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Savvy Sleevar

Prior to joining the Southeast Missourian, Savvy Sleevar served as a Dunn Fellow for Communications and Digital Media at the Office of the Illinois Governor. Before that, Sleevar covered rural health disparities with a cohort of reporters for the Columbia Missourian and Investigate Midwest. Her team's reporting on the intersection of pesticide use, high cancer rates and health inequities in Missouri communities earned a 2025-26 Hearst Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting. Sleevar also covered higher education for the Columbia Missourian, and she penned several feature pieces as a city life reporter for Vox Magazine. Sleevar graduated summa cum laude from the University of Missouri, earning her Bachelor of Journalism with a minor in history.

Estefanía Pinto Ruiz

Pinto Ruiz covers Latino and immigrant communities across North Carolina, focusing on democracy, immigration, and community affairs. Previously, Pinto Ruiz covered agriculture, environment, and water at KWQC TV6 News in the Quad Cities for Report for America and the Ag & Water Desk. Her reporting focused on elevating farmers’ voices and bringing awareness to the importance and difficulty of the work farmers do to feed the USA, often in an unpredictable industry. Some of her extensive reporting focused on mental health in agriculture, grain bin safety, and proposed pesticide legislation, earning her an honorable mention in the 2026 North American Agricultural Journalists writing awards. Pinto Ruiz is bilingual in English and Spanish and is a proud Colombian, which means you can often find her searching for the things she misses most as an immigrant—Colombian food and a good cup of Colombian coffee—alongside her companion on adventures, her dog Miel.

Curtis Brodner

Curtis Brodner covers housing and affordability for The Jersey Vindicator. Prior to joining the Vindicator, Brodner worked as a freelancer. His coverage included a months-long investigation into prison disability accommodations for Prism. As a Columbia Journalism Investigations fellow, he worked on a four-part series about wrongful convictions for New York Focus. At 1010 WINS, he reported on housing and homelessness. During the 2020 protests against police abuses, he co-founded a reporting project in which a team of about 30 volunteers produced live coverage of demonstrations. Brodner holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia Journalism School and a bachelor's degree in journalism from SUNY Purchase.

Scott White

Scott White is a digital communities reporter at The Woodford Sun as part of a pilot partnership with Press Forward Blue Grass, which trains community members to work as journalists in their hometowns. Before joining Report for America, White spent 39 years practicing law, focusing primarily on complex federal and state criminal defense and constitutional litigation. In addition to private practice, he served as the Kentucky Deputy Attorney General from 1996 through 2003. In 2022, White relocated his practice from Louisville–Lexington to Woodford County to help his longtime friend, retired Congressman Ben Chandler—the publisher of the Woodford Sun—keep the 150-year-old newspaper from going out of business. While focusing on business and community engagement, White also became a part-time reporter to help the newsroom stay afloat. He is no longer practicing law but is overseeing the paper's transition to a nonprofit organization.

Lia Salvatierra

Lia Salvatierra covers education in Northern Kentucky for LINK nky. Before reporting for LINK, Salvatierra spent two years as a local government accountability reporter for the Ouray County Plaindealer with Report for America. Her accountability work spanned a first-place investigation on an effort to secure local ownership over a federal reservoir to award-winning features on the area’s striking characters. In 2024, after graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, Salvatierra attended the Hearst National Journalism Awards Championship, where she won second place for her article on the use of artificial intelligence chatbots for psychotherapy. Her work has also appeared in WyoFile, INDY Week and other outlets in North Carolina, Wyoming and Colorado. When she's not wordsmithing, Salvatierra is learning silversmithing.

Sharmila Venkatasubban

Sharmila Venkatasubban is a senior editor and health reporter at the Florida Trib. Before joining Report for America, Venkatasubban was a reporter, editor, and researcher for local and international news outlets for two decades. She got her start at alt-weeklies in Pittsburgh and has worked at BuzzFeed News, Al Jazeera Media Network, and, most recently, at CNN. Venkatasubban has helped shape crucial stories at the height of #MeToo, as well as investigations across fields including education, health care, law enforcement, and government accountability. At AJ+, she was part of a team that won an Emmy Award for its coverage of the war in Gaza.

Sinclair Holian

Sinclair Holian covers development and gentrification for the Coconut Grove Spotlight. Through Report for America, Holian previously covered segregation and its lasting impacts for The Roanoke Rambler in Roanoke, Virginia. Holian studied journalism at UNC Chapel Hill, where she reported on inequalities in the agriculture industry, public education, and healthcare. Her story, “Land Loss and Legacy on Historic Black-owned Farmland,” received the 2024 Article of the Year award from the national Hearst Journalism Awards Program. When she’s not chasing a story, she enjoys swimming, hiking, and exploring local thrift shops.

Shauna Reynolds

Shauna Reynolds is the growth and development reporter at Main Street Media of Tennessee. Before joining Report for America, Reynolds worked as a freelance reporter covering the greater Nashville area for local and national outlets. She also interned at the Nashville Banner, after graduating from Middle Tennessee State University in 2025. At MTSU, she served as features editor for Sidelines, the university’s editorially independent student newspaper. When Reynolds is not reporting, she can be found hiking in state parks, watching and feeding backyard birds, or being a homebody with her family and their standard poodles.

Theo Greenly

Theo Greenly reports on Southern Oregon coastal communities for Jefferson Public Radio. Before that, he spent five years reporting from Alaska’s Bering Sea, where he chased stories by boat, helicopter, and, once, Jet Ski. He began as an RFA corps member at KUCB in Unalaska in 2021. After serving a full three years, he remained in the Aleutian Islands as a regional reporter for Alaska Public Media. His reporting has earned multiple honors, including a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for his coverage of Indigenous language revitalization in the Pribilof Islands and several awards from the Alaska Press Club. His work has appeared on Marketplace, Science Friday and NPR. Greenly began his public radio career at KCRW in Santa Monica after studying journalism at Santa Monica College and graduating from the Transom Storytelling Workshop. When he is not reporting, he is usually hiking or playing guitar.