For 20 years, I’ve reported and built communications across Cambodia and Southeast Asia. I connect what people live through to program priorities, donor decisions, and public trust.
These films show both sides of my work: reporting human stories with care, and helping organizations earn trust through evidence-led communication.
A three-minute introduction to my work: 20 years of field reporting in Khmer across Cambodia, BoComm and its StoryTruth™ verification method, and Takebo, where I write poems and personal notes for greeting cards. The narrator is an AI voice; the field footage and the facts are real.
Watch on YouTube ↗A field story from Preah Vihear, Cambodia — reported and written by Botumroath LeBun for UNICEF Cambodia. Of every 100 children with disabilities in Cambodia, only 20 are in school. Piseth is one of them.
The Road to Piseth: Piseth, 16, crosses mud roads and a plank bridge to reach school in Preah Vihear, Cambodia. The first child in his village to hold a disability card, he is one of only 20 in 100 children with disabilities in Cambodia who are in school.
Watch on YouTube ↗The BoComm film: Bo LeBun on twenty years of field reporting for the United Nations in Cambodia, and how she now helps nonprofits tell stories donors can trust — featuring StoryTruth, her verification approach for the age of AI.
Watch on YouTube ↗A short look behind the scenes at the seeing and listening that come before the writing.
Come with me into the field. I speak in Khmer. In my own words: “My name is Botumroath. I am in the field. I work as a writer for UNICEF Cambodia, and right now I would like to invite you to look behind the scenes of how I work in the field as a writer and reporter.”
Filmed in 2025 at a rural school in Preah Vihear, Cambodia, where Long Piseth, whose story I reported for UNICEF Cambodia, is a student.
Field reporting is where every story I write begins—in the classroom, on the dirt road, sitting with families and listening first. The writing comes after. This is a small look at that first part: the seeing, the listening, and the care it takes to tell a child's story truthfully and with dignity.
I am Botumroath “Bo” LeBun, a journalist and writer with twenty years of field reporting in Cambodia, now founder of BoComm and creator of StoryTruth, my approach to ethical storytelling: AI can scale content. It cannot verify truth.
Filmed in Preah Vihear, Cambodia, 2025. Spoken in Khmer; English summary above.
“Our donors give $5,000 a year to sponsor a student's education, and they give it on trust: most will never meet the young person they sponsor. Bo's storytelling protects that trust.”
It lives in field notes, interviews, reports, and daily work. My job is to find what is verified, understand what it means, and shape it so people can see why it matters.
I built StoryTruth from that practice. It gives teams a disciplined way to use AI in communication while keeping evidence and human judgment in charge. Through BoComm, I help organizations connect stories to program goals, donor priorities, and decisions. Every engagement should leave the client with something useful that lasts: a story bank, a message framework, a workflow, or a stronger team.
AI can help a team work faster. It cannot verify truth. People remain responsible for every claim and every story.
Begin with what happened. Check names, dates, context, and claims. Mark what is known and what still needs an answer.
No invented facts. No borrowed certainty.Give people context, voice, and dignity. Use consent. Name the gaps. Show how a life connects to a larger system without reducing a person to a symbol.
Human interest with accountability.AI can organize notes, tighten language, and flag claims that need checking. A human verifies and approves the final work.
AI assists. A person is accountable.
Takebo makes greeting cards for the moments worth celebrating, remembering, and sharing.
Explore Takebo ↗BoComm is a strategic communications firm connecting field reporting, program priorities, and audience strategy.
Visit BoComm ↗
StoryTruth helps nonprofits build trust and raise funds for impact through verified, human-led stories.
Explore StoryTruth ↗Reported features and communications that connect a person’s experience to the choices and systems around them.
A teenager’s story about education, caregiving, and the support that helps a family plan for what comes next.
Read the story ↗A young child finds confidence at a community preschool in Ratanakiri.
Read the story ↗An interview with Phillip Bank’s leadership about how the bank built trust as a Cambodian institution.
Read the story ↗My storytelling supported broader communication and fundraising work associated with approximately €500,000 in resource mobilization for UNICEF Cambodia. It was a collective result; my contribution was storytelling.
Colleagues at UNICEF Cambodia speak to the editorial judgment and communication value behind the work.
“Botumroath combines professionalism, empathy, and strong editorial judgment.”
“Botumroath consistently translated complex education and early childhood programmes into clear, human-centred stories that supported advocacy, donor communication, and fundraising efforts. Her writing helped make programme results visible and compelling for external audiences, playing an important role in UNICEF Cambodia’s broader resource mobilisation and communication objectives.”
I was born in Cambodia and raised in the United States. My work has taken me back across Cambodia and Southeast Asia, where I have spent 20 years reporting, listening, and working alongside communities and institutions.
I hold dual master’s degrees from Columbia University. I speak English and fluent Khmer, which lets me conduct field interviews directly, with no interpreter. I bring journalism discipline to every project: verify what happened, preserve the speaker’s meaning, add context, and leave room for what we do not know.
My work joins human-interest storytelling with program strategy and institutional communication. I want each story to help people understand the work, see the evidence, and decide what should happen next.
Tell me what you are trying to explain, prove, or change. We’ll find the evidence, choose the right story, and decide what should happen next.