Texas

Sara Ernst

Sara Willa Ernst reports for Houston Public Media, where she covers health disparities related to factors including income that affect Houston communities. Ernst was a Reporting Fellow at New Hampshire Public Radio, working both in daily news and long-form podcasting. During her time there, she was a producer for the podcasts The Second Greatest Show On Earth and Outside/In. She co-reported a two-part podcast on sex education in New Hampshire, covering topics from the statewide curriculum, abstinence-based education, LGBTQ inclusivity, consent and more. Before working on the podcast team, she was a General Assignment Reporter in the NHPR newsroom, covering the charter school debate embroiling the Granite State and the 2020 New Hampshire Presidential Primary. After graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Ernst interned for NPR in Washington D.C. She previously held internships at Nashville Public Radio and WBUR Boston. She was a Chips Quinn Scholar in 2018 and is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Sriya Reddy

Sriya Reddy covers South Dallas for The Dallas Morning News, where she had interned earlier. A 2021 graduate of Southern Methodist University, Reddy holds a bachelor's degree and majored in journalism, history, corporate communications and public affairs. She was editor-in-chief of The Daily Campus, the student-run publication, and her in-depth reporting about gentrification in Dallas earned her a first-place award from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association, and her opinion piece “Local Journalists Pay Attention When No One Else Does” was also honored. SMU recognized her work with an Outstanding Achievement in Digital Journalism award. Reddy grew up in Plano, Texas. She has worked at KERA, a public radio station in Dallas, Central Track, and the Dallas Free Press. In her free time, she loves to journal, buy more books than she reads and spend hours in local museums.

Victoria Rossi

Victoria Rossi covers the status of women in El Paso, Texas for El Paso Matters, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Previously, she worked as a research fellow for a UCLA School of Law data project, where she investigated state prisons thought to be undercounting COVID-19 deaths. Rossi spent the summer of 2019 in El Paso documenting conditions among asylum seekers returned to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico under the U.S. government’s Migrant Protection Protocols. Originally from Houston, Rossi has covered education and health at the Napa Valley Register, earning her two awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and has reported in Latin America and South Asia. She holds a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a master’s in public policy from The University of Texas at Austin.

Annie Rosenthal

Annie Rosenthal is the border reporter at Marfa Public Radio, which is based in Marfa, Texas. In 2020, as a Yale Parker Huang Fellow focused on migration and criminal justice and fluent in Spanish, Rosenthal helped to produce a bilingual radio show, tracked COVID deaths in U.S. prisons, and freelanced for publications like Politico Magazine and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She previously covered rural Alaskan life for the Homer News, the local paper in “the halibut fishing capital of the world,” and reported on immigration and the legal system as an intern at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Rosenthal received her B.A. from Yale University, where she was editor-in-chief of The New Journal, a long-form magazine about New Haven. Her thesis reporting on the search for missing migrants in Arizona earned her a 2020 Overseas Press Club Scholar Award and Yale's John Hersey Prize for journalism. Her hometown is Washington, D.C.

Carolina Cuellar

Carolina Cuellar reports on immigration and communities in the Rio Grande Valley for Texas Public Radio, which is based in San Antonio. Cuellar is a bilingual reporter who grew up in Stockton, California after she and her family emigrated from Colombia. A scientist-turned-journalist, she worked on the science desk at KQED, public TV and radio stations serving Northern California, and has written about dog DNA criminal forensics and the largest fire in Santa Cruz County history, the CZU Lightning Complex wildfire that started in August 2020. Her work has appeared in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, The Mercury News, and science sites such as Eos and Mongabay. Cuellar, a first-generation college graduate, holds a master’s degree in science communication and a bachelor’s in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was a researcher in a virology lab and at a genomics company, with a focus on protein engineering, before pursuing a career in journalism.

Elena Bruess

Elena Bruess covers drinking water issues and the environment for the San Antonio Express-News, focusing on development in Texas Hill country and the Edwards Aquifer. Previously, Bruess reported on national and international freshwater issues for Circle of Blue, a nonprofit environmental news organization. As a 2020 reporting fellow for the Pulitzer Center, she covered the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on a primarily Latino neighborhood in Chicago. Bruess has reported on culture, comedy and food as a freelancer. She grew up in Iowa and Greece, and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa's undergraduate writing program. Bruess earned a master's from the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, where she was awarded the Comer scholarship for environmental reporting.

Ivan Flores

Ivan Armando Flores is a photojournalist for the Texas Observer, an Austin-based nonprofit news organization, covering the state's Indigenous communities. As a freelance photographer, Flores focused on migration, refugees, addiction crises and the war in Afghanistan, where he reported from on and off for several years. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Guardian and The New York Times. Flores holds a master's degree in journalism from The City University of New York, and a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Florida International University. He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and Diversify Photo, an online database of visual storytellers for editors seeking to diversify their rosters. He calls Miami home.

Laura Onyeneho

Laura Onyeneho reports for the Houston Defender Network, covering the city's education system as it relates to African American children. Onyeneho is a multimedia journalist and has reported on social, cultural, lifestyle and community news. As an independent journalist, her coverage of issues that impact Black communities has been published online at The Crisis, Radiant Health, 21Ninety, Her Agenda and Afroelle Magazine. In 2019, she was a multimedia producer for the Boston Herald, and has worked as a news associate at Boston's WBZ-TV, a CBS station. Onyeneho earned her master's degree in broadcast journalism at Emerson College, and her bachelor's at Curry College. She's from Lowell, Massachusetts.

Pauly Denetclaw

Pauly Denetclaw reports for the Texas Observer, an Austin-based nonprofit news organization, covering the state's Indigenous communities. Before coming to the Observer, she was a reporter for the Navajo Times in Window Rock, Arizona, covering youth, LGBTQ2S+, arts, culture, and more. Denetclaw is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and grew up in Manuelito, New Mexico. She's Haltsooí (Meadow People, her mother's clan), and Kinyaa'áanii (Towering House People, her father's clan). Denetclaw's work earned her the Arizona Press Club's top award for both breaking news in the community and coverage of social issues. A recipient of the Native American Journalists Association's award for investigative reporting, Denetclaw teamed up with a journalist to reveal the effects of the Gold King Mine waste spill on tribal communities in New Mexico for National Native News, which airs on radio stations in the U.S. and Canada.

Sam González Kelly

Sam González Kelly is a metro reporter at the Houston Chronicle, focusing on communities of color and issues most affecting historically marginalized people. Prior to this, Kelly spent two years on the breaking news desk of the Chicago Sun-Times, his hometown paper, covering everything from crime and weather to police violence and social justice movements, in addition to pitching and writing features on music, labor, education and sports. After graduating from Pomona College in 2018, where he majored in media studies and minored in music, Kelly reported on arts and culture in Chicago’s West Side for Free Spirit Media. He is a native Spanish speaker who enjoys reporting in Spanish, especially on stories where sources may otherwise be overlooked due to a perceived language barrier.