PHOTOGRAPHY

Onz Chéry

Onz Chéry covers Miami's Haitian community for The Haitian Times. Chéry started working for the Brooklyn, New York, based paper in January 2020. This Report for America position allows him to continue covering the largest Haitian American community in the U.S. Previously, Chéry covered soccer for Elite Sports NY, Cosmopolitan Soccer League, the Daily Soccer Digest and FirstTouch. Chéry is from Abingdon, Maryland. He holds a bachelor's degree in English and journalism from The City College of New York, where he started his journalism career as a sports reporter for The Campus, the student-run publication. When Chéry isn't writing, he's playing soccer.

Sam Wilson

Samuel Wilson is a visual journalist covering rural Montana for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He has worked most recently as a freelance photographer based in Portland, Oregon, his hometown, and previously in southeast Alaska, while also independently producing short and full-length documentaries. Wilson interned at several community newspapers around the country after graduating from the University of Montana, where he was the multimedia editor for the student publication, the Montana Kaimin, and took first place in the Hearst National Multimedia Championship. Wilson considers the mountains of the Pacific Northwest to be home.

Tash Kimmell

Natasha “Tash” Kimmell is an audio and photojournalist for KCAW, a nonprofit, noncommercial community radio station in Sitka, Alaska. Prior to this, Kimmell was a photo intern with the news site CalMatters, covering COVID-19, housing, education and other socio-political issues affecting Californians. As a production intern, she reported on the intersection of food and social justice for “Meat and Three,” the flagship podcast of the Heritage Radio Network. Kimmell holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Oregon, where she was a staff writer and photographer for Ethos, a student-run publication, and a DJ at the campus radio station KWVA. Her hometown is Pengrove, California.

Jesse Vad

Jesse Vad covers eastern Santa Cruz County for Nogales International, a local publication in southern Arizona. Previously, Vad worked as a reporting intern for SJV Water, a nonprofit online publication focused on water coverage in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where he covered all things water including agriculture, climate change and policy. Vad is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s class of 2020 where he specialized in visual journalism. He and his peers were finalists in the EPPY Awards for their pandemic coverage in the South Bronx. Vad has also worked as a remote reporting intern for The Jakarta Post where he covered Covid-19’s impact abroad. He was awarded the 2020 Correspondents Fund Scholar title from the J-School for his work with The Jakarta Post. As a freelancer, Vad’s work has appeared in NBC News, Gothamist, The Times-Standard and more. Before coming to journalism, Vad was an elementary school teacher. Over summer breaks, he worked on his own storytelling projects in New Orleans, Tajikistan and China.

Alex Driehaus

Alex Driehaus is a photojournalist for the Valley News in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. Previously, Driehaus worked at the Naples Daily News in Naples, Florida, where she covered community stories, including migrant students facing education challenges during the pandemic and python hunters in the Everglades. Before moving to the Sunshine State, she interned at The Virginian-Pilot, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Patriot-News. Driehaus enjoys working in situations where she is able to spend time getting to know the people she photographs and exploring their lives and relationships visually. Driehaus grew up in Cincinnati, and is a graduate of Ohio University's School of Visual Communication. Her photography earned her a spot at The Eddie Adams Workshop in 2019.

Arden Barnes

Arden Barnes is a visual journalist with the Herald and News in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where she focuses on covering the Klamath Project, a historic dam removal project, and its environmental and community impact. Before this, Barnes was a freelance photojournalist and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Lexington Herald-Leader and USA Today. Born in Harrison County, Kentucky, Barnes was photo editor and then art director of the Kentucky Kernel, the student newspaper at the University of Kentucky. In 2018, Barnes was awarded the Reinke Grant for visual storytelling and participated in a project to help create a visual archive of daily life in Harrison County. Her photography earned her a spot in The Eddie Adams Workshop and multiple awards, including honors from the National Press Photographers Association and the Kentucky News Photographers Association.

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.

Kayla Renie

Kayla Renie is a photojournalist covering communities of color for the Athens Banner-Herald in Athens, Georgia. Previously, she was a photographer for the Jackson Hole News & Guide in Jackson, Wyoming. Born and raised in the Southeast, Renie was photo editor of The Red & Black, the student-run website and weekly paper at the University of Georgia. Her internships have taken her to Texas and Indiana, where she depicted childhood in rural communities and the pandemic's initial effect on a county. As an intern for The Muskegon Chronicle in Michigan, she built relationships within the community that enabled her to pursue more in-depth projects, spurring an interest in documenting family and gender dynamics and women's health issues. Renie's goal is to use the documenting of everyday moments as a way to help people to better understand what's going on in their communities and with each other.

Herald and News (Klamath Falls)

The Herald and News has operated in Klamath County, in southwest Oregon, for more than a century. We cover the the city of Klamath Falls and Klamath County, in addition to neighboring Lake County and some communities across the nearby state border into California.  

Athens Banner-Herald

Athens Banner-Herald is an under 20,000 circulation newspaper in Athens, Georgia, owned by Gannett. The newspaper traces its history to the Southern Banner newspaper that first published on March 20, 1832. In 1921, the newspaper merged with the Athens Herald to become the Athens Banner-Herald.