2022-2023

Alexa Krupp

Lexi Krupp covers Science and Health for Vermont Public Radio, with a focus on the challenges and opportunities in rural communities. She also contributes to coverage of statewide issues. Krupp was a science reporter for Interlochen Public Radio in northern Michigan, where she produced a podcast about the land, water and inhabitants of the upper Great Lakes' area. Her work has appeared on All Things Considered, and as a freelancer, in Audubon, Popular Science, Science Vs, VICE, and Medscape. Krupp was a teacher and once spent a summer tracking mountain goats for the U.S. Forest Service. She holds a master's degree in journalism from New York University and a bachelor's in biology from Dartmouth College.

Elena Bruess

Elena Bruess covers drinking water issues and the environment for the San Antonio Express-News, focusing on development in Texas Hill country and the Edwards Aquifer. Previously, Bruess reported on national and international freshwater issues for Circle of Blue, a nonprofit environmental news organization. As a 2020 reporting fellow for the Pulitzer Center, she covered the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on a primarily Latino neighborhood in Chicago. Bruess has reported on culture, comedy and food as a freelancer. She grew up in Iowa and Greece, and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa's undergraduate writing program. Bruess earned a master's from the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, where she was awarded the Comer scholarship for environmental reporting.

Laura Onyeneho

Laura Onyeneho reports for the Houston Defender Network, covering the city's education system as it relates to African American children. Onyeneho is a multimedia journalist and has reported on social, cultural, lifestyle and community news. As an independent journalist, her coverage of issues that impact Black communities has been published online at The Crisis, Radiant Health, 21Ninety, Her Agenda and Afroelle Magazine. In 2019, she was a multimedia producer for the Boston Herald, and has worked as a news associate at Boston's WBZ-TV, a CBS station. Onyeneho earned her master's degree in broadcast journalism at Emerson College, and her bachelor's at Curry College. She's from Lowell, Massachusetts.

Sam González Kelly

Sam González Kelly is a metro reporter at the Houston Chronicle, focusing on communities of color and issues most affecting historically marginalized people. Prior to this, Kelly spent two years on the breaking news desk of the Chicago Sun-Times, his hometown paper, covering everything from crime and weather to police violence and social justice movements, in addition to pitching and writing features on music, labor, education and sports. After graduating from Pomona College in 2018, where he majored in media studies and minored in music, Kelly reported on arts and culture in Chicago’s West Side for Free Spirit Media. He is a native Spanish speaker who enjoys reporting in Spanish, especially on stories where sources may otherwise be overlooked due to a perceived language barrier.

Alejandro Figueroa

Alejandro Figueroa reports for WYSO, the NPR affiliate station in Dayton, Ohio. He covers food insecurity in southwest Ohio, particularly the efforts by local organizations and government agencies to address a problem that has increased dramatically since the pandemic started. Figueroa was born in a small coastal town in Puerto Rico and in 2014 he and his family moved to Columbus, Ohio. He is a 2021 graduate of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, and while there he reported for The New Political, a student-run publication focused on politics and government. Figueroa covered news at the campus and city level, with a special interest in city government and the coal industry in southeast Ohio. As an intern for Ohio Magazine, he reported on great travel destinations in the state.

Alixel Cabrera

Alixel Cabrera covers government accountability in West Valley City for The Salt Lake Tribune, a nonprofit newspaper in Salt Lake City, Utah. Cabrera is a Venezuelan journalist who has reported on the economy, energy, food and culture for newspapers and websites in Venezuela and the U.S., including The Salt Lake Tribune and Rest of World, an international nonprofit journalism organization. She has also reported for La Verdad and Cronica Uno, where she covered Maracaibo, her hometown and one of the cities most affected by blackouts and food shortages in Venezuela. Cabrera earned her master's degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2020. She was a Maria Moors Cabot scholar and the recipient of a Jack R. Howard fellowship in international journalism.

Erin Glynn

Erin Glynn reports for The Cincinnati Enquirer, focusing on government accountability in three suburban counties. Before coming to The Enquirer, Glynn covered city government and business for the Manistee News Advocate in Michigan. This former news editor of The Miami Student, the student-run paper at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, studied Mandarin Chinese at Beijing University as part of a study-abroad program, and reported on the expatriate experience in Beijing. When she returned to Ohio, Glynn interned for The Enquirer, and also did an internship at Women of Cincy, a nonprofit that's focused on uplifting women through storytelling. Glynn graduated from Miami in 2020 with degrees in journalism and global politics.

Laura Brache

Laura Brache is a reporter for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, covering the effects of changing demographics on minority communities across the region. Brache spent her first year as a RFA corps member in Charlotte, North Carolina covering immigration and the Latino community for both WFAE public radio and La Noticia, a Spanish-language paper. She is a multilingual, multimedia journalist from North Carolina who was born in Massachusetts and raised in the Dominican Republic. Brache led the production of “Believe It, Do It, Earn It,” an award-winning documentary about the twice-undefeated field hockey team at her alma mater, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A recipient of the Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for social media, Brache was part of the news team at WFMY-TV in Greensboro that won for its bilingual coverage of a series of severe weather events. She holds a master’s degree from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Savannah Tryens-Fernandes

Savannah Tryens-Fernandes reports on child wellness and mental health for the Alabama Education Lab, part of AL.com, a site devoted to Alabama news and based in Birmingham. Tryens-Fernandes earned her master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2021, where she was a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and worked on the “Missing Them” project for The City, a nonprofit news site in New York City, documenting the impact of COVID-19 in vulnerable New York communities. Prior to this, Tryens-Fernandes worked at Human Rights Watch, covering xenophobic violence in South Africa. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and government from Villanova University and is fluent in French.

Annie Rosenthal

Annie Rosenthal is the border reporter at Marfa Public Radio, which is based in Marfa, Texas. In 2020, as a Yale Parker Huang Fellow focused on migration and criminal justice and fluent in Spanish, Rosenthal helped to produce a bilingual radio show, tracked COVID deaths in U.S. prisons, and freelanced for publications like Politico Magazine and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She previously covered rural Alaskan life for the Homer News, the local paper in “the halibut fishing capital of the world,” and reported on immigration and the legal system as an intern at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Rosenthal received her B.A. from Yale University, where she was editor-in-chief of The New Journal, a long-form magazine about New Haven. Her thesis reporting on the search for missing migrants in Arizona earned her a 2020 Overseas Press Club Scholar Award and Yale's John Hersey Prize for journalism. Her hometown is Washington, D.C.