MEET THE FELLOWS

Charla Bear has worked as a multimedia reporter and anchor at KQED Public Radio, one of the largest NPR affiliates in the country. She has also taught cultural diversity and reporting courses at San Francisco State University. Her reporting has been recognized by RTNDA/Unity, the Native American Journalists Association, and the Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards. She holds a master’s in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.

Marquita Brown covers K-12 education for the News & Record in Greensboro, North Carolina. She moved to Greensboro in 2013, immediately picking up coverage of socioeconomic inequity in local schools. Brown is a former reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi, and The Roanoke Times in Virginia. She has a bachelor’s degree in both journalism and political science from the University of Mississippi.

Kavitha Cardoza is a special correspondent with WAMU Radio, the NPR affiliate in Washington, D.C. She focuses on children, education and poverty. She is also the host of the documentary series “Breaking Ground,” which airs on public radio stations across the United States. Before joining the station in 2008, Cardoza was the Springfield bureau chief for WUIS in Illinois. She has won more than 25 awards, including a national award for investigative reporting from the Education Writers Association.

Dan Carsen is a public radio education reporter. Since 2011, he has filed radio and Web stories for The Southern Education Desk; WBHM, a public radio station in Birmingham, Alabama; and National Public Radio. His previous work experience includes being a newspaper reporter, a Teach For America teacher, a freelance writer, and an editor for an educational publishing house. His writing and reporting have won numerous state, regional and national awards.

Matt Collette is a podcast producer at WNYC in New York. He was previously a reporting fellow at The Teacher Project, an education reporting initiative at Columbia Journalism School. His stories, based on embeds at public schools in New York City, have run on WNYC, NPR and Slate. Collette has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where he focused on radio reporting and education journalism.

Johnny Crawford is an award-winning photographer and educator. He was a staff photographer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for more than 28 years. During his tenure he photographed three Olympic games, five U.S. Presidents, and other major events and figures. Today, Crawford teaches private photography lessons, and is an editorial and event photographer at Johnny Crawford Photography. He holds a master’s in photojournalism from Ohio University.

Elisa Crouch covers urban education for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her work includes focusing on inequities in the St. Louis region’s education system, which has grown increasingly more segregated by race and economics. Before joining the media outlet in 2003, she was the City Hall beat reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. She also covered southeastern Massachusetts for the Providence Journal. Crouch is a University of Missouri journalism school graduate.

Emily DeRuy is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic, where she covers education. Previously, she worked as an associate editor at Fusion, an ABC News-Univision joint venture. She covered education and politics, with a focus on college affordability and student debt. Before joining Fusion, DeRuy wrote for several California newspapers. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University.

Ron French is senior writer at Bridge, the online publication of The Center for Michigan, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank focused on policy issues in Michigan. Before joining Bridge, French was a projects reporter at The Detroit News. His primary interests are K-12 education, higher education and health care. Past projects have included comparing education policies in high-achieving states with policies in Michigan.

Jennifer Guerra is a reporter for Michigan Radio’s State of Opportunity, a multiyear reporting and community engagement project focused on how poverty affects the state’s children. She previously covered arts and culture for the station, and was a lead reporter for the award-winning education series “Rebuilding Detroit Schools.” Prior to working at Michigan Radio, Guerra was a producer at WFUV, an NPR station in the Bronx. She has won numerous regional and national awards for her journalistic work.

Beth Hawkins is a writer-in-residence at Education Post, a nonpartisan communications organization working to support student-focused improvements in public education. Hawkins previously wrote for MinnPost’s education blog Learning Curve. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including from the Education Writers Association and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Her work has appeared in More, Mother Jones, Minnesota Monthly and many other publications.

Laura Isensee covers education for Houston Public Media. Previously, she was a staff reporter at The Miami Herald and contributed to South Florida’s NPR affiliate. Her work has also appeared in The Dallas Morning News, Reuters and Clarín in Argentina. Isensee has won awards for her work in print and radio, including best specialty/beat reporting from the Texas AP Broadcasters Association in 2014. Her radio stories have aired on national programs, such as NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Here & Now.”

Alejandra Lagos joined Univision News Network as an editorial and digital producer for their multimedia education initiative. She has been reporting on various education topics involving early childhood education, Common Core, and college and career readiness. Lagos has a master’s in education from New York University, as well as more than eight years of teaching and facilitating experience in New York City public schools.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen covers Kansas education for the Topeka Capital-Journal. She has been honored with awards from the Kansas Press Association for her investigative and education reporting, and from the Kansas City Press Club for her general reporting. She is a former writer and copy editor for the Taipei Times in Taiwan. She has a master’s in journalism from Columbia University, and a master’s in bilingualism studies from Stockholm University in Sweden.

Rob Manning has reported news for Oregon Public Broadcasting since 2003. He covers education and local government for the media outlet. Manning was part of the reporting teams that won a 2009 Peabody Award and a 2004 Harry Chapin Media Award. He also earned four awards in 2015 for his long-term education project “Class of 2025.” Manning graduated from Pomona College with a concentration in anthropology and music.

New America Media is the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 3,000 ethnic news organizations. Founded by the nonprofit Pacific News Service in 1996, New America Media is headquartered in California with offices in New York and Washington, D.C., and partners with journalism schools to grow local associations of ethnic media.

Rebecca Nuttall is a staff writer with the Pittsburgh City Paper, an alternative weekly, where she covers issues ranging from education to criminal justice. Previously, she spent five years with the New Pittsburgh Courier, one of the country’s oldest African-American newspapers. Nuttall’s recent journalism honors include receiving two awards in 2015 from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania for her feature on the failures of a highly touted Pittsburgh public school.

Kristina Rizga covers education for the independent news organization Mother Jones. In 2015, she wrote the book “Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It and the Students and Teachers Who Made it Triumph.” Before joining Mother Jones, Rizga ran WireTap, an award-winning political and cultural magazine for young adults. She is co-founder and editor of The Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism, based in her homeland, Latvia.

Claudio Sanchez is an education correspondent for NPR. A former elementary and middle school teacher, he focuses on the “three p’s” of education reform: politics, policy and pedagogy. Claudio’s reports air regularly on “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and “Weekend Edition.” Prior to joining NPR in 1989, he was the executive producer for the Latin American News Service, and the news and public affairs director at KXCR-FM in El Paso.

Beth Slovic is a staff writer at Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon, and a journalism instructor at Portland State University. She has been a staff writer at The Oregonian, and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in Montana. She graduated from Amherst College and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Zaidee Stavely is an award-winning radio reporter and feature news editor for Radio Bilingüe, the Latino Public Radio network. She has reported for a number of other outlets, including “KQED News” and “The California Report.” Her honors include receiving a Rubén Salazar Award from CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California for an investigative story on an unusually high number of birth defects in the mostly Latino town of Kettleman City, California.

Aisha Sultan is a nationally syndicated columnist, and home and family editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her work has appeared in more than a hundred print and online publications. She was a 2011-2012 Knight Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where she studied parenting and privacy in the digital age. Sultan is a regular radio commentator on CNN and MSNBC, and local affiliate news programs. She is a speaker on subjects related to education, parenting and the Muslim-American experience.

Patrick Wall is a reporter who covers the New York City school system for Chalkbeat New York, a nonprofit education news organization. Wall previously worked for DNAinfo New York, where he reported on the South Bronx. As a freelance journalist, he has written for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Crain’s New York Business. He has won awards from the Education Writers Association, the New York Press Club, and the Society of the Silurians.