Adrianna (She/Her) is an award-winning Report for America journalist who covers Indigenous Democracy across the state of North Dakota for Buffalo’s Fire. Based in Bismarck, she reports on voting rights, the tribal council, school board and rural co-op meetings, tribal college issues and K-12 education. She graduated with an MA in journalism from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she was awarded the Graduate Newspaper Fellowship for Minorities. In addition to her work at Buffalo’s Fire, Adrianna also has had bylines at Syracuse.com, POPSUGAR, Flique Editorial, The Stand Southside and Central Current. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, hiking and exploring the community.
Farrah (She/Her) is an investigative reporter based in the Midwest. She works as a fellow at Invisible Institute producing police accountability investigations in collaboration with Illinois Public Media. Most recently, she was a fellow with the Investigative Reporting Workshop in Washington, DC. Farrah has published work with The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Intercept, The Appeal, Wisconsin Watch and St. Louis Public Radio. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Central Illinois local.
In 2024, Farrah was awarded the Society for Professional Journalists (Region Five) first place award for Audio Reporting and the Public Media Journalists Association second place Award for Collaborative Reporting for her reporting with Invisible Institute and Illinois Public Media. She is committed to producing immersive multimedia stories that feature the voices of marginalized communities and shed light on abuses of power.
Mara (She/Her) is an independent writer, reporter and fact-checker based on the East Coast. Previously, she was a fact-checker at The Nation and a reporter for El Tecolote, San Francisco’s bilingual Latinx newspaper. As a Report For America corps member at El Tecolote, Mara covered health inequality, policing and education in the Bay Area’s Latinx communities. Her abortion justice coverage was recognized by both the San Francisco Press Club and Ethnic Media Services.
Mara’s writing has also been published in The Nation, Syntax, and Jacobin Brasil. Currently, she fact-checks as a freelancer for Dissent and Jewish Currents. She has a bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies and International and Public Affairs from Brown University, where she was managing editor of The College Hill Independent and an editor for SOMOS Literary Magazine. She speaks Portuguese and Spanish fluently, and has experience reporting and writing in both languages.
Jessica (She/Her/They/Them) is a Xicana filmmaker and journalist who earned her master’s degree at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Their work centers on sociopolitical issues impacting immigrant Latine communities. Jessica’s work has been featured in Teen Vogue, José Andrés Media, Oaklandside and other outlets. She currently works as a creative coordinator and is developing her first feature film.
Jessica was raised in Salinas, Calif., and earned their undergraduate degree in journalism and documentary filmmaking at San Francisco State University. Previously, Jessica was an inaugural Jose Andres fellow for the 11th Hour Food and Farming Fellowship, where they published journalistic work with Teen Vogue and produced a short documentary on teen farmworkers in the Central Valley of California. Jessica’s most recent completed short-documentary, La Chef, is based in Mexico City on a female chef’s gripping struggle against toxic masculinity and her transformative journey to redefine women’s roles in the industry.
Taayoo (She/Her) is a boy mom and an award-winning writer. She is a New York City transplant, born and raised in Jamaica, West Indies. Her experience as her brother’s health proxy during his liver transplant process in 2018, awakened her interest in the U.S. health system and the glaring disparities that exist. As a health writer, she’s deeply invested in health issues that impact Black and Brown communities.
In 2023, she won the New York Association of Black Journalists Ed Bradley Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting, for her Amsterdam News cover story about Black COVID-19 orphans in New York City. Her work has been published by Yahoo, Mayo Clinic Press, Amsterdam News, Essence Magazine, Parents and many more. When she’s not working, Taayoo enjoys talking with her besties in her mom group chat, binging crime TV and drinking a good white wine.
Toastie (They/Them) is an award-winning journalist and a staff writer for High Country News writing from the Pacific Northwest. In 2023 their story about Pacific lamprey was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for features writing. That story was also featured in the Open Notebook’s Storygram series and at the Uproot Project’s “Journey of a Story” event in Chicago.
The same year, Toastie also won ProPublica’s local reporting network grant to investigate green colonialism in the Pacific Northwest, an ongoing investigation focusing on renewable energy development threatening tribal cultural resources. Toastie has also written for Foreign Policy, ICT News, Underscore News, the IRE Journal, Willamette Week, Street Roots and others. They’re an active member at the Indigenous Journalists Association, a member of the Trans Journalists Association, the Pacific Northwest Chapter Leader of the Uproot Project, and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Maria (She/Her) is a journalist focused on how land rights and climate change impact tribal communities, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. She graduated with a master’s degree from MIT’s Science Writing program and, most recently, was a reporter and spatial data analyst on the Indigenous Affairs desk at Grist, where she made maps about Indigenous affairs, conservation and resource extraction. While there, she led the data reporting on an investigation about state trust lands that send profits to land grant universities from Indigenous lands. Maria will work as a Nova Media Fellow over the next year, reporting on how Indigenous land dispossession acts as a threat to mental and physical health, especially in the context of climate change.
Prior to working at Grist, Maria served as a producer on Resettled, a podcast that explores the refugee resettlement process in the United States, produced NPR’s Morning Edition in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and worked for a nonprofit addressing migrant rights and statelessness in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Her work can be found in publications including Grist, Popular Science, NPR, The Allegheny Front, and the New York Focus.
Meghan (She/Her) is an investigative journalist from Alaska, whose reporting focuses on technology, Indigenous communities and human rights. Most recently, she completed a one year fellowship with the Scripps News National Investigative Unit, where she worked on broadcast and documentary investigations as a reporter, producer and on-air correspondent. Prior to that, she led an award-winning series with the Solutions Journalism Initiative and Indian Country Today, focused on the long-term impacts of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act—a complex law that established Alaska’s unique land policy and economic system.
Meghan started her career in journalism as a reporting fellow for the NBC News Business and Technology Unit, and by working part time for the NBC News Bay Area Investigative Unit during her senior year of college. She graduated from Stanford University with Honors in International Relations in 2019. She is a member of the Indigenous Journalists Association, the National Press Club, the Overseas Press Club, and Investigative Reporters and Editors, and is a board member of the Alaska Native Media Association.
Ray (She/Her) is a journalist based in the Bay Area, living on unceded Ohlone land. Ray’s climate justice reporting can be found at Prism and their freelance work is published in the Washington Post, The Guardian, Teen Vogue, and Yes! Magazine, among others.
Ray was included in the inaugural 2022-2023 Solutions Journalism Network cohort for climate journalists. Ray’s 2019 Teen Vogue article, “The Red Deal: An Indigenous Response to the Green New Deal,” was included in the 2021 anthology “No Planet B: The Teen Vogue Guide to the Climate Crisis.” Outside of journalism, Ray writes poetry, reads as much fiction as possible, and plays soccer.
Wendy (She/Her) is a Chicago-based independent print and audio journalist, and the immigration editor at South Side Weekly, where she explores how migrants are pitted against other marginalized groups to compete over scarce resources. Her work sheds light on how solidarity can be built between communities of color. Wendy also directs the data-driven training program for emerging journalists at the Investigative Project on Race and Equity.
Wendy’s work has been supported by the International Center for Investigative Journalism and International Women Media Foundation. She has held fellowships with the Chicago Reader and Juneteenth Productions. In 2023, her reporting on interracial solidarity was nominated for a Peter Lisagor Award and a Chicago Journalism Associations’ Award.
Since 2021, Wendy has served as the programming committee co-chair of ARTWORKS Projects, an organization that amplifies photojournalism documenting human rights issues. In her first career, Wendy worked on refugee response projects in the Middle East and East Africa, before dropping out of a political science PhD to pursue journalism.