NEW

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.

Ryan Di Corpo

Prior to joining Athens County Independent, Ryan Di Corpo was managing editor of Outreach where he won a Catholic Media Award for a months-long investigation into the violent persecution of LGBTQ refugees in East Africa. He twice represented Outreach at the White House. Most recently, he has collaborated with the National Catholic Reporter on its series investigating clergy sex abuse. He is an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, Boston Magazine, U.S. Catholic and America, where he previously worked as an O'Hare Fellow. He holds a B.A. in film from Fordham University, where he was the culture co-editor of its journal-of-record, and an M.A. in journalism from Northeastern University. Di Corpo was part of a Northeastern reporting team honored at the 47th Boston/New England Emmy Awards for the best college newscast of 2023. Di Corpo was recognized at Northeastern for academic excellence and professional ethics.

Adriana Gutierrez

Prior to joining Mission Local, Adriana Gutierrez spent three years at The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California as an education and child welfare reporter through the Report For America reporting program. During her time there, she covered 40 school districts across Sonoma County, paying close attention to the fiscal crisis of the county's largest school district, Santa Rosa City Schools. She won awards from the California News Publisher Association and California Journalism Awards for her coverage of violence on school campuses and student homelessness in Sonoma County. Gutierrez graduated from Oregon State University in 2023, where she served as the dditor-in-chief of the university's newspaper, The Daily Barometer. She also interned at The Oregonian in 2022. During her internship, she covered the business section of the metro paper, while also serving on the breaking news, education and weather desks.

Anita Li

Anita Li is the government accountability reporter at Coconut Grove Spotlight. Through Report for America, she previously covered education for the Prince William Times, where she won a Virginia Press Association award for reporting on Venezuelan teachers who lost their Temporary Protected Status. Before joining Report for America, Li interned at Minnesota Public Radio and FOX 5 DC. Her passion for highlighting underrepresented voices started when she interned at WLRN, Miami’s NPR station. Li grew up in Maryland and graduated from Northwestern University, where she reported for The Daily Northwestern. She speaks Mandarin and Spanish, and will never say no to mango pomelo sago or a good story.

Ellen Schmidt

Before joinging the Associated Press, Ellen Schmidt was a visual journalist, CatchLight Local fellow and Report for America corps member at MinnPost. Her career began while earning an undergraduate degree in journalism and art at the University of Minnesota, where she worked as a reporter, photographer and the multimedia editor at the Minnesota Daily student newspaper. Her roles there propelled her to internships at Minnesota Public Radio News, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Duluth News Tribune and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In Nevada, her success led to five years as a staff photojournalist visualizing breaking news, community stories, enterprise coverage, the environment and major sporting events.