About Connect Puerto Rico
Connect Puerto Rico is a newsletter and emerging network that tracks the people, policies, and projects shaping Puerto Rico’s energy development. It provides clear, contextual information about how energy decisions are made, who makes them, and who they affect.
The project’s mission is twofold.
First, Connect Puerto Rico follows how Puerto Rico’s energy system is being rebuilt — from the centralized electric grid to renewable and decentralized energy projects. It tracks how U.S. policy, investment, and infrastructure decisions intersect, and what those choices mean for reliability, resilience, and accountability.
Second, Connect Puerto Rico connects Puerto Rican communities across the United States — as well as allies and supporters of Puerto Rico — with news affecting the island. While Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico cannot vote in federal elections, Puerto Ricans and allies in the states can, and often lack consistent coverage of how U.S. policy decisions impact Puerto Rico.
By connecting energy systems with the communities and political power that influence them, Connect Puerto Rico strengthens understanding, accountability, and engagement around Puerto Rico’s energy development.
Why Connect Puerto Rico Exists
Puerto Rico’s energy development is shaped by decisions made across U.S. policy, private investment, and infrastructure planning. Those decisions are often complex, fragmented, and difficult to track, especially when responsibility is spread across federal agencies, local institutions, and private actors.
Coverage frequently focuses on individual projects or breaking news without sustained context about how policy choices, funding, and implementation connect over time.
Connect Puerto Rico exists to bring continuity and clarity to these decisions, helping readers understand what’s happening, what’s not, and what it means for Puerto Rico’s energy development.
How the Work Is Approached
Connect Puerto Rico focuses on tracking and contextualizing, not producing original investigative reporting at this stage. The work centers on:
Curating and synthesizing credible reporting from multiple sources
Connecting policy decisions to real-world infrastructure and workforce impacts
Centering Puerto Rican expertise and lived experience
Making complex systems legible to people who influence funding, policy, and implementation
The newsletter publishes monthly and prioritizes accuracy, transparency, and clarity over speed.
Who’s Behind Connect Puerto Rico
Jillian Melero is the founder of Connect Puerto Rico. She is a journalist, editor, and project manager with more than a decade of experience spanning policy, science, infrastructure, and equity-focused journalism.
She has held editorial and digital roles supporting coverage at The TRiiBE, WTTW News’ Chicago Tonight, Latino Voices, Black Voices, Climate Central, and Borderless Magazine. Most recently, she served as project manager for the Chicago Sun-Times / La Voz Chicago immigration resource project, coordinating editorial workflows, partnerships, and audience engagement.
Jillian previously served as president of the Chicago Headline Club (2023–2024) and holds a master’s degree in editorial journalism from Northwestern University.
This project grew out of earlier reporting and research on Puerto Rico’s energy system.
Read the original reporting that helped inform this work:
Puerto Rico’s clean-energy and grid-restoration efforts still in doubt (The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
Jillian Melero
Looking Ahead
Connect Puerto Rico is a growing project. Over time, the work will expand through partnerships, collaboration, and sustainable support, with the goal of strengthening the information ecosystem around Puerto Rico’s energy development.