2022-2023

Gabriela Szymanowska

Gabriela Szymanowska reports on the judicial system for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Prior to this, she covered breaking news and public safety for the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi. Born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, she holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and electronic media from The University of Tennessee, where she was editor-in-chief of The Daily Beacon, the student paper. Szymanowska earned top honors for features/hard news photography at the 2020 Southeastern Journalism Conference on-site competition. As a fellow in the Carnegie-Knight News21 investigative program, Szymanowska, along with 34 other journalists, investigated juvenile justice in America in the multimedia reporting project, “Kids Imprisoned.” Their work won the 2021 Robert F. Kennedy College Journalism Award. Beyond reporting, she’s passionate about photography and capturing the everyday, ordinary moments of people’s lives.

James Hanlon

James Hanlon reports for The Spokesman-Review, based in Spokane, Washington, covering rural counties in eastern Washington and the Idaho Panhandle. Previously, Hanlon reported for The Oxford Leader in Oxford, Michigan. He grew up in Anchorage, Alaska and Snowflake, Arizona, and he holds bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and film and media studies from Arizona State University. After college, Hanlon spent three years living in a Japanese village of 700 people, teaching English and writing about revitalization projects in the countryside for a local nonprofit. His work has also appeared in Kyoto Journal, Tokyo Cheapo and Asia Matters for America by the East-West Center.

Joshua Rosenberg

Joshua Rosenberg covers the environmental beat for The Lens, a nonprofit digital newsroom based in New Orleans, where he reports on storm surges, hurricanes, and the continuing disappearance of wetlands. Prior to joining The Lens, Rosenberg reported on federal tax policy for the legal newswire Law360, tracking down stories in the halls of Congress before moving into a more features-oriented role. As a 2014 Teach For America corps member, he taught high school history in Indianapolis. Rosenberg hails from Roxbury, New Jersey, and he earned his undergraduate degree in history and secondary education from William Paterson University, and holds a master’s degree in public affairs from Brown University.

Lindiwe Vilakazi

Lindiwe Vilakazi reports for The Washington Informer, a multimedia news organization serving African Americans in the metro Washington, D.C. area. Previously, she was a contributing editor at Acumen Magazine, a Washington-based publication featuring investigative stories that examine eugenics, African-American history, social movements and popular culture. Vilakazi says that she is an investigative journalist whose work highlights the lives and stories of those groups of people who often go unnoticed in the mainstream news. Her freelance work has appeared in several digital and print publications.

Michael Livingston

Michael Livingston covers four rural counties in northern Michigan for Michigan’s Interlochen Public Radio and the Traverse City Record-Eagle. A recent graduate of Central Michigan University with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and international relations, Livingston was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, Central Michigan Life, and won multiple awards with the rest of his staff. He has interned at WCMU Public Radio/Michigan newspaper collaborations.

Rose Wong

Rose Wong covers early childhood education for The Oregonian/OregonLive in Portland. Wong graduated from Duke University, where she was senior editor of the student paper, The Chronicle. In 2020, she won top honors in the university’s Melcher Family Award for Excellence in Student Journalism, which recognized her series exposing a pattern of misdiagnoses and inadequate care at the Duke Student Health Center. The reported columns and Wong’s personal story of misdiagnosis were recognized in a Washington Post investigation on college health centers across the country. As a college intern for the Tampa Bay Times, Wong covered breaking news, while reporting on the outbreak of COVID-19 cases in the region’s nursing homes and the operational failures that enabled it. Wong speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin, and is from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Tandy Lau

Tandy Lau reports on public safety for the New York Amsterdam News in the historic Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem. Before joining Report for America, Lau was down the street working on his master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University, and reporting on race, sports and workers’ rights as a student journalist. He hails from Los Angeles, where he began working in minority press as a regular contributor to Character Media, an Asian American entertainment magazine. When he’s not writing or reporting, Lau can be found watching boxing and struggling to keep his houseplants alive.

Bennet Goldstein

Bennet Goldstein reports on water and agriculture as Wisconsin Watch’s Report for America representative on the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk—a collaborative reporting network across the Basin. Before this, Goldstein was on the breaking news team at the Omaha World Herald in Nebraska. He has spent most of his career at daily papers in Iowa, including the Dubuque Telegraph Herald. Goldstein’s work has garnered awards, including the Associated Press Media Editors award for an explanatory feature about a police shooting in rural Wisconsin, and an Iowa Newspaper Association award for a series that detailed the impacts of the loss of social safety net programs on Dubuque’s Marshallese community. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Connor Giffin

Connor Giffin covers climate change and environmental issues in Louisville, Kentucky, for the Courier-Journal as the Report for America representative on the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk—a collaborative reporting network across the Basin. While earning his bachelor’s degree at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Giffin contributed to “Lost on the Frontline,” an award-winning collaborative project from Kaiser Health News and The Guardian documenting the deaths of frontline health care workers during the pandemic. He also reported on state government and the environment for the Columbia Missourian, the university’s community paper.

Gabriella Paul

Gabriella Paul is a journalist at WUSF Public Media, the NPR affiliate in Tampa, Florida, reporting on the people living paycheck to paycheck in the area. Previously, Paul was the digital news editor for WUFT public radio in Gainesville, Florida. Born in Colorado, she grew up in the Tampa Bay region and holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in history from the University of Florida. While there, Paul earned two Sunshine State Awards from the Society for Professional Journalism, and co-authored a report on the university’s racial legacies. As a fellow for the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, Paul contributed to an award-winning investigative podcast, “Why Don’t We Know?”