2020-2021

Ian Davis-Leonard

Ian Davis-Leonard reports for The Daily Herald in Everett, Washington, and focuses on issues facing the working-class citizens of Snohomish County, including mental health, transportation, education and addiction. Davis-Leonard hails from Everett and spent three years working for the student newspaper at Gonzaga University, a Catholic college in Spokane, Washington. He also has had student summer internships covering local news for Beacon Publishing in Mukilteo, Washington, and The Herald. Davis-Leonard earned praise for his collegiate journalism including winning three Society of Professional Journalism Mark of Excellence awards for news reporting and sports reporting.

Theresa Davis

Theresa worked as the editor of the Kemmerer Gazette in rural Wyoming for two years. Her work on the Bears Ears National Monument controversy in southern Utah earned awards from the National Newspaper Association, the Associated Press of Utah-Idaho-Spokane, the Utah Press Association and the Utah Society of Professional Journalists. Her coverage of the coal mining industry in southwest Wyoming earned awards from the Wyoming Press Association. As a student at Brigham Young University, she was the deputy editor at The Universe, the student-run publication. She grew up in the Texas Hill Country.

Miranda Cyr

Miranda Cyr reports for the Las Cruces Sun-News in Las Cruces, N.M., focusing on the condition of education as well as poverty. She reported for Cronkite News and Cronkite Noticias with Arizona PBS as a Spanish language and health reporter. She interned at Times Media Group in 2019 Tempe, Ariz. where she covered a range of topics for different local publications around the valley. In 2019, she traveled to Lima, Peru to report on the Venezuelan economic crisis that pushed tens of thousands of refugees into the city. Miranda grew up in Phoenix and first took an interest in journalism when she was 17. She graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications in May 2020.

Hannah Critchfield

Hannah Critchfield covers racial disparities in infant and maternal health, women’s health outcomes,  the health of prisoners and gender health for North Carolina Health News. Critchfield previously worked for Phoenix New Times in Arizona, covering immigration and criminal justice in the Grand Canyon state. Her investigative reporting has appeared in The Intercept, VICE, and Documented. A graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she focused on workplace abuse within undocumented communities and received the Melvin Mencher Reporting Award for Superior Reporting and the Fred M. Hechinger Award for Education Journalism for her investigation on the re-hiring of university faculty accused of sexual harassment in 2019. She is a graduate of North Park University in Chicago.

Emma Cotton

Emma Cotton reports for VTDigger, a news publication and watchdog based in Montpelier, Vermont, where she focuses on Southern Vermont, which has been plagued by everything from contaminated drinking water to population decline and opioid abuse. Since 2016, Cotton has been a Vermont based reporter and writer. For the Addison County Independent, she explored the intersection of agriculture and water quality decline in Lake Champlain for a three-part investigative series called “The Giving Stream.” Formerly, she served as assistant editor of Vermont Ski + Ride and Vermont Sports Magazines, where she won “Best Columnist” from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. Her work has also appeared in the  University of Otago’s student publication, Critic Te  Arohi, The St. Pete Catalyst, 5280 Magazine, and The Brandon Reporter. She was the editor-in-chief of Eckerd College’s student publication, The Current, where she won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her coverage of the college’s attempt to change Campus culture surrounding sexual assault. She graduated with Eckerd’s first Bachelor of Science in the Creative Arts collegium after designing her own major in science journalism. Before joining RFA, Cotton toured the country in a homemade campervan.  

Acacia Coronado

Acacia Coronado covers the Texas Legislature and the politics of climate change for The Associated Press. She is a recent graduate from the University of Texas at Austin. Her passion for storytelling led her to a bachelor of journalism degree. Most recently, she covered immigration and human rights as a fellow at The Texas Observer. She also did two semesters at The Texas Tribune as an investigative fellow, covering immigration, the Texas Legislature and criminal justice, and a summer in New York at The Wall Street Journal as a reporting intern with the U.S. News East Coast Bureau. She first fell in love with journalism as a Life and Arts reporter with The Daily Texan, the student newspaper, in 2016. She loves returning to her small-town roots and living her Catholic faith to the fullest.

Brooklynn Cooper

Brooklynn Cooper covers South Dallas for the Dallas Morning News with an emphasis on income inequality, housing, and jobs in this predominantly African-American neighborhood. During her senior year at the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill Cooper, who is fluent in Spanish, wrote on Hispanic/Latino affairs for both The Charlotte Observer as a reporting intern and at Our Chatham, a project to fill news gaps in N.C.’s Chatham County. For the Observer she covered Charlotte, N.C.’s immigration court and, as an intern at The Independent Journal Review, a policy journal in Washington, D.C., she also covered immigration. After spending three years at The Daily Tar Heel, UNC’s independent student newspaper. Cooper spent her last spring covering Venezuelan migration in Medellín, Colombia. Cooper is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. She volunteers with Latino youth in Durham, N.C.

H.L. Comeriato

H.L. Comeriato reports for The Devil Strip, a community-owned, independent news outlet in Akron, Ohio. Comeriato covers health care in the region in its broadest sense from gun violence to immigrants navigating the Medicaid system. Comeriato is a writer, editor and multimedia journalist living and working in Akron, Ohio. Their work includes contributing to TransAkron, a visual storytelling project and comprehensive, educational resource designed to explore the lived realities of trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people living in the Rustbelt. Comeriato is a graduate of the University of Akron Williams Honors College and has interned with the Akron Community Foundation. Currently, they serve on the Board of Directors for the Community AIDS Network/Akron Pride Initiative. Their work has appeared both in print and online.

Rachel Cohen

Rachel worked as an editorial intern at New Hampshire Public Radio, where she produced local stories for broadcast on All Things Considered, and on NPR’s Science Desk, where she reported on food and health. In the last year, she also conducted pre-production research on immigration for the award-winning documentary team, Living on One. She also worked as a volunteer at the Open Door Clinic, which provided migrant farm workers and others with free healthcare. Rachel began her journalism career at the Addison County Independent in Vermont. She’s a graduate of Middlebury College.

Lana Cohen

Lana Cohen reports for The Mendocino Voice in Boonville, California, where she focuses on the effect of environmental regulation on salmon runs, wildfires, the economy and other issues. A reporter from Brooklyn, New York, Cohen covered the environment, conservation and climate politics during fellowships at WhoWhatWhy, an investigative newsroom, and the National Audubon Society. Her work explored everything from natural disasters to water rights to the newest green technology. She previously worked in public health and environmental justice communications with WE ACT for Environmental Justice in Harlem. At Colorado College, Cohen majored in environmental science and concentrated on weather and air quality.