Slaying Dragons: CJ Ortuño’s First Weeks in MTC @ Medill

“Each of us has our own dragon, and we’re on a journey that feels simultaneously individual and collective.”

CHICAGO, IL (February 20, 2026) — The MTC @ Medill Executive Fellowship Class of 2026 launched its year-long journey last month, orienting Fellows to the people they’ll learn alongside, the tools they’ll use, and the performance challenges they’ll tackle through the year and beyond.

For CJ Ortuño, Chief Development Officer at Borderless Magazine, the opening session felt less like a fellowship program and more like the start of a collective quest.

“I’ve always been drawn to stories about a group of unlikely people coming together to solve some big, great challenge,” Ortuño said. “MTC feels like a group of these unsuspecting folks coming together in a similar world… each of us has our own dragon, and we’re on a journey that feels simultaneously individual and collective.”

What struck him most in the first week was the improbable mix of peers. One moment he was sitting beside global leaders from Reuters and the Associated Press; the next, he was in conversation with leaders of small, frontline newsrooms serving immigrant and LGBTQ communities. That range, he said, creates a rare learning environment: “One week later, I feel like I’m a member of their team, of their cheering section… Anytime a group of people goes through something together, you can’t help but build strength and understanding and compassion and an interest in their lives and in their success.”

For Ortuño, the program’s practical frameworks landed at exactly the right moment. Borderless Magazine had just begun its fiscal- year planning, and the MTC performance challenge tools gave him a structure for turning ambition into action. “Before MTC, my toolbox was kind of a group of disparate sets of tools,” he said. “What the tools at MTC are doing for me is crystallizing the toolbox itself; I know the difference between the hammer and the Phillips head.”

He is applying the MTC performance-challenge framework to build Borderless’ revenue roadmap, confronting a central risk head-on. “Our problem statement is that Borderless Magazine is highly dependent on institutional funders,” he explained. “That creates a significant amount of risk. So diversifying revenue – moving from foundation-dependent to community-sustained – is the vision.”

Coaching has been another defining element of his early experience. Ortuño knows the kind of coach he needs: “I need a person who cuts through the noise.” He credits his coach, Danyelle White, with doing exactly that. “I can BS my way through some stuff,” he laughed. “I need a coach who can smell that a mile away and call me on it. The hard truth is an expression of care.”

Even as he feels ahead of the curve, Ortuño expects the work to deepen. “I know what’s coming,” he said. “She’s going to remind me where I didn’t think it all the way through. And that’s what I need.”

The Class of 2026 will reconvene in March at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, continuing a year of experimentation, coaching, and collective problem-solving. For Ortuño, the early weeks have already reframed the journey ahead: a cohort of peers, a shared set of tools, and a willingness to face hard truths together, one dragon at a time.