2020-2021

Mara Abbott

Mara is an Olympic-athlete-turned-journalist. As a freelance journalist in Colorado, she has been published in The Wall Street Journal, espnW, The Colorado Independent, Runner’s World, and Westword. For her hometown paper, Boulder’s Daily Camera, she reported on everything from agricultural policy to the influence of local political advocacy groups. She has won multiple Colorado Associated Press Awards. Before her career in journalism, she was a professional cyclist — the two-time U.S. National Champion, winner of women’s Giro d’Italia and a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team where she placed fourth.

Christopher Aadland

Christopher Aadland covers Native American issues, Covid-19 fallout and the Montana Legislature for the Montana Free Press, an investigative news outlet in Helena, Montana. Aadland spent his first year as a Report for America corps member in Wyoming reporting on the Wind River Reservation for the Casper Star-Tribune. Chris and a colleague won a Wyoming Press Association Pacemaker award for a story they did revealing a dark money lobbying effort by one of the state’s tribes. Chris has also worked at the Wisconsin State Journal, where he covered public safety, city government, breaking news and other subjects. As a student at the University of Minnesota, he was the managing editor of the award-winning, student-run Minnesota Daily and a student reporter for the Twin Cities newspaper, the StarTribune. Chris, whose father is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, started learning the Ojibwe language while at the University of Minnesota and developed a desire to contribute to better, more nuanced coverage of Indian Country as a journalist.