2022-2023

Aaliyah Bowden

Aaliyah Bowden covers healthcare for The Charlotte Post, which reports on the African American community in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bowden interned at North Carolina Health News, a nonprofit news organization, during the peak of the pandemic, reporting on health issues across the state. Her story on food handlers and farmers testing positive for the coronavirus was republished in The Siasat Daily in Hyderabad, India. Bowden won an award for her story on North Carolina's historically Black colleges and universities keeping COVID-19 cases low during the fall 2020 semester. As a student at North Carolina Central University, she was the co-editor of the Campus Echo, reporting breaking news and feature stories, and scoring interviews with fashion designer Dapper Dan and singer and actress Keke Palmer. Bowden, from Jacksonville, North Carolina, aspires to start a health magazine solely devoted to covering the health of Black women.

Dante Miller

Dante Miller reports for WFAE as a member of a Race & Equity team that will cover topics affecting communities of color, including economic mobility, race and justice, health disparities, police reform, housing, environmental inequality, etc. through audio and text for digital and radio audiences. Miller knows the area well. She covered community-based stories during her time as a reporter and freelancer for QCityMetro, Charlotte’s leading digital platform for the African-American community. She was the Union County Reporter for Charlotte Media Group, the owners of Union County Weekly, South Charlotte Weekly, and Matthews Mint Hill Weekly. Miller is a proud alumna of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and received her Bachelor's of Science in journalism and mass communications in August 2017. As a student, she served as the first Yard Section Editor for her university newspaper, which focused on hard and campus news stories. During her free time, Miller enjoys reading, singing and writing poetry. She's a military brat who was born in Arlington, Texas, but raised in Wilson, North Carolina.

Kayla Renie

Kayla Renie is a photojournalist covering communities of color for the Athens Banner-Herald in Athens, Georgia. Previously, she was a photographer for the Jackson Hole News & Guide in Jackson, Wyoming. Born and raised in the Southeast, Renie was photo editor of The Red & Black, the student-run website and weekly paper at the University of Georgia. Her internships have taken her to Texas and Indiana, where she depicted childhood in rural communities and the pandemic's initial effect on a county. As an intern for The Muskegon Chronicle in Michigan, she built relationships within the community that enabled her to pursue more in-depth projects, spurring an interest in documenting family and gender dynamics and women's health issues. Renie's goal is to use the documenting of everyday moments as a way to help people to better understand what's going on in their communities and with each other.

Rose Varela

Rose Monique Varela Henriquez reports for El Nuevo Herald in Miami, focusing on the Spanish-speaking immigrant communities of South Florida. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Varela Henriquez is a bilingual multimedia journalist with experience covering social justice issues and economic disparities. She interned at the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo in Puerto Rico, where her in-depth investigation uncovered how the island’s government halted a plan meant to assist homeless people during the pandemic. She also created data visualizations and carried out fact-checks on Puerto Rico’s governor candidate for the 2020 election. While working for Pulso Estudiantil, a student-run news site at the University of Puerto Rico, Varela Henriquez developed her photojournalism skills, and she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, magna cum laude, in 2020.

Charlie Wolfson

Charlie Wolfson is a local government accountability reporter at PublicSource, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to public service reporting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, his hometown. Wolfson focuses on policy, the impact of government programs and election procedure and access. For three years he reported for The Boston Globe, both while earning his bachelor’s degree in journalism at Northeastern University and after he graduated in 2020. Wolfson was a reporter and editor at The Huntington News, Northeastern’s student paper, including a term as editor-in-chief and an intense several months covering the university’s response to the early days of the pandemic. In early 2021 he interned at the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

Alex Driehaus

Alex Driehaus is a photojournalist for the Valley News in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. Previously, Driehaus worked at the Naples Daily News in Naples, Florida, where she covered community stories, including migrant students facing education challenges during the pandemic and python hunters in the Everglades. Before moving to the Sunshine State, she interned at The Virginian-Pilot, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Patriot-News. Driehaus enjoys working in situations where she is able to spend time getting to know the people she photographs and exploring their lives and relationships visually. Driehaus grew up in Cincinnati, and is a graduate of Ohio University's School of Visual Communication. Her photography earned her a spot at The Eddie Adams Workshop in 2019.

Dustin Bleizeffer

Dustin Bleizeffer covers the energy beat for WyoFile, a nonprofit public-interest news website based in Lander, Wyoming that reports on the state's people, places, and policies. Bleizeffer has worked as a coal miner, an oilfield mechanic, a reporter and editor primarily covering Wyoming's energy industry, and a freelancer writing about the environment and rural life. Most recently he co-authored the “Reckoning in Coal Country” investigative series, published on WyoFile, the Energy News Network site, and as a book. Bleizeffer was communications director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council, and beginning in 2010, he served as WyoFile's editor-in-chief for six years. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and communications from the University of Wyoming, and as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, he examined how emerging technology can help reinvigorate news and democracy in the American West. Bleizeffer lives in Casper, Wyoming.

Kyra Miles

Kyra Miles is an education reporter for WBHM, the listener-supported station of the University of Alabama in Birmingham. This radio reporter from Greenville, North Carolina has a passion for telling stories that uplift diverse communities. As a student at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Miles was a reporter and producer for Carolina Connection, the radio newscast created by students in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Notably, one program she worked on received the 2020 Student Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in audio newscast. A multimedia journalist, Miles covered arts and culture for The Daily Tar Heel, the student paper at UNC, and interned at a news website for faculty and staff. Miles graduated with a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism in 2021.

Sam Wilson

Samuel Wilson is a visual journalist covering rural Montana for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He has worked most recently as a freelance photographer based in Portland, Oregon, his hometown, and previously in southeast Alaska, while also independently producing short and full-length documentaries. Wilson interned at several community newspapers around the country after graduating from the University of Montana, where he was the multimedia editor for the student publication, the Montana Kaimin, and took first place in the Hearst National Multimedia Championship. Wilson considers the mountains of the Pacific Northwest to be home.

Greta Jochem

Greta Jochem reports for The Berkshire Eagle, a daily publication based in Pittsfield and serving western Massachusetts. She covers North Adams, and contributes to investigations. Jochem got her start in local news by reporting on Northampton, Massachusetts for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, where she covered topics like growing homelessness, city politics, and LGBTQ issues. Jochem is a graduate of Tufts University where she was an editor of the student magazine, the Tufts Observer. As a fellow at Grist, a nonprofit news organization devoted to covering climate solutions, she reported on climate change, and has written about science as an NPR intern. Jochem grew up in Wisconsin and outside of work, she can be found biking.