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Matt Mencarini

Prior to joining Bridge Michigan, Matt Mencarini was a local government and investigative reporter at the Lansing State Journal. His journalism career has taken him to five different states, where’s covered mass incarceration in Kentucky and voting rights in Wisconsin. During a previous stint at the State Journal, he spent more than two years covering the case of Larry Nassar, a former Michigan State University sports doctor serving prison time for sexually assaulting women gymnasts. Mencarini also investigated Michigan State University's failures to stop the abuse sooner. Mencarini was part of the Louisville Courier Journal team that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. He’s a Chicago native with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee and bachelor’s degree from Augustana College in Illinois.

Drew Shaw

Before joining The Aspen Daily News, Drew Shaw held local elected officials accountable in Fort Worth, TX, reporting on government spending and city hall politics for the Fort Worth Report. Shaw's work also appeared in ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and The Dallas Morning News. A Texas native, Shaw studied journalism at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he served as managing editor at The Shorthorn, the student newspaper. He took his last UTA classes from Washington, D.C., as an intern with Al Jazeera English.

Max Kappel

Before joining The Yale Expositor, Max Kappel covered local government and features for The Laker Pioneer, a Lake Minnetonka area newspaper. His journalism career began when he joined his college newspaper in his senior year as a sports reporter and editor. He earned his bachelor's in Information Science from The University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with certificates in Classical Studies, Data Science, Digital Media Analytics, and Sports Communication. When he's not working, Kappel enjoys reading, playing basketball, and spending time by the Chain of Lakes.

Sydney Salomon

Sydney Salomon is a housing and community affairs reporter covering homelessness, housing affordability, and local policy. She previously reported for New Mexico In Depth, where she produced a feature on LGBTQ+ youth homelessness that was republished as a cover story by the Santa Fe Reporter and reached the New Mexico Statehouse. She also worked as a reporter for NYU’s graduate publication, The Click, covering housing and education issues across Union County. Salomon holds a master’s degree in journalism from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in English from Saint Elizabeth University, where she graduated cum laude. In addition to reporting, she is an independent poet and the author of 7 books. She has received awards for two of her poems, separate from her published book work, The Lunchroom (2023) and The Ballads of Tragedy: America’s School Shooting Saga (2024). A New Jersey native, she enjoys creative writing and community-focused storytelling.

Tarohn Finley

Tarohn Finley is a sports journalist at The Atlanta Voice. Before joining Report for America, Finley worked on the Quick Strike team at Yahoo Sports, where he covered a wide range of sports stories. He also freelanced for The Detroit News, where he co-hosted a Detroit Pistons podcast and specialized in in-depth reporting and feature storytelling. In addition, Finley served as a co-host on Sports Rap Radio, the nation’s first all-Black sports radio station. He is a proud member of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and an alumnus of Syracuse University and the Sports Journalism Institute (SJI).

Thomas Pablo

Thomas Pablo is an Indigenous Affairs reporter covering the Native American tribes in Oklahoma for KOSU. He recently studied journalism and political science at the University of Oklahoma, where he began a career in professional journalism. Pablo worked for the OU Daily, the university’s independent student news organization, throughout all four years of undergraduate school in multiple roles, including junior and senior news reporter and as a news editor. There, he primarily covered municipal government in the city of Norman during a series of substantial changes and conversations, including large-scale turnpike development and a controversial, taxpayer-funded entertainment district and arena. Pablo first interned at KOSU last summer, where he realized he could complement journalistic storytelling with Indigeneity. He plays multiple instruments and makes music in his spare time.

Pierce Gentry

Pierce Gentry is the Central Nebraska reporter for the Flatwater Free Press. Before joining Report for America, he worked as a radio reporter at WUOT in East Tennessee, where his reporting on Hurricane Helene, the Great Smoky Mountains and rural communities earned regional and national recognition. In 2024, he produced stories about violence and intimidation in American elections for the Carnegie-Knight News21 program. While studying journalism at the University of Tennessee he covered faculty affairs and changes to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts for The Daily Beacon. Gentry enjoys shooting film photography and getting lost on long hikes when he's not off chasing a story.

Troy Sambajon

Prior to covering City Hall and federal impacts for the San Francisco Public Press, Troy Sambajon covered housing and affordability for The Christian Science Monitor, where his work earned awards for best housing story and best human-interest feature in New England. He writes stories on housing and solutions, from church-to-housing conversions to workforce housing for teachers and the nation’s broader housing shortage. He also covers how institutions expand – or fail to expand – access, from free community college in Massachusetts to statewide public defender strikes. Sambajon began his journalism career at his college newspaper, The Bottom Line, eventually serving as national beat reporter. He studied Global Studies and French at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Rose LaForest

Rose LaForest is a multi-media journalist at Nine PBS. Prior to this role, LaForest produced video explainers for WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, as part of an experimental program testing storytelling strategies for video journalists in local newsrooms. In 2024, she earned her master’s degree in broadcast and video journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where she produced short documentaries on dementia-related wandering, juvenile incarceration, and even traveled to Argentina to cover the shifting cultural attitudes toward women in male-dominated sports. LaForest previously interned at Detroit PBS, producing stories and coordinating digital content. Her journalism career began when she found non-fiction storytelling through a film history class while studying TV and film production at Michigan State University. As she learned more about the medium, LaForest says it helped her find a natural way to become involved and contribute to her community.

Walker Smith

Walker Smith is a visual journalist for Mainstreet Daily News in Gainesville, Florida. Before joining Report for America, Walker's work was shaped by a diverse job history, from selling cotton candy at a dirt track in high school to working on industrial fishing boats in Alaska during the COVID-19 pandemic. He draws on his blue-collar background and experience in the supply chain to examine labor and rural industry. He holds an M.A. in Visual Communication from Ohio University and completed a photojournalism internship at The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. When he’s not photographing, he plays saxophone, works on commercial fishing boats, and spends time sailing.