2024-2025

Jess Savage

Jess Savage

Jesse Savage reports on clean air, water, and agricultural systems in northern Illinois at Northern Public Radio-WNIJ, part of the Mississippi River Basin Project. They recently graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Jess was awarded the Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Fellowship, where they will be reporting on landscape-scale ecological restoration in England and its effects on local farmers. They studied ecology at the University of Vermont as an undergraduate. Jess is based in Chicago, and they love to ride their bike.  

Corli Jay

Corli Jay is the community investment reporter for Chicago-based digital news site The TRiiBE. Most recently she worked as a general assignment reporter at Crain's Chicago Business, where she covered the media beat. Jay started her career in journalism in 2020 as a fellow of the civic journalism lab City Bureau. She soon began freelancing for other publications that included Chicago Magazine and Chicago Reader. Jay would go on to write for the Hyde Park Herald, the city's oldest neighborhood newspaper. She graduated from Chicago State University with a bachelor's in media arts in 2018.  

Sierra Pfeifer

A native of Hillsborough, North Carolina, Sierra Pfeifer is a mental health and addiction reporter for KOSU in Oklahoma. Previously, Pfeifer served as the audio editor for The Daily Tar Heel, where she led a team covering everything from local politics to the UNC-Duke rivalry. She also served as the producer for Carolina Connection, a student-run radio show covering higher education, and worked as a reporter for local radio station WCHL. Pfeifer was a part of NPR’s Next Generation Radio fellowship, where she put together a non-narrated audio story covering modern ties to “home” in the American South, and won first place in the National Hearst Audio Competition this year. In her free time, she likes making collages and wading through creeks.  
PR Lockhart

P.R. Lockhart

P.R. Lockhart covers politics and power in Greensboro, North Carolina, for The Assembly. Before joining The Assembly, Lockhart worked as an economic development reporter in West Virginia covering labor and tax policy, workforce development, and business impacts on rural communities. Her background is in national reporting on race, justice and equity, and she has previously worked as a race and identity reporter for Vox, a Ben Bagdikian Editorial Fellow for Mother Jones, and as a freelance writer covering Black communities, voting rights, and policing for various outlets, including NBC News and the Guardian US. She is a 2024 Gwen Ifill Fellow through the International Women’s Media Foundation. Lockhart graduated from Duke University with a bachelor's degree in psychology and a certificate in policy journalism and media studies.  

Estefanía Pinto Ruiz

Estefanía Pinto Ruiz covers environmental policies and regulations impacting the Mississippi River basin and explores potential solutions to ensure its sustainability. Before joining KWQC-TV 6 in Davenport, Iowa, Estefania interned as a culture reporter in Colombia's most widely read newspaper, EL TIEMPO.  She holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Florida and worked as an editor at WUFT News, focusing on their Spanish content. She also mentored students in reporting Latin American news in Spanish.  Estefania is a proud Colombian, so she is always looking for Colombian food and hosting a listening club for her favorite podcast, Radio Ambulante, to speak her native language to stay connected to her roots.
Grace Fiori

​Grace Fiori

​Grace Fiori covers how agricultural and other industries environmentally impact the Tribal Nations along the Missouri River. The tribes have a long and storied history with the sacred waters of the Missouri. Prior to joining Buffalo’s Fire, Grace reported on the intersection of local economies and agricultural systems, first as an intern and then as a contributing reporter for the Harvard Press in Harvard, Massachusetts. She will graduate in May from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and sustainable agriculture, having served as the managing editor of the student newspaper, the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. Grace has been passionately involved in both journalism and agriculture since her teenage years, spending multiple seasons on diversified vegetable farms, most recently with the UMass Student Farming Enterprise.
Lia Salvatierra

Lia Salvatierra

Lia Salvatierra covers all local government for the Ouray Plaindealer. Prior to joining the Plaindealer, she reported for a number of non-profit news organizations, including an internship at Wyofile, where she reported on Wyoming's education systems and Latinx and Indigenous communities. She has completed additional research internships from Minneapolis, MN, to Berlin, Germany. Lia is a California native and recent graduate from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. When she’s not hopping on an interview, she loves leading outdoor excursions from North Carolina’s mountains to beaches for her peers.
Esteban Candelaria

Esteban Candelaria

Esteban Candelaria covers child welfare and the state Children, Youth, and Families Department for The Santa Fe New Mexican. He is based in Albuquerque. Prior to joining The New Mexican, he covered education at the Albuquerque Journal. There, he tackled accountability stories about the state education department's administration of services for students to stories about the proliferation of guns in Albuquerque schools. Before the Journal, he covered criminal justice and the local courts at The Colorado Springs Gazette. Esteban graduated with a bachelor's degree from Colorado College, where he also won an award for his time and contributions to student journalism during the COVID-19 pandemic.

KOSU

KOSU is more than a radio station. We’re a community organization dedicated to sparking curiosity with stories, resources, events and information that connect people. We report news in collaboration with the public, not just for the public. KOSU helps Oklahomans understand issues that are important to them and discover new things about our state.
Elise Plunk

Elise Plunk

Before joining Louisiana Illuminator, Plunk earned her bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Florida, where she worked as editor-in-chief of Atrium magazine, a narrative nonfiction outlet on campus. She also worked as an environmental communications intern for the Thompson Earth Systems Institute, where she wrote feature stories and produced social media content on environmental topics relevant to Floridians, and as a climate journalist fellow at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. Plunk's favorite class in college was environmental journalism, where she learned to connect her passion for the natural world with her studies in reporting. When she isn't working, she loves making art from upcycled materials.