2020-2021

Sophia Eppolito

Sophia Eppolito covers the Utah Legislature for The Associated Press where she concentrates on the intersection of religion and state government. As a news associate for The AP in New York City, she wrote about crime and community news on the East Coast. Previously, she worked at The Boston Globe for two years covering general assignment stories and breaking news. She also worked as a Massachusetts Statehouse Correspondent for the Lowell Sun where she reported on the rollout of recreational marijuana and climate change. A Los Angeles native, she attended Boston University where she received the Blue Chip Award, the highest student honor conferred by the BU College of Communication.

Patricia Nieberg

Patty Nieberg covers the Colorado statehouse for The Associated Press, where she concentrates on energy and environmental issues. She returned to the U.S. recently after completing fellowships with The Associated Press in Jerusalem and Haaretz through the Jerusalem Press Club. She graduated from Northwestern University with a master’s in journalism with a concentration in politics and national security. During graduate school, Nieberg reported from Washington, D.C., and worked with the James Foley Foundation on U.S. hostage policy and journalist safety. Her reporting also took her to swing states for 2018 congressional races, North Carolina to cover Hurricane Florence, and Guantánamo Bay for a military commission hearing, where she focused on the facility’s healthcare system for detainees. She grew up in south Brooklyn and received her bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University.  

Mohamed Ibrahim

Mohamed Ibrahim covers the Minnesota Legislature for The Associated Press where he concentrates on energy and environmental policy. He has worked as an intern at Minnesota Public Radio News, and at the Star Tribune covering St. Paul, Minn. and its surrounding areas. He was a reporter for the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities’s student-run newspaper, the Minnesota Daily, where he covered public safety, city government and the Minnesota Legislature. Born in San Diego, Ibrahim is the child of Somali immigrants and was raised in the suburbs of Minneapolis. He earned his B.A. from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in December 2019.

Sam Metz

Sam Metz covers the Nevada Legislature for The Associated Press with a special emphasis on water, education and health care. Metz most recently covered California politics for The Desert Sun and USA TODAY Network in Palm Springs, Calif. His work on wildfires, criminal justice and agriculture has won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association and IRE. He previously spent two years in Morocco researching and reporting on migration in the Mediterranean as a Fulbright Scholar and his work has also appeared in VICE News, Quartz and The New Republic. He grew up in Illinois, swam at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials and graduated from UC Berkeley, where he was part of the Men’s Swimming team that won two NCAA championships.

Alejandra Martinez

Alejandra Martinez reports for KERA in Dallas as well as The Texas Newsroom, a journalism collaboration among the public radio stations of Texas and NPR, where she covers the impact of Covid-19 and its associated economic fallout on marginalized communities. Before joining Report for America, Martinez was a producer at WLRN, South Florida's NPR station where she covered immigration, marginalized communities, and the local arts scene. She would book, write, and produce stories for and the station’s daily talk show, “Sundial,” and she was part of Public Radio International’s (PRI) “Every 30 Seconds” election project, a collaborative public media reporting project tracing the young Latino electorate leading up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond. A native Texan, Martinez began her broadcast career working with KUT, Austin’s NPR station, first as an intern and later a producer. In Texas, Martinez participated in NPR’s Next-Generation Radio project, a week-long journalism boot camp, where she covered Houston’s recovery post-Hurricane Harvey in 2018. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism in 2017.  

Michelle Griffith

Michelle Griffith reports for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead in North Dakota. She focuses on the decline and rise of rural America, told through a North Dakota lens, including coverage of economic development, jobs the people who make up these communities. Griffith covered breaking news and enterprise stories while interning at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She was the Campus Activities Editor for the Minnesota Daily, the University of Minnesota’s independent student newspaper, where she oversaw coverage on topics like diversity, student life and research. Griffith was also a founding member of the Minnesota Daily’s Content Diversity Board, which analyzed the paper’s coverage of minority communities and trained reporters on best practices for covering marginalized groups. She grew up in Buffalo, Minnesota and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2020 with a degree in journalism.

Kevin Trevellyan

Kevin Trevellyan reports for Yellowstone Public Radio in Billings, Montana, where he focuses on the Montana statehouse. An audio journalist interested in public policy and natural resource issues, Trevellyan didn’t understand the power of auditory storytelling—and hearing sources express themselves in their own voice—until beginning a Montana Public Radio internship last year after enrolling in the University of Montana’s environmental journalism master’s program. (He receives his degree in 2020.) Before that Trevellyan reported for the Post Register daily newspaper in Idaho Falls, Idaho, writing about everything from food baskets to radioactive waste. He learned the importance of local journalism while watching eastern Idaho’s depleted news outlets struggle to cover big issues and hold local decision-makers accountable. Trevellyan grew up in San Diego and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Oregon with a B.S. in journalism.  

Juanpablo Ramirez

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco covers substandard housing and police-community relations for WNIJ Radio in Illinois. An audio producer and journalist based out of Chicago, Ramirez-Franco has been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, he produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois, He is a graduate of Knox College.

Sarah Kim

Sarah Y. Kim reports for WYPR in Baltimore, where she focuses on the city’s housing and health crisis. Kim has spent her senior year at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore as editor-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, one of the oldest student newspapers in the country. It was through The News-Letter that Sarah fell in love with Baltimore and decided to pursue a career in local journalism. After becoming a staff writer in 2017, she served as news editor and opinions editor. Sarah is also a paid freelance researcher for Baltimore magazine and was an editorial intern there in the summer of 2018. Though born in Walnut Creek, California, Sarah grew up in South Korea for over 12 years, where she developed a passion for storytelling. She is an avid writer of fiction and poetry and graduates this spring with a B.A. in creative writing and international studies. Sarah is also an intern at the Baltimore division of international nonprofit Impact Hub, where she continues to expand her growing network of local entrepreneurs, activists and community members. She is excited to continue her career in journalism in Baltimore, the city she calls home.  

Chris Welter

Chris Welter reports for WYSO, the NPR station covering the greater Dayton, Ohio, area where he focuses on climate change and its impact on southwest Ohio and explores possible solutions. Welter is an Ohio lifer. He will graduate with a self-designed degree in environmental sciences from Antioch College in June 2020. He did boots-on-the-ground conservation work at farms and conducted extensive policy research on land-use issues in southwest Ohio as a Miller Fellow with the non-profit organization, Tecumseh Land Trust. He was editor-in-chief of Antioch College’s independent community newspaper, The Record. He also worked as a paralegal at a criminal defense firm in Chicago and a bankruptcy center in Philadelphia through the college’scooperative education department. He is originally from Columbus, Ohio. Chris has two cats, Beaver and Franklin, and is an avid disc golfer playing in tournaments across the country.