North Carolina

Gale Melcher

Before joining The Assembly, Melcher covered local government and community issues in Greensboro and Winston-Salem for Triad City Beat, a tenacious alternative newspaper that served the Triad community for 11 years before closing in February 2025. During her two years with the publication, she wrote hundreds of stories and reported on a wide range of topics including public housing, homelessness, policing, activism, elections and transit, producing in-depth, people-centered pieces. In January 2023, she wrote an investigative piece for Triad City Beat about Greensboro’s Pallet shelters, which remains the website’s most-viewed article. In 2024, Melcher earned a second place award from the North Carolina Press Association for her city/county government reporting, and has a bachelor's degree in biological sciences from North Carolina State University.

Enlace Latino NC

Enlace Latino NC was founded in 2018 and is the first non-profit Spanish-language digital-native news outlet in North Carolina. We produce useful, public service journalism about politics, immigration, and community and state issues of, for, and by Latino/Hispanic immigrants in the state. We publish independent, truthful and reliable journalism through our website, two newsletters, and a podcast, aimed at different Latino|Hispanic immigrant communities in our region.

Olivia Richard

Olivia has been associate producer at KJZZ, the NPR station in Phoenix, a reporting intern at KNBC in Los Angeles, and an intern at Arizona PBS, where she covered education, the borderlands, and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. She is also a game developer, focused on new ways of distributing news content. She has won several prestigious awards including Emma Bowen Award for Courage in Reporting, First Place for BioTech Science Reporting, First Place for radio features at the Festival of Media Arts. She received her B.A. from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
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.
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.  

Aaleah McConnell

Aaleah McConnell covers the criminal justice system in New Hanover County, North Carolina, at WHQR Public Radio. Before joining Report for America, McConnell completed a fellowship with the national nonprofit organization States Newsroom, where she focused on enterprise stories centered on the affordable housing shortage, mental health care, and education. Before that, she interned at the Georgia Recorder reporting on laws proposed under the gold dome of Georgia’s state Capitol during the 2023 Georgia Legislative session. She also covered the 2022 Georgia Legislative Session for Gold Dome Debrief, a weekly podcast produced by Fresh Take Georgia. She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and Emerging Media from Kennesaw State University, with a minor in African and African American Diaspora Studies. When not serving underserved communities through journalism, she loves to roller-skate and go on long walks with her dog Kai.

Chloe Courtney Bohl

Chloe Courtney Bohl covers Raleigh and Wake County government for INDY Reporter in North Carolina. Before she joined Report for America, Bohl worked as a general assignment co-op for Boston.com, writing about politics and civic life in and around Boston. She earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations at Tufts University, where she served as the editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily.

Morgan Casey

Morgan Casey covers wellness, mental health and the environment in Cumberland County, North Carolina, at CityView Today. Before joining Report for America, Casey led the writing and fact-checking of a team national investigation into U.S. lithium mining with The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism that published with USA Today and aired on PBS Newshour. Before that, she was a fellow with News21 where she was part of a team reporting on how Catholic health system mergers with local secular hospitals impact abortion access. She holds a master's degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University and earned her bachelor's at the University of Maryland.

Santiago Ochoa

Santiago Ochoa is a bilingual journalist covering health care at WFDD and La Noticia in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Before joining WFDD, Ochoa covered healthcare access at the Yakima-Herald Republic in Yakima, Washington for Report for America. Ochoa began his journalism career at the Flint Beat in Flint, Michigan, covering the city’s Latino population—and won top honors in the Michigan Press Association’s feature category. Ochoa studied at the University of Michigan-Flint, where he was editor-in-chief of the school’s paper, The Michigan Times. When he’s not working, Ochoa enjoys cross-country trips on his motorcycle, photography and going to the movies.

WFDD

WFDD is North Carolina’s charter NPR affiliate station, celebrating 75 years on the air. WFDD broadcasts in 32 counties across the Piedmont and High Country of North Carolina and southern Virginia. Its mission is to bring stories from all corners of the region, rural and urban.