver Post covering immigration. She forged the newspaper's Denver neighborhoods beat after reporting on the business desk for almost two years, focusing her coverage on social inequities in business. She writes for National Geographic, Better Homes & Gardens, Business Insider, Vox, Smithsonian Magazine, Delish, Eater and other publications. For two years, she chased after lawmakers on Capitol Hill as Bloomberg Government's agriculture and trade policy reporter. Megan has covered the Venezuelan refugee crisis in Peru, immigration in Colombia, socioeconomic issues in Guatemala, parliamentary affairs in England and White House press briefings in Washington, D.C. During her stint at Arizona PBS, she worked two beats: borderlands and social justice. Megan received her master's in mass communication from Arizona State University. She now teaches Media Issues in American Pop Culture as a faculty adjunct. She is a 2025 Gwen Ifill Mentorship Program Fellow, the 2024 Denver Post "I Heart Readers" Award winner, a 2023 Goldschmidt Data Immersion Fellow, the 2023 Denver Post "I Heart Readers" Award runner-up, a 2022 Cannabis Media Fellow at UVM, a 2020 Bloomberg Industry Group "Beltz Award for Editorial Excellence" winner, a 2020 White House Correspondents' Association scholar and a 2019 Pulliam Journalism Fellow at The Arizona Republic. In 2025, Megan earned four awards at SPJ's Top of the Rockies, including No. 1 in a special topic series about immigration. She trained as part of IJNR's Land Back workshop about tribal issues in 2024 and Covering Climate Now's Climate at the Border initiative in 2025. Megan is a member of the Overseas Press Club, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, the Indigenous Journalists Association, the Colorado Press Association and the Online News Association. She is proud of her Kanaka 'Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) ancestry.