Higher education, vocational training and retraining

Cleo Krejci

Cleo Krejci covers workforce development and manufacturing in Wisconsin for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She developed her love for accountability reporting after uncovering dangerous building code violations at a student housing complex as a sophomore at the University of Minnesota. She continued working for her student paper, the Minnesota Daily, until graduation in May 2020, including as editor-in-chief of the 70-person newsroom during senior year. That summer Krejci left her hometown of Minneapolis to spend 10 weeks covering national politics for the Arizona Republic via the Pulliam Journalism Fellowship. From Arizona she moved to Iowa, where she spent two years covering K-12 and higher education for the Iowa City Press-Citizen and Des Moines Register. In summer 2022 she got a full-time job as an unskilled caregiver in a memory care unit, trusting it would serve as fodder for a later project about U.S. elder care.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is the product of the 1995 merger of the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel, newspapers that date to 1882 and 1837, respectively. After two transitions, we are part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, which includes 10 other newsrooms in Wisconsin and 109 newsrooms nationwide. While we regularly do stories with national interest and impact, our focus is fiercely local. We cover Milwaukee, southeastern Wisconsin and the state like no one else does—or can. We are most proud of the day-to-day reporting that chronicles our community, informs our residents and holds officials accountable for what they do. We expose wrongdoing. We highlight programs that work. We engage the community. We help lead the search for solutions.