New York

Elijah de Castro

Elijah de Castro reports on health disparities for WAER, Syracuse Public Media. Prior to WAER, he was the health reporter at The Keene Sentinel, where he led the Monadnock Region Health Reporting Lab, a newsroom journalism project focused on investigative and solutions journalism about New Hampshire’s health care system. Previously, he was a climate fellow at the Solutions Journalism Network and a Report for America corps member in South Carolina, where he was on the rural communities beat covering issues like systemic poverty and gun violence in rural Allendale County. He got his start in journalism as News Editor of The Ithacan, the student newsroom of Ithaca College, where he graduated in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He is an avid player of pool and ping pong.

Cat Carroll

Prior to joining the Times Union, Carroll reported internationally on migration with the support of the Wolff Fellowship. She was a 2025 Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Reporting Fellow, and her work has appeared in The Guardian, Progressive Magazine, and the Cap Times. Carroll got her start in journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she served as managing editor and later chair of the board of directors of the independent student newspaper The Badger Herald. She grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and speaks German, Spanish, and Arabic, and is currently learning Turkish.

Jose Sandoval

Jose reports on Latino communities in the Finger Lakes region for WXXI Public Media. Prior to joining WXXI News, Jose acted as the bilingual local All Things Considered Host and general assignment reporter for Blue Ridge Public Radio where he reported on elections, language access, and contributed to BPR's award winning Hurricane Helene coverage. His journalism career started as a producer for the Hola initiative at WNIJ and later as an intern with NPR’s content development team. An Illinoisan, Jose enjoys hiking, playing basketball, and listening to music from artists like J. Cole, Feid, and Bad Bunny.

WAER Syracuse Public Media

WAER Public Media, founded at Syracuse University in 1947 as one of the nation's first educational FM stations, serves Central New York with trusted news, music, and sports coverage. A commercial-free, listener-supported NPR affiliate, WAER is housed within the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and provides professional training for emerging journalists and broadcasters. Its mission is to enlighten, engage, and entertain the community while fostering informed citizenship and lifelong learning.

Times Union

The Times Union is the dominant media organization in NY’s Capital Region, and in the past four years has expanded its coverage area to include the Hudson Valley and (in partnership with a nonprofit) the Adirondacks. In addition to covering the news and events of the region, we are recognized for our statehouse coverage and watchdog journalism. The paper has been in operation since the Civil War and has been part of Hearst Newspaper Group for a century.

WXXI News

WXXI News is part of WXXI Public Media, a resource that strengthens our community by bringing highly valued media services on platforms that serve residents' needs. As an NPR member station, we offer around-the-clock on-air news, with numerous local cut-ins that provide both spot and enterprise reports. We offer two hours of live public affairs discussions each day on our talk show. We also have a daily news podcast and a monthly arts-focused magazine.

Isabelle Taft

Isabelle Taft covers immigration for New York Focus through Report for America. Prior to joining Focus, she was a reporting fellow on the National desk at the New York Times, covering breaking news around the United States and writing about criminal justice, higher education and immigration. Before that, she spent four years in Mississippi reporting for Mississippi Today, the Biloxi Sun Herald and ProPublica. Her investigation into Mississippi's practice of jailing people with no criminal charges to await mental health treatment helped lead lawmakers to overhaul the involuntary commitment process there. Taft's first full-time journalism job was copy editing at Viet Nam News in Hanoi. She speaks Spanish and is proud to be from Atlanta.

Debadrita Sur

Before joining Report for America, Debaditra Sur graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she reported on housing and homelessness, and co-produced a short documentary on food insecurity in the South Bronx. After graduating, she joined The Buffalo News as a general assignment reporter, covering daily breaking news and long-term enterprise stories on pedestrian safety, homelessness in Erie County, and Jewish and Arab families in Western New York reacting to the Middle East conflict. She later joined Reach PLC in New York City, where she worked on tight deadlines to cover the Trump administration. She grew up in Kolkata, India, and completed her undergraduate degree in English literature from Presidency University, while also working for a London-based cultural magazine, Far Out, on the side. When she's not reporting, Sur makes adventure bucket lists or plays with her cat, Mountain Dew.

Adam Smith-Perez

Prior to joining Investigative Post, Smith-Perez produced podcasts, fact-checked and reported for The Nation. Smith-Perez has also worked extensively as a freelance fact-checker for several outlets, including Mother Jones, Ambrook Research, Noema Magazine, and HarperCollins. He started his journalism career reporting on COVID's impact on immigrant communities in his hometown of Boston, where he worked for an immigrant and refugee advocacy non-profit writing newsletters. As a student at Columbia Journalism School, Smith-Perez reported more extensively on the housing and overdose crisis. Following his graduation, he hosted and produced a segment about Hepatitis C for VICE News, and was a fellow at the Columbia Age Boom Academy, where he honed his reporting and research skills on the aging, housing and health beats. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists, and a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

New York Focus

New York Focus unmasks power in the Empire State. As the only nonprofit publication with an emphasis on state-level coverage, we produce deeply reported, investigative stories on the systems, decisions and actors that affect communities throughout New York. While most local accountability coverage is directed at New York City, we keep an eye on Albany — the notoriously corrupt and quietly impactful center of power throughout the state.