NEW

Amy Schafer

Prior to joining The Mississippi Free Press, Schafer worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post where she covered the extradition hearings for Luigi Mangione. She also served as editor-in-chief and business manager of Penn State's student newspaper The Daily Collegian. During her time as a student journalist she also completed an independent reporting project where she covered the criminalization of domestic and sexual violence in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She is graduating from Penn State Schreyer Honors College with degrees in public relations, global and international studies and women's, gender and sexuality studies as well as a minor in spanish.

Anna Wilder

Prior to joining The Associated Press, Wilder was a political and Statehouse reporter in South Carolina with The Post and Courier. During three years covering the Statehouse, including a year and a half at The State newspaper, she chronicled the state’s most contentious policy fights, documenting both the legislative maneuvering and the people most affected. She also spent months covering the arrest and indictment of a former lawmaker on charges related to child sexual abuse material. She is a Florida native and graduated from the University of Florida, where she was managing editor of The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper. Her work has appeared in outlets like Politico, the Miami Herald, and ProPublica.

Aydali Campa

Aydali Campa is a multimedia bilingual journalist based in Chicago whose reporting and video work span education, environmental justice, and immigration. Her work has appeared in The Arizona Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Inside Climate News, and Borderless Magazine. She has produced an investigative documentary, segments for an Arizona PBS primetime series, and short-form videos in English and Spanish for various media organizations and social media platforms. She began her journalism career as an undergraduate at Arizona State University, where she focused on video production and magazine writing, before serving as a Teach for America corps member teaching third and fourth grade. She later returned to ASU to earn a master's degree in investigative journalism. When she's not reporting, she's watching reality TV, working out, or searching for her next hobby.

Ben Bennett

Ben Bennett covers education in Lower Bucks County for the Bucks County Beacon. Before joining Report for America, Bennett interned and worked as a newsroom fellow at WHYY, Philadelphia's NPR affiliate station. There he covered K-12 education, school closures, and youth civic engagement stories. His interest in journalism began in high school, writing movie reviews for the school paper. Bennett went on to study journalism at American University and graduated in 2024. When he is not reporting, you can find him at the local AMC, rooting for the Knicks and Giants, or exploring Philadelphia with his dog.

Ben Austin

Prior to joining The Timberjay, Ben conducted investigations as part of American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop and wrote and edited for the campus magazine The American Way of Life. During that time, he maintained one of the country's leading databases tracking state-level anti-trans legislation in the United States. While writing for the magazine, he put a spotlight on American University's finances, investigating structural issues in the school's revenue streams. He has also worked with WJFF Radio Catskill and the Natural Resources Research Institute in Duluth, Minnesota. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from American University, with a minor in data science. Outside of journalism, he enjoys photography and painting.

Eleanor Fitzgerald

Eleanor Fitzgerald is a veteran and military communities reporter in San Antonio. Prior to joining The San Antonio Report, Fitzgerald reported on Texas politics for the statewide politics show Capital Tonight. She worked to document conditions inside federal detention facilities, the impact of the newly passed redistricting maps on the 2026 midterm elections and the reverberating effects of immigration enforcement on Texans. While completing her bachelor’s degree in international affairs at George Washington University, Fitzgerald was a part of the Global Bachelor’s Program, spending time in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Chile to study conflict reporting. While living in Santiago, she was an intern at El Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, where she worked on exhibits documenting the role of journalists during the Chilean military dictatorship. In college she served as the contributing culture editor of the GW Hatchet, the student newspaper, and she was raised in Naperville, Illinois.

Cat Carroll

Prior to joining the Times Union, Carroll reported internationally on migration with the support of the Wolff Fellowship. She was a 2025 Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Reporting Fellow, and her work has appeared in The Guardian, Progressive Magazine, and the Cap Times. Carroll got her start in journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she served as managing editor and later chair of the board of directors of the independent student newspaper The Badger Herald. She grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and speaks German, Spanish, and Arabic, and is currently learning Turkish.

Chart Riggall

Prior to joining the Ouray County Plaindealer, Chart covered courts and legal affairs for Law360 in his hometown of Atlanta, GA. He began his reporting career at the nearby Marietta Daily Journal, covering local and state politics and economic development. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia. Before journalism, he led other lives as a government oversight investigator, brewery hand, and public lands worker in southwest Colorado.

Ryan Oehrli

Ryan Oehrli is a statewide accountability reporter at NC Local. Before joining Report for America, Oehrli reported on criminal justice at The Charlotte Observer, public safety at the Asheville Citizen Times, and other beats at several Mississippi outlets. Oehrli covered Border Patrol and ICE operations, the killing of Iryna Zarutska and North Carolina’s pardon system, among other issues. In 2025, with colleagues at the Observer and the News & Observer in Raleigh, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for breaking news reporting on Hurricane Helene.

Claire Carlson

Before joining MinnPost as the reporter covering drinking water in Minnesota, Claire Carlson was a reporter for the Daily Yonder, where she spent four years reporting on the nexus of climate change, food systems, and rural communities. She also worked as a freelance journalist for Civil Eats, Offrange, FoodPrint, Minnesota Reformer, Sierra Nevada Ally, and other regional and national publications. She credits her career to the single journalism class she took in graduate school that showed her how to write a lede, nut graph, and how to pitch editors (and not get her feelings hurt when rejected). She holds a master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana and a bachelor’s degree in international affairs from the University of Nevada-Reno.