Florida

Abe Aboraya

Prior to joining Oviedo Community News, Abe Aboraya's work appeared on NPR, ProPublica, Kaiser Health News and StoryCorps. He spent 2018 investigating post-traumatic stress disorder in first responders, and investigated why paramedics didn't enter Pulse nightclub to bring out victims. In 2018, the Florida Associated Press Professional Broadcasters Contest awarded that series second place in the investigative category and first place in the public affairs category. Aboraya holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Central Florida. His first journalism job in 2007 was covering the city of Winter Springs in Seminole County. A father of two, Aboraya spends his free time reading and writing fiction and enjoying his second home in the Hyrule kingdom.

Katelyn Ferral

Katelyn Ferral is a reporter with the Tampa Bay Times covering the impact of federal policy on local communities. Prior to coming to the Tampa Bay Times, Ferral taught English Language Arts in a Title I, inner city public elementary school through Americorps' Teach For America program. Before spending a year in the classroom. she was a reporter on the investigations team at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Her work was regularly published in USA TODAY. Ferral spent a month in 2022 in Poland along the Ukraine border documenting the refugee crisis and human toll of the Russian war in Ukraine for USA TODAY. She has reported extensively on the military and veterans affairs on the state and national level. She was named a Livingston Award finalist in 2022 for national reporting for her investigative work on the National Guard. She has also received the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi award. Before the Journal Sentinel, she was the investigative reporter at The Cap Times in Madison, Wis. Prior to that, she covered the energy industry at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and local government at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

Amélie Horace

Prior to joining WUSF as an Audience Engagement producer, Amélie Horace reported on local news in Macon, Georgia. As a journalism student at Mercer University, she worked for the Macon Newsroom, Georgia Public Broadcasting, Macon Magazine, Macon Arts Alliance, and interned with local TV station 13WMAZ. She has covered local businesses, breaking news, community events, student programs, local and federal government proceedings, court cases, and profiles. In her senior year of college, she started a podcast on Waffle House stories, set to launch in 2025. She earned her bachelor's in journalism from Mercer University and was the campus news editor of The Cluster, the student newspaper.

WUSF

WUSF is the NPR station for the Tampa Bay region; we are committed to providing accurate, honest journalism that helps the public understand the community and the world. Our journalists are independent, curious, and respectful. As a newsroom, we are committed to listening and engaging with the community to provide journalism that reflects the place we call home. This addition to the newsroom will be supported by the entire team as well as two senior editors who can guide and coach this new talent.

Tampa Bay Times

The Tampa Bay Times, winner of 14 Pulitzer Prizes, is Florida’s largest newspaper and a trusted source for news. As a locally owned and independent media organization, the Times also operates tampabay.com. In addition to its flagship publication, the company publishes the free weekly tbt* Weekend and Bay magazine, offering comprehensive coverage of local news, entertainment and lifestyles. The Times now employs 80 full-time journalists — each dedicated to delivering impactful, in-depth reporting.

Mainstreet Daily News

Mainstreet Daily News is laser-focused on local. We keep citizens informed about local news, sports and events, so they can stay safe, cast informed votes, and be a better neighbor in Gainesville and the surrounding area. We work to unify the community by reporting the facts accurately and fairly, so people can draw their own conclusions.

Oviedo Community News

Oviedo Community News is a nonprofit, independent newsroom serving Greater Oviedo and Winter Springs, Florida. The Greater Oviedo and Winter Springs community was a news desert before Oviedo Community News launched in 2021. Its mission is to create a better informed and connected community through independent, public service journalism that focuses on issues that residents told us matter to them.

Billy Jean Louis

Award-winning journalist Billy Jean Louis is a senior editor and reporter for Miami Fourth Estate in Florida. He covered litigation for Bloomberg Law; diversity, equity, and inclusion for The Baltimore Sun; and health and education for The Baxter Bulletin before joining Report for America. His reporting on education has earned him prizes from the Virginia Press Association and Associated Press Media Editors. Jean Louis, a journalism graduate of the University of Florida, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He speaks French and Haitian Creole. He was first drawn to journalism during his youth in Haiti when he was exposed to the coup d’état of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, the Haitian press didn’t act as a strong watchdog, inspiring Jean Louis to become a journalist to expose corruption in Haiti — and around the world.

Kate Payne

Kate Payne covers government and politics for The Associated Press with a focus on the Florida Legislature and education. Before joining Report for America, Payne covered education for WLRN Public Media in South Florida, where she profiled students and pressed officials in some of the country’s largest school districts. Payne has spent her career in public media newsrooms in Florida and Iowa, where her reporting has spanned interviewing middle schoolers on the lunch line to presidential candidates on the campaign trail. In 2020, she and NPR’s Miles Parks broke the story that Iowa Democrats planned to use an untested and potentially vulnerable app to transmit their Caucus results. Payne has won awards for her political reporting, feature writing and sound editing, and has reported from the field in the aftermath of multiple natural disasters. Like a good Floridian, Payne has a love for the weird and the wild and makes an excellent Key lime pie.

Rose Schnabel

Rose Schnabel covers agriculture, water, and climate in North Central Florida at WUFT News. Before joining Report for America, Schnabel worked as a bilingual AAAS Mass Media Fellow at El Nuevo Día in San Juan, Puerto Rico, covering science and the environment. She holds undergraduate degrees in biology and Spanish from Indiana University, where she completed an honors thesis on the rhetoric of science in the 1950s birth control trials in Puerto Rico. During her time at Indiana, Schnabel worked as a science writer for their College and led the online creative content team of their undergraduate academic journal.