2025-2026

Gerard Albert

Gerard Albert III

Gerard Albert III covers rural communities in Western North Carolina at Blue Ridge Public Radio. Before joining Report for America, Albert worked at WLRN in South Florida reporting on affordable housing, law enforcement, and local government accountability in Broward County. There, he won multiple state and national awards for his coverage of the Parkland school shooter death penalty trial. His work has been featured on NPR, Here & Now and the BBC. Previously, he reported on the criminal justice system in Palm Beach and South Carolina, where he won state-wide awards for his reporting on police policies. Albert started his journalism career at Florida International University’s student-run newspaper. He became Editor in Chief his senior year and earned state-wide awards for his investigation into the university spending millions of dollars on palm trees from a shady dealer. In Florida, he spends most weekends knee-deep in the Everglades and looks forward to exploring trails in the Blue Ridge Mountains. When not outdoors, he enjoys reading, writing poetry, and perfecting the sugar-to-coffee ratio for his coladas.
Cassandra Stephenson

Cassandra Stephenson

Cassandra Stephenson covers issues impacting rural West Tennessee for The Tennessee Lookout. Prior to joining The Tennessee Lookout, Cassandra covered Metro Nashville government at The Tennessean for nearly three years, chronicling the consequences of policy decisions for residents in one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. Cassandra's post-collegiate reporting career began in West Tennessee in 2018 when she moved from her hometown in Ventura County, California after graduating from Pepperdine University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. There, she reported on breaking news and justice for a 13-county region, publishing award-winning investigations on local physicians’ involvement in the opioid epidemic and conditions in local for-profit prisons. Cassandra joined The Tennessean as a business reporter in 2020, covering pandemic-related business challenges including unemployment, workplace safety and eviction. Outside of the newsroom, you'll find Cassandra immersed in her latest art project or baking endeavor.  
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.  

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.

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.