2021-2022

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.

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.

Sara Cline

Sara Cline reports for The Associated Press, covering the Oregon Legislature and state government, with a special focus on the tech boom and the crisis in housing affordability. Cline covered City Hall and homelessness at the San Antonio Express-News through the Hearst Fellowship Program. During her first year in the program, she covered breaking news and crime for the Times Union in Albany, New York. There, she also had a column. Prior to the fellowship, Cline worked at the Brockton Enterprise and Taunton Daily Gazette, both in Massachusetts, as a general assignment reporter. She has also contributed to newspapers and magazines in Arizona, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She has won New England Newspaper & Press Association awards in the Sports Column and Racial and Ethnic Issues categories. Cline graduated from the University of Arizona with a B.A. in journalism. During her time at university, she also studied anthropology and participated in an archaeological dig in Italy.

Keren Carrión

Keren Carrión reports for KERA in Dallas as well as The Texas Newsroom, a journalism collaboration among the public radio stations of Texas and NPR. A visual bilingual journalist, originally from Puerto Rico, she’ll bring her intelligence and camera to her work covering communities around Dallas. Carrión graduated from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. with a Bachelor’s in fine arts and spent four years gaining reporting experience in the nation’s Capital. Carrión recently worked with CNN as a video editor in Atlanta, Georgia, where she edited and produced videos for on-air and the network’s digital platforms. She has previously interned with CNN, the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, USA Today, Univision, and The Hill. Carrión is an alumnus of the 2019 New York Portfolio Review, the Eddie Adams Workshop XXXI, and the 2019 Momenta Photo Workshop Project Puerto Rico.

PrincessSafiya Byers

PrincessSafiya Byers is a reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service which focuses on low-income minority residents of the Wisconsin city. Her wide-ranging beat covers health, minority businesses, faith, jobs, housing and transportation. A proud Milwaukee native, Byers is a 2020 graduate of Marquette University, the Catholic university in Milwaukee. She has had internships with the Milwaukee Community Journal, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service itself. Byers has also co-produced a community podcast and written for community newsletters. In 2018, she was awarded the Bucks Youth Leader award for community service and leadership. In addition to her journalism, Byers has been working for the non-profit children and family center, COA Youth and Families Center, which began in 1906 as the Children’s Outing Association.

Madeline Burakoff

Madeline Burakoff covers health care for Spectrum Milwaukee, part of Spectrum Networks, which brings hyperlocal content to audiences through multimedia and long-form journalism. Burakoff has previously worked as an intern for CNN’s Southeast Bureau, focusing on immigration and politics. As an intern at Smithsonian magazine, she wrote a wide variety of stories on science, environment, history and culture, including features on the collapse of global biodiversity and the physical impact of space travel on astronauts. Burakoff received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism with a specialization in science reporting and a minor in Spanish, including a semester at Universidad del Salvador/Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At The Daily Northwestern, the campus newspaper, she was a managing editor and helped lead award-winning coverage of the school and its administration. She co-authored an account of a campus gun scare that won first place for a News Story from the Illinois College Press Association (ICPA). Burakoff is a Southern California native.  

Paul Braun

Paul Braun reports for WRKF and WWNO, the NPR member stations in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where he covers the Louisiana Legislature. His coverage of Louisiana politics and policy as the interim capital access reporter for the stations has aired on national programs, including All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Here & Now. Braun continues reporting in the same capacity as a Report for America corps member. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication, where he covered the Louisiana Legislature and the criminal justice system as a member of the Manship School News Service. Braun joined WRKF as an intern in February 2019 and took over as the station’s full-time political reporter six weeks before Louisiana’s gubernatorial primary. He previously worked as an intern at The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, and as a contributing writer and radio reporter for The Daily Reveille, LSU’s student-run newspaper.

John Boyle

John Boyle reports for WFPL News Louisville where he covers the local civics beat—from Census outcomes to the democratic process and elections to how local government works. The reporting provides the historical context of voting law, districting and civil rights. Boyle has spent the past year as a reporter for the News and Tribune, an Indiana publication, covering Clark and Floyd counties in the southern part of the state. In that time, he focused on the operations of local governing bodies, ranging from those of the smallest towns to the largest cities. His first tenure at the newspaper lasted from 2016 to 2017, serving as the education reporter during school board shakeups and major referenda. In between stints, Boyle took a deep dive into the world of health care as an investigative reporter at Berkeley Research Group in New York City. His interest in reporting started at Indiana University Southeast, where he wrote for a number of magazines and the student newspaper, the Horizon.

Devna Bose

Devna Bose reports for The Charlotte Observer where she focuses on underserved, underreported communities including the poor, minorities, immigrants and those who identify as LGBTQ. Bose worked as an education reporter in Newark for Chalkbeat during her first year of service for Report for America. She has also worked as a multimedia journalist for newspapers across Mississippi. She interned at the Neshoba Democrat, Jackson Free Press, Meridian Star and Oxford Eagle. She has covered city government, mental health, the LGBTQ community and other issues. She attended the University of Mississippi, where she served as Managing Editor of the student-run publication, The Daily Mississippian. She has won several awards for her feature writing, photography and design from the Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists, Southeastern Journalism Conference and the Mississippi Press Association.