2023-2024

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.

Brooke Schultz

Brooke Schultz is a Statehouse reporter for The Associated Press in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Before joining the AP, she was a digital editor for the Delaware State News, and has covered education for the Newark Post in Newark, Delaware. A graduate of Washington College, Schultz was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, The Elm.

Ellen Heffernan

Ellie Heffernan is Mountain State Spotlight’s community watchdog reporter, based in Charleston, West Virginia.  She is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, where she studied journalism and environmental studies. Ellie has written for several publications in North Carolina, including INDY Week, The Local Reporter, The UNC Institute for the Environment, and The Daily Tar Heel, and was also a MDDC Press Association Reese Cleghorn Intern at The Daily Record in Baltimore, Maryland, for which she was recognized for her reporting on the area's independent music venues. In her spare time, she likes reading, playing her clarinet or guitar, and hanging out with her cat, Franklin. She can also (kind-of) speak four languages: Macedonian, French, English, and Wolof.

Isabel Hicks

Isabel Hicks reports on the future of agriculture for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. A graduate of Colorado College with a degree in environmental studies and journalism, Hicks was the editor-in-chief of her college paper. Throughout her journalism career, she has strived to tell stories about human relationships with the environment. Born and raised in Denver, Hicks worked on an organic farm in Carbondale, Colorado, where she became well-versed in challenges facing food systems in the Rocky Mountain West. While working on the farm Hicks also freelanced for Carbondale’s local paper, earning front-page coverage for her environmental reporting. Hicks also wrote a weekly newsletter about COVID-19 impacts to higher education, producing work that was featured in the New York Times, USA Today, and the Colorado Sun. In her free time, Hicks enjoys fostering kittens, hiking and tending to her many houseplants.

Joseph Tomlinson

Joe Tomlinson covers the civic sector in Edmond, Oklahoma for NonDoc Media, a nonprofit outlet that reports on Oklahoma news. Prior to joining NonDoc, Tomlinson was a fellow with Gaylord News in Washington, D.C. and reported on the Oklahoma congressional delegation. As a summer intern at NonDoc, he covered Native American politics. Tomlinson earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Oklahoma in 2021.

Madison Lammert

Madison Lammert covers child care and early childhood education across Wisconsin for the Post-Crescent, which is based in Appleton, Wisconsin and part of the USA Today network. Previously, she reported for the Republic-Times, the only local news source dedicated to Monroe County, Illinois. Lammert graduated summa cum laude from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with a bachelor’s degree in mass communications, and was editor-in-chief of the student paper, The Alestle, which won multiple Illinois College Press Association awards under her leadership. Lammert’s photos of a Black Lives Matter protest took home a College Media Association Pinnacle Award.

Raegan Miller

Raegan Miller covers communities—Alaska Native, Asian American and rural—in southeast Alaska for KRBD public radio in Ketchikan, Alaska. Previously, she was a reporter for the Ketchikan Daily News, covering the pandemic, the arts, education issues and business. Her stories on a tourism-driven road improvement project, a homegrown filmmaker's festival debut, and a hydroponic farm startup have appeared in publications around the U.S. and in Canada. Born and raised in Alaska, Miller studied at the University of Alaska Southeast. Her work has been featured in Tidal Echoes, the university’s literary and arts journal, and in "A Tether to This World,” a collection of essays, stories and poems.

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.

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is the legendary news voice of Chicago’s working class. The news organization was recently acquired by a diverse consortium of philanthropists, business leaders and Chicago area labor organizations.

Juanpablo Ramirez

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco covers drinking water quality for WNIJ Radio in Illinois. This multimedia reporter focuses on the quality of the rivers and groundwater, and how climate-driven rain and flooding pose threats to life in the region north of the Illinois River.  An audio producer and journalist based out of Chicago, Ramirez-Franco has been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, he produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois, He is a graduate of Knox College.