In 2016, she was supported by the Friends Provident Foundation to set up Far Nearer, a reporting project about local economies in the UK. Hazel has travelled throughout the UK documenting alternative economies that have emerged in the aftermath of austerity and in the shadow of Brexit, including community housing, food waste supermarkets, new currencies and community-owned whisky distilleries.
The project has resulted in hundreds of articles in the Independent, the Times, the Guardian and elsewhere and several short films.
Hazel was formerly the business editor of the Independent and a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University in New York.