FELLOWS
Danielle (she/her or they/them) is a journalist, screenwriter and activist from Stockton, Calif., who worked as an Entertainment and Arts intern for the Los Angeles Times in 2021. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from California State University, Long Beach, with bylines in the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Black Girl Nerds, Allure, USA TODAY and more. She’s also been a panelist at San Diego Comic Con: Special Edition and a screenwriter for the PBS documentary series called “Subcultured.”
Danielle worked in education for over six years and was an intern for the environmental justice organization East Yard: Communities For Environmental Justice for four years in Long Beach, Calif.. While her work as a freelance writer ranges from beauty to politics, she focuses on overlooked communities in the entertainment industry and advocates for social change. She wants to dedicate her life as a screenwriter, journalist, activist and educator to abolishing corrupt systems and creating a world vested in equity, generational healing and collectivism. Danielle loves nerding out over Marvel, video games, anime, gardening, food, boba and books whenever she can.
Taylor (she/her or they/them) is a Brooklyn-based independent audio producer and editor from Syracuse, NY. Taylor is currently working as an associate audio producer at Kaiser Health News. They are passionate about telling stories that center the voices of marginalized people, particularly stories about disability justice, queer and trans liberation, and transformative justice. Their work has recently appeared on the BRIC Arts Media podcast “Brooklyn, USA” and the Brooklyn Public Library podcast, “Borrowed.” In 2021, Taylor was selected as an AIR New Voices Scholar.
Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Middlebury College and a graduate certificate in disability studies from the City University of New York. Before becoming an audio producer, they worked in climate justice advocacy and labor union organizing.
In their free time, Taylor is on a mission to visit all of New York City’s public beaches and pools.
Brea (she/her) is a strategic leader and award-winning journalist, who currently works to stop the spread of misinformation surrounding health and politics as the NABJ-Facebook Fact-Checking fellow for FactCheck.org. Since 2015, Jones has focused on underrepresented communities while writing articles and producing multimedia for publications in South and Central Florida. In her free time, Brea explores her creativity through art and photography. For her project with the Renaissance Journalism’s LaunchPad Fellowship for NexGen Journalists, Jones is looking to investigate how intersectionality combined with an act of sexual injustice often leads to the dehumanization of a Black woman by the general public. By providing historical context of how long Black women have endured and fought against sexual injustice and the dehumanization of Black women, the project aims to create conversation and inspire change in today’s society on helpful ways to actually protect Black women.
Tasmiha Khan (she/her) is an independent journalist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Vox, among other news publications. She currently covers a wide range of topics related to health, race, politics, culture, and religion. She founded a nonprofit organization to address health concerns for women in Bangladesh, an initiative for which she was invited to the White House twice by President Obama. This past year, she was named a Fellow for Knight Science Journalism at MIT, Religion News Service, Education Writers Association and Woodrow Wilson’s Higher Education Media. She was also a recipient of the COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists by The National Geographic Society. Tasmiha was an awardee of the International Center for Journalists to help with brand-building and audience engagement. She is also a recipient of the Kozik Environmental Justice Reporting Grant from The National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute.
Sarah Belle (she/they) is a freelance journalist based in New York City. She is currently a newsletter fellow at the Insider and freelances for a Bronx newspaper, among other national news outlets. Sarah Belle is driven towards seeking the truths of people from marginalized and disenfranchised environments. They have documented dozens of social and cultural movements decrying injustice. It’s in Sarah Belle’s nature to collect stories on the ground and from the frontlines. She aims to share narratives that confront biases and stereotypes and challenge mainstream beliefs. Sarah Belle has been published in New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Oakland Magazine, Capital & Main and NPR Youth Radio (now YM Radio). She has also contributed to local news outlets such as Patch, Berkeleyside and The E’ville Eye News. Sarah Belle was recently awarded the SPJ 2021 Excellence in Journalism Award in Investigative Reporting (Print/Online Small Division), along with two colleagues, for an investigation into whether the Oakland Police Department violated its policies against protesters, published by The Oaklandside.
Casey (she/her) is a Filipino American writer and filmmaker whose work focuses on immigration and human rights. She is the founder of Mahalaya, a San Francisco-based community newspaper that centers Filipinx voices in and beyond the Bay Area through solidarity journalism. As a volunteer of Kasama ng Kalayaan, she organizes for the liberation and healing of Filipinx impacted by systems of incarceration, immigration detention, and deportation. Casey earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast communications from San Francisco State University and a certificate in TV foreign reporting from the Danish School of Media and Journalism. She recently earned a master’s degree in Migration Studies at the University of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in El Tecolote and Globus.
MENTORS
Carolina is a producer for Radio Rookies, WNYC’s award-winning youth radio program, where she works with young people as they report personal stories about their lives and communities.
Carolina joined WNYC after covering justice reform, social movements and immigration issues as a reporter and photojournalist at St. Louis Public Radio. While there, she reported on pretrial ankle monitoring, a campaign to shut down a notorious jail and the aftermath of the uprising in Ferguson. In 2019, she reported from the United States-Mexico border as an International Women’s Media Foundation fellow. And in 2018, she was named one of The Lit List’s “30 photographers to watch.” Previously, Carolina worked at the Naples Daily News and the Tampa Bay Times. She also volunteers as a mentor with NPR’s Next Generation Radio project. Carolina is a proud native New Yorker who reps Queens.
Zaidee (she/her) covers bilingual education, early education and immigration as it relates to schools and hosts EdSource’s “Education Beat” podcast. She is a bilingual print and radio reporter who has worked in Mexico and the U.S. She has covered education, immigration, environmental justice and traditional arts for KQED, Radio Bilingüe and Public Radio International’s “The World,” among other outlets. Zaidee has won numerous awards for her journalism, including an Emmy, a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award, an Excellence in Journalism Award from SPJ Northern California, and the Rubén Salazar Award from CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California. She grew up in rural Mendocino County, where both her parents taught in public one-room schoolhouses. She has a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies and Community Studies from UC Santa Cruz. She lives in Oakland with her husband and two children.