West

Ian Davis-Leonard

Ian Davis-Leonard reports for The Daily Herald in Everett, Washington, and focuses on issues facing the working-class citizens of Snohomish County, including mental health, transportation, education and addiction. Davis-Leonard hails from Everett and spent three years working for the student newspaper at Gonzaga University, a Catholic college in Spokane, Washington. He also has had student summer internships covering local news for Beacon Publishing in Mukilteo, Washington, and The Herald. Davis-Leonard earned praise for his collegiate journalism including winning three Society of Professional Journalism Mark of Excellence awards for news reporting and sports reporting.

Rachel Cohen

Rachel worked as an editorial intern at New Hampshire Public Radio, where she produced local stories for broadcast on All Things Considered, and on NPR’s Science Desk, where she reported on food and health. In the last year, she also conducted pre-production research on immigration for the award-winning documentary team, Living on One. She also worked as a volunteer at the Open Door Clinic, which provided migrant farm workers and others with free healthcare. Rachel began her journalism career at the Addison County Independent in Vermont. She’s a graduate of Middlebury College.

Lana Cohen

Lana Cohen reports for The Mendocino Voice in Boonville, California, where she focuses on the effect of environmental regulation on salmon runs, wildfires, the economy and other issues. A reporter from Brooklyn, New York, Cohen covered the environment, conservation and climate politics during fellowships at WhoWhatWhy, an investigative newsroom, and the National Audubon Society. Her work explored everything from natural disasters to water rights to the newest green technology. She previously worked in public health and environmental justice communications with WE ACT for Environmental Justice in Harlem. At Colorado College, Cohen majored in environmental science and concentrated on weather and air quality.

Sara Cline

Sara Cline reports for The Associated Press, covering the Oregon Legislature and state government, with a special focus on the tech boom and the crisis in housing affordability. Cline covered City Hall and homelessness at the San Antonio Express-News through the Hearst Fellowship Program. During her first year in the program, she covered breaking news and crime for the Times Union in Albany, New York. There, she also had a column. Prior to the fellowship, Cline worked at the Brockton Enterprise and Taunton Daily Gazette, both in Massachusetts, as a general assignment reporter. She has also contributed to newspapers and magazines in Arizona, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She has won New England Newspaper & Press Association awards in the Sports Column and Racial and Ethnic Issues categories. Cline graduated from the University of Arizona with a B.A. in journalism. During her time at university, she also studied anthropology and participated in an archaeological dig in Italy.

Jackie Botts

Jackie is a data and multimedia reporter originally from Southern California. She has interned on the Data and Enterprise desk for Reuters News and for her hometown paper, The Santa Barbara Independent. Her reporting on immigration, the environment, and wildfires has appeared in Pacific Standard, SFGate, Public Radio International’s “The World,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Peninsula Press and the Half Moon Bay Review. A graduate of Stanford University’s master’s program in journalism, she received the James S. Robinson student journalism award for a multimedia series that documented the impacts of wildfires on immigrant communities in Northern California in 2017. The California legislature’s treatment of poverty issues Jackie covers poverty with a legislative and data focus as part of “The California Divide.” Poverty is the biggest coverage gap in the state. In response to this, CALmatters, McClatchy’s five California news organizations and the 25 Digital First newsrooms have created a news hub with a collaboration project on the topic. “The California Divide” is an unprecedented news partnership that combines the strengths of respected news-gathering organizations across the state. The shared goal is to build a sustainable and replicable model for data-driven, change-making journalism in this critically underserved coverage area. Report for America has teamed up with three of the new hub’s newsrooms to offer three new corps member placements: CALmatters in Sacramento, The Fresno Bee in Fresno and The Mercury News in San Jose.

Kimberly Bojórquez

Kim Bojórquez reports for The Sacramento Bee where she covers California’s Latino communities. She notes that “as the daughter of a Guatemalan father and a Mexican mother, my parents were not keen on my choice to pursue a career in journalism. In their home countries, asking questions was looked down upon and downright dangerous.” She has covered everything from Latino lives in Utah to veterans affairs healthcare at the Deseret News, where she worked as an intern before officially joining the newspaper. Formerly, Bojórquez freelanced for the Daily Herald in Provo, Utah and interned for ABC4 in Salt Lake City. She received her B.A. in journalism and minor in Latin American studies from Utah Valley University in 2019. Bojórquez served as the editor of UVU’s student newspaper, the UVU Review, between 2017-2018. During her junior year, she was named a recipient of the Utah Headliners SPJ Sunshine Award for advocating for open records practices at her university. Before moving to the Beehive State, she was raised in North Hollywood, California.

Seth Bodine

Seth Bodine reports for KOSU in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he covers agriculture and rural issues on a new beat that’s aimed not only at rural Oklahomans but those in cities and suburbs who aren’t connected to farming. It’s something he knows well. Bodine covered agriculture, business and culture for KBIA, the NPR affiliate station in Columbia, Missouri. He also covered the 2020 Missouri Legislature for the Missouri Broadcasters Association and KMOX-St. Louis. Previously, he was an intern at Missouri Business Alert, Denver Business Journal and the Colorado Springs Gazette. His work has been picked up by dozens of publications, including U.S. News & World Report, The Associated Press and The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Bodine graduated with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and English creative writing from Colorado State University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Brandon Block

Brandon Block reports for The Olympian in Olympia, Washington, focusing on homelessness in and around the state capital and the factors that contribute to homelessness, such as mental illness and drug addiction. Block is a reporter and filmmaker who, for two years, has covered criminal justice, immigration and the environment in Baltimore. His writing has appeared in WYPR 88.1, the DCist, and the Baltimore Beat, and he fact-checked the book “I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad.” He spent the last year in Bangkok, Thailand, where he worked for an education nonprofit on a Princeton in Asia fellowship. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and Film & Media Studies from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Block got his start in journalism by writing film and theater criticism for Baltimore City Paper.

Annie Berman

Annie Berman covers health care for the Anchorage Daily News. A veteran of AmeriCorps and Vista volunteer programs, Berman is a multimedia journalist who has covered breaking news, crime, culture and politics for Mission Local and KQED, both in San Francisco. She has also helped produce “The Science of Happiness,” an award-winning podcast by PRX, Her work has been published in The New York Times, KQED and The Indian Express, an English-language daily published in Mumbai. She holds a B.A. from Smith College and is graduating from the University of California’s Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in May.

Nada Samir Atieh

Nada Atieh is a reporter for the Redding Searchlight in Redding, California, which covers areas north of Sacramento. She focuses on education, childhood trauma and the achievement gap. An Arab-American journalist from Dallas, Texas, Atieh has been working as a journalist in the Middle East since 2017. She has reported on the military escalation in northwest Syria and the humanitarian crisis created by the Syrian civil war within Syria. Previously, she trained with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), where she coordinated the awards distribution at the 2018 annual conference. She has reported about the economic climate in Jordan for Venture magazine. Atieh has also covered the Jordanian government’s initiative to bring employment services to refugee camps, the impact of tax hikes on food producers in Jordan, and the growth of air connectivity throughout the Middle East. She is fluent in conversational Arabic and proficient in Modern Standard Arabic. She holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Arlington, where she studied broadcast journalism and communications.