2022-2023

Clara Bates

Clara Bates reports on gaps in the social safety net for the Missouri Independent, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism. A recent graduate of Harvard University with a concentration in social studies, she also studied Russian and spent a summer in Moscow. Bates has written for Fifteen Minutes—the weekly magazine of The Harvard Crimson student paper— about a controversial congressional orientation and an early 20th-century class war among students. As an intern for Nevada Current, she wrote about laid-off convention workers and unregulated funeral homes, and while reporting on an anti-union hiring fair, Bates was ejected from a casino.

Gabriel Poblete

Gabriel Poblete covers New York state agencies for The City, a nonprofit digital news outlet dedicated to accountability reporting. Previously, he was the city reporter for Miami Today, reported on education in New Mexico for the Las Vegas Optic, was a junior reporter at The Real Deal, and interned at Crain’s and City & State. Poblete was born in Miami and earned a master’s degree at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

James Pollard

James Pollard covers state government and inequality for The Associated Press in Columbia, South Carolina. Before joining the Report for America corps, he earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science at Northwestern University. There, he served as managing editor of The Daily Northwestern and worked as a research assistant in the political science department. Pollard has reported on Texas politics and policy as a fellow with The Texas Tribune, interned on the NBCUniversal digital team, and covered his hometown of St. Louis as an intern with the Riverfront Times. In his free time, Pollard enjoys playing guitar, cooking and hiking.

Josh Irvine

Joshua Irvine reports on poverty for the Telegraph Herald in Dubuque, Iowa. A recent graduate of Northwestern University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he’s lived in a few places but will tell you that he grew up outside Chicago. Irvine was a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune’s suburban publications, covering municipal government and local school boards. He has reported for Windy City Times, which serves the LGBTQ community, and was a copy editing intern at the Tampa Bay Times.

Leto Sapunar

Leto Sapunar is a business and tech reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, a nonprofit newspaper in Salt Lake City, Utah. Previously, he freelanced for Popular Science, Scientific American, Inverse and Retraction Watch, among other outlets, covering physics, space and science accountability. Sapunar’s work resulted in the retraction of numerous flawed scientific papers and caused a senior faculty member accused of misconduct to step down from his chair position. During Sapunar’s studies, he was a fellow with Inside Climate News and an intern with Retraction Watch and Alpinist Magazine. He earned his master’s in science journalism from New York University and his bachelor’s in physics from Oregon State University. An avid rock climber, Sapunar says that he speaks French and just enough Russian to be offensive. As a former science camp teacher, he’s always happy to look through a telescope and answer questions about space.

Michael Indriolo

Michael Indriolo is a multimedia journalist at Flint Beat, a digital publication in Flint, Michigan. Before this, Indriolo worked at The Land, a Cleveland-based nonprofit newsroom, spearheading coverage of Cleveland’s historic 2021 mayoral election and health equity. He began his career at The Portager, which serves Portage County, Ohio, investigating how calls for racial equity in the wake of George Floyd’s murder clashed with the status quo in rural northeast Ohio. Indriolo says that growing up the son of a Lebanese refugee and a parent born in a small town in America left him ethnically ambiguous while offering him unique insights into what being an American means, and if it weren’t for violence ripping through Lebanon in the ‘70s, most of his family wouldn’t be in America. That’s what he seeks to understand through journalism: how violence intersects with communities’ and individuals’ pursuits of the American dream.

Riley Board

Riley Board covers rural communities on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula for KDLL public radio, an NPR affiliate serving the central Kenai Peninsula. A recent graduate of Middlebury College, where she studied linguistics, English literature and German, Board was editor-in-chief of The Middlebury Campus, the student newspaper, and completed work as a Kellogg Fellow, doing independent linguistics research. She has interned at the Burlington Free Press, covering the early days of the pandemic’s effects on Vermont communities, and at Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife, where she wrote about culture and folklife in Washington D.C. and beyond. Board hails from Sarasota, Florida.

Srishti Prabha

Srishti Prabha is an education reporter for The Observer, which serves the Black community in Sacramento, California, and for CapRadio, an NPR station in Sacramento. Before joining Report for America, Prabha was the managing editor of India Currents, a nonprofit magazine for the Bay Area community, covering the intersection of immigration, cultural identity, health and more in the South Asian community. Prabha’s first language is Hindi, and Prabha holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Northeastern University. Prabha came to journalism as a Public Allies Fellow working at East Palo Alto Today, addressing the effects of gentrification in East Palo Alto, California. Since then, Prabha has won awards from the San Francisco Press Club and the California News Publishers Association.

Bella Davis

Bella Davis covers Indigenous affairs for New Mexico In Depth, a nonprofit, digital news outlet. She’s based in Albuquerque. Most recently, Davis reported on cannabis, housing, local government and more for the Santa Fe Reporter. She got her start in journalism at her college newspaper, which she joined at the beginning of the pandemic, and primarily covered protests spurred by the police murder of George Floyd. A graduate of the University of New Mexico with a degree in journalism, Davis was born in Eureka, California, grew up in central New Mexico, and is a Yurok tribal member.

Colleen Cronin

Colleen Cronin covers rural communities in Rhode Island for ecoRI News, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on environmental and social justice issues. Prior to joining ecoRI, Cronin worked as a digital producer and metro correspondent at The Boston Globe, writing education stories and breaking news overnight. She’s also worked on a year-long project investigating the opioid epidemic in Rhode Island, freelanced for The New York Times, and interned at People Magazine. Cronin is bilingual and received her bachelor’s degree in English from Brown in 2021, where she covered state and local politics, the college admissions scandal, and the university’s response to COVID-19 for The Brown Daily Herald. She eventually worked her way up to the role of editor-in-chief and president.