2024-2025

Andrew M. Lusk

Andy Lusk is a radio reporter for KUCB 89.7 FM Public Radio in Unalaska, Alaska, where he covers a wide range of issues in the Eastern Aleutian Islands. Prior to his work with KUCB, Lusk was a financial reporter for InvestmentWires, a trade publication based in New York City. He discovered his passion for journalism in 2016 by jumping on a bus to a Raleigh polling station and interviewing voters impromptu. Lusk has been walking up to strangers and asking for their thoughts on the topic of the day ever since. He holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from New York University.

Jordan Rusche

Jordan Rusche covers community news in rural North Dakota for the Tioga Tribune and The Journal in Crosby. She recently graduated from South Dakota State University in Brookings where she served as co-editor-in-chief of The Collegian, the student newspaper, and received a bachelor's in English and journalism. Rusche also has held internships at South Dakota Public Broadcasting, doing general reporting on stories throughout the state, and 605 Magazine, covering South Dakota arts, entertainment and more. She was part of the 2022 Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Fellowship reporting on Indigenous representation in education.

Reagan Ryan

Reagan Ryan covers climate change and the environment across Central Florida as a multimedia journalist for Spectrum News 13 in Orlando, Florida. She recently graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, where she earned a master’s degree in investigative journalism. She’s covered public housing as a reporter at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and policing as a data and documentary journalist for the Carnegie-Knight News21 collegiate reporting initiative. She specializes in video and digital storytelling. She also holds a bachelor's degree in English from Florida State University, where she majored in editing, writing and media. Growing up in Daytona Beach, Florida, Creamer became interested in pursuing journalism by watching her local news stations, like News 13, cover hurricanes and storms.

Arabella Saunders

Arabella Saunders covers economic development for New York Focus. Prior to joining the newsroom, Saunders’ freelance work appeared in VICE, HuffPost, DCReport.org, The Assembly NC and more. Her journalism career began in high school, where she served as editor-in-chief of the school’s newsmagazine. In 2018, she was a runner up for the National High School Journalist of the Year. In college, she worked for The Daily Tar Heel and also as a freelancer. She covered topics that ranged from Snapchat porn scams to the undercounting of COVID-19 deaths in North Carolina prisons. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media as well as English and comparative literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A fun fact about her is that she has a Joan Didion-inspired tattoo.

Katelyn Vue

Katelyn Vue covers housing at the Sahan Journal in St. Paul. Prior to joining the Sahan Journal, she was an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, double-majoring in journalism and political science. While a student, she interned at the Star Tribune, PublicSource, American Public Media Group and Super Lawyers, part of Thomson Reuters. She was also a student reporter and associate editor at her university's newspaper, The Minnesota Daily. Before college, Vue was a high school participant at ThreeSixty Journalism, a nonprofit program at the University of St. Thomas that teaches journalism and communication skills to diverse teenagers from all around Minnesota. Born and raised in St. Paul, Vue is Hmong American with parents from Thailand and Laos.

Samuel Shaw

Samuel Shaw covers rural-to-urban transformation in East Texas for the Longview News-Journal. Previously, Shaw was one of two applicants selected for the High Country News editorial internship, where he reported on infrastructure, housing and landscape across the West, with articles syndicated in The Atlantic and Mother Jones. Shaw also contributed to open-source investigations for the award-winning Airwars investigations team based in London, UK, focusing on civilian harm monitoring in Iraqi Kurdistan. He got his start penning stories after college when he founded The Speer, an independent online magazine exploring underreported topics on the Colorado Front Range, where he grew up. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Goldsmiths University in London and a bachelor's degree in Political Science from University of California Santa Cruz. Shaw's photography has won awards with C.LAB in London, while his photojournalism has been featured in High Country News, 5280 Magazine, The Land Desk, Boulder Weekly, East London Lines and Rat Park Magazine. As a prototypical Colorado-California kid, he's frequently spotted on two wheels, two skis or a surfboard.

Brooklyn Draisey

Brooklyn Draisey covers higher education across Iowa for Iowa Capital Dispatch. Prior to joining the Iowa Capital Dispatch team, Draisey reported stories from the Quad-Cities, covering the region’s arts and culture community and connecting individual perspectives to larger issues influencing everyone. She fell in love with journalism at a young age, watching national news and reading local publications with her family, and has pursued her career in the industry since joining her high school newspaper. She worked as a reporter and editor at The Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa’s student-run newspaper, and reported on Eastern Iowa for The Gazette and The Southeast Iowa Union before graduating in 2021. Draisey holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication and certificate in Entrepreneurial Management from the University of Iowa.

Kyle Williams

Kyle Williams covers sports in Chicago, Illinois, for the Chicago Sun-Times. Prior to joining the Sun-Times, Williams graduated from Northwestern University with a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism. His journalism career started the summer of his freshman year with an internship at ABC7 for the daily talk show, ""Windy City Live."" Following that internship, Williams interned at Marquee Sports Network and the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has covered everything from the Chicago Cubs to North Carolina women’s soccer. As an undergraduate student, he majored in journalism with a minor in anthropology and sociology.

Shannon Chaffers

Shannon Chaffers covers the epidemic of gun violence in New York's Black, immigrant, and under-resourced communities for The New York Amsterdam News’ Blacklight investigative unit. Prior to joining the Amsterdam News, Chaffers spent a year in Berlin, Germany as a Fulbright Young Professional Journalist. She reported on the history and legacy of Berlin’s Olympic Stadium while also interning at The Local Germany. Chaffers’ journalism career began in her hometown of Wellesley, Massachusetts, where she wrote for her high school newspaper, The Bradford. She then attended Princeton University, graduating in 2022. She majored in Sociology and minored in Journalism, African-American Studies, and German and also served as the Head Opinion Editor of The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper. Away from journalism, Chaffers loves playing soccer and cheering on her favorite team, Arsenal FC.

Carlos Nogueras

Carlos Nogueras reports on the vast Permian Basin region in West Texas for the Texas Tribune, writing about the hundreds of thousands of people who shoulder the impacts of an extraction-based economy in the oil and gas capital of the country. Before relocating to Texas, Nogueras was a political reporting fellow for Al Día News in Philadelphia, a bilingual digital paper and magazine covering Latino politics, its dynamics, power players and the policy shaping the Hispanic community. Nogueras has written extensively about Latino lawmakers—their stances versus their words, promises on the campaign trail and how they helped define municipal local politics. In Puerto Rico, where Nogueras was born and raised, he was a freelancer writing about the unpaid labor behind motherhood during the pandemic, gun violence and the waning coffee industry. He earned his bachelor's degree in music from Berklee College of Music in Boston and began his master's degree in journalism at the University of Puerto Rico.