2021-2022

Jacob Steimer

Jacob Steimer reports on poverty, power and public policy for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit digital newsroom in Memphis, Tennessee. Before this, Steimer reported for the Memphis Business Journal for more than four years, regularly scooping the competition. He says that his best stories included an investigation into a low income housing program and an in-depth look at why so few Memphis commercial real estate agents are Black, why that matters and how it could change. While studying journalism and economics at the University of Missouri, he was a reporter and editor for the Columbia Missourian, the school’s community paper, and earned awards from the Missouri Press Association. Steimer has interned at The Charlotte Observer and WVLT-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. An avid sports fan and a history enthusiast, he grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Lionel Ramos

Lionel Ramos covers race and inequity for Oklahoma Watch, a nonprofit investigative news outlet in Oklahoma City. Ramos recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from Texas State University, where he reported for The University Star, covering Black students' perspectives on the voting process ahead of the 2020 election, and more. While earning his associate degree at San Antonio College, Ramos wrote for The Ranger, a student publication, including a story about a statistics class that discovered misleading language explaining the odds of winning the Texas lottery, which led to the lottery commission changing the wording. As the stats professor told Ramos in an interview: “Lottery is government; you ought to have truth in government.” Born into a circus family, Ramos has traveled all over the U.S., Mexico and Canada and is a first-generation American.

Phoebe Taylor-Vuolo

Phoebe Taylor-Vuolo reports for WSKG, an NPR affiliate in Binghamton, New York, covering rural health care in the southern part of the state. She grew up in Brooklyn and is a fourth generation Brooklynite. Before joining WSKG, Taylor-Vuolo freelanced for Documented, a nonprofit news site that focuses on New York City’s immigrant communities and policies that affect them. She reported on the city’s immigration court system and explored immigration issues and conditions in detention centers and county jails. Taylor-Vuolo holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and creative writing from Baruch College, where she investigated the use of video teleconferencing in immigration court hearings in a piece that was published by Gothamist, a website. She currently lives in Delaware County, New York and when she’s not writing and reporting she’s painting houses, growing vegetables, and taking care of her chickens.

Tash Kimmell

Natasha “Tash” Kimmell is an audio and photojournalist for KCAW, a nonprofit, noncommercial community radio station in Sitka, Alaska. Prior to this, Kimmell was a photo intern with the news site CalMatters, covering COVID-19, housing, education and other socio-political issues affecting Californians. As a production intern, she reported on the intersection of food and social justice for “Meat and Three,” the flagship podcast of the Heritage Radio Network. Kimmell holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Oregon, where she was a staff writer and photographer for Ethos, a student-run publication, and a DJ at the campus radio station KWVA. Her hometown is Pengrove, California.

Arden Barnes

Arden Barnes is a visual journalist with the Herald and News in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where she focuses on covering the Klamath Project, a historic dam removal project, and its environmental and community impact. Before this, Barnes was a freelance photojournalist and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Lexington Herald-Leader and USA Today. Born in Harrison County, Kentucky, Barnes was photo editor and then art director of the Kentucky Kernel, the student newspaper at the University of Kentucky. In 2018, Barnes was awarded the Reinke Grant for visual storytelling and participated in a project to help create a visual archive of daily life in Harrison County. Her photography earned her a spot in The Eddie Adams Workshop and multiple awards, including honors from the National Press Photographers Association and the Kentucky News Photographers Association.

Damakant Jayshi

Damakant Jayshi covers Hmong and other immigrants from Southeast Asia for Wisconsin's Wausau Pilot & Review, a nonprofit digital news organization with a focus on government accountability. This self-described accidental journalist is passionate about journalism's watchdog role, and feels there's a lot of opportunity for nuanced coverage of immigrants and refugees. As a reporter and an editor for two national dailies in Nepal, The Kathmandu Post and MyRepublica, a site he helped launch, and as special correspondent for The Hindu, a paper in India, Damakant has covered earthquakes, unequal citizenship for women in Nepal, human rights, insurgency, refugees, politics, parliament, foreign affairs and civil aviation. He is the founder of South Asia Check, a fact-checking news site that promotes transparency and accountability in politics and media. Jayshi is a 2007 Nieman fellow.

Jasmin Herrera

Jasmin Herrera reports on affordable housing in Charlotte, North Carolina for La Noticia, the state’s largest Spanish-language paper. Herrera is a trilingual Mexican American journalist born in California and raised in North Carolina. She earned an associate degree at Central Piedmont Community College and holds a bachelor’s in media and journalism with a minor in social and economic justice from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As part of a multimedia team project covering the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and its devastating effects on Puerto Rico and its people, Herrera reported on the island’s fallen electrical grid and helped the team win the Online Journalism Awards’ top honor for student journalism in 2018 and earn second place in the Society of Environmental Journalists’ student awards. The judges deemed this multimedia project “a superior example of the potential of modern journalism.” Herrera has also interned with her local NPR affiliate and Creative Loafing Charlotte.

Liz Donovan

Liz Donovan reports for City Limits, a nonprofit investigative news site based in New York City. She covers climate change and its implications for the city, including the disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities. Previously, as a fellow for the Global Migration Project, Donovan investigated the exploitation of immigrant women in a health care workforce. For over a decade she worked as a magazine editor, then earned her master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. As an Émile Boutmy scholar, Donovan earned a master's at the Sciences Po Journalism School in Paris in 2020. There, she interned on the climate and environment desk at Agence France-Presse and reported on France's migrant population. Her freelance work has been published in The Intercept, Documented, and The Week. In the summer she has taught reporting and editing to high school students at The School of The New York Times.

Rebecca Griesbach

Rebecca Griesbach covers the educational opportunity gap in Birmingham, Alabama, for AL.com, which reports on Alabama news. Prior to joining AL, Griesbach tracked and reported on COVID-19 cases in correctional facilities for The New York Times, and gathered election data for OpenElections.net. Her journalism career started when she joined her high school newspaper as a hopeful comics artist in the 10th grade. There, she worked with ProPublica journalists to tell the story of school segregation in her hometown of Tuscaloosa. As a college intern for Chalkbeat, Griesbach covered education history, equity and access across Alabama and in Memphis. She holds a master's degree in gender and race studies from The University of Alabama, where she earned her bachelor's in journalism and was editor-in-chief of The Crimson White, the student newspaper.

Theo Greenly

Theo Greenly is a radio reporter at KUCB, a public station in Unalaska, Alaska, where he covers the Eastern Aleutian Islands. Before joining KUCB, Greenly interned at NPR, working on long-form podcasts like “Invisibilia” and “Louder Than A Riot.” As an independent journalist, he has written about homelessness and racial inequality for the Santa Monica Daily Press, and has produced stories for several NPR-affiliated stations around the country. He helped cover the 2018 midterm elections as an intern at KCRW public radio in Santa Monica, California. Greenly loves to tell stories at “The Moth,” and you can hear him making fun of himself on an episode of “This American Life.” He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studied creative writing, and he's a proud graduate of the Transom Story Workshop. His hometown is Los Angeles.