PHOTOGRAPHY

Gerard Edic

Gerard Edic covers the effects of gun violence on LeFlore County in the Mississippi Delta at The Greenwood Commonwealth. This marks his second stint at the newspaper, where he began his journalism career as a general assignment reporter. Most recently, Edic worked at PBS News, where he assisted with research and editorial production for PBS News Weekend and Washington Week with The Atlantic. He also co-produced various segments for PBS News Weekend, including tensions in the South China Sea, gang violence in Haiti, and school lunch junk fees. Edic has also edited pieces submitted by incarcerated writers for Prison Journalism Project and wrote about policy issues at The American Prospect. Edic earned his master’s degree in journalism, focusing on business and economics reporting, at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Edic has won several awards from the Mississippi Press Association’s Better Newspaper Media Contest, including the Bill Minor Prize for General News Reporting for a piece assessing the community impact of record-high homicides in Leflore County in 2020. Edic is an avid runner and loves to cook.

Lia Portillo

Lia Portillo is a recent graduate of Northwestern State University of Louisiana. She has interned at news stations in New Orleans, such as Telemundo 42 New Orleans and WDSU 6 News. As a student journalist, she worked for her student newspaper, The Current Sauce, throughout her college career, starting as a features reporter. In her junior and senior years, she led the newspaper as editor-in-chief.

Christiana Botic

Christiana Botic is a visual journalist for Verite News in New Orleans, Louisiana. Prior to joining Verite News, she received a master’s degree from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication and worked as a freelancer for a number of publications, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. She also completed internships at the Evansville Courier and Press and the Boston Globe. Her career as a photographer began when she lived with, and documented, her grandmother in Serbia. As a National Geographic-Fulbright Fellow, she explored themes of identity, culture, migration and memory in the Balkans. Her work often investigates the intergenerational impacts of inequity and violence on communities, with a focus on how people challenge systems of oppression—from finding joy and connection in everyday life to forming social movements.

Fabianna Rincón

Prior to joining El Tiempo Latino, Fabianna graduated from American University with her bachelors in journalism, bridging politics and the media working at the School of Communications and studying mis- and disinformation with the University Honors Program. Throughout her time at AU, she worked as a digital journalist for NBC10 Boston and worked with in the student newsroom of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She also received scholarship opportunities from The LAGRANT Foundation, and continued exploring political communications as an intern with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Raised in a household of Venezuelan journalists, her passion for reporting began at just seven years old when she was first publishing Spanish-language interviews with musicians, politicians, and public figures. She is thrilled to return to Spanish reporting with El Tiempo Latino, and cannot wait to cover the local government and communities that welcomed her into the world of local journalism.

Abe Aboraya

Prior to joining Oviedo Community News, Abe Aboraya's work appeared on NPR, ProPublica, Kaiser Health News and StoryCorps. He spent 2018 investigating post-traumatic stress disorder in first responders, and investigated why paramedics didn't enter Pulse nightclub to bring out victims. In 2018, the Florida Associated Press Professional Broadcasters Contest awarded that series second place in the investigative category and first place in the public affairs category. Aboraya holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Central Florida. His first journalism job in 2007 was covering the city of Winter Springs in Seminole County. A father of two, Aboraya spends his free time reading and writing fiction and enjoying his second home in the Hyrule kingdom.

Jolan Kruse

Prior to joining Buffalo's Fire, Jolan Kruse interned with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and WISN Channel 12 News, where she covered Milwaukee schools, breaking news and the Republican National Convention. She most recently reported on Second Look Legislation and Juvenile Life Without Parole laws for the O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism. Jolan was part of the Marquette University class of 2025, graduating with honors in journalism and social welfare and justice. She also studied abroad in South Africa where she immersed herself in the local community as a volunteer teaching 4th-grade English while taking classes at the University of Western Cape.

Simmerdeep Kaur

Before joining the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Simmerdeep Kaur was the lead reporter at the Redwood City Pulse, where she covered city government and launched the newsroom’s first-ever podcast. The series featured in-depth interviews with Redwood City Council candidates ahead of the 2024 elections. Kaur’s odyssey into journalism began as an undergraduate, working as a part of her university’s editorial team and interning at several newsrooms in India. As a Master’s student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, she was determined to reinvent herself and go beyond writing. She acquired data skills by learning Python and tools for visualizations to serve as a strong supplement to her stories. Kaur is a firm believer that in an era of growing threats to press freedom, robust journalism is more essential than ever. Over the past three years, she has reported on a wide range of topics, including police brutality, threats to press freedom, AI warfare, and the dangers of lithium-ion batteries.

Lucy Tompkins

Prior to joining Seven Days, Tompkins reported on housing issues as a freelance reporter in New York City, and for the Texas Tribune. She worked for The New York Times as a national reporting fellow and later on their Headway team. Before that, she spent two years in Berlin on a Fulbright fellowship, where she studied international asylum policy and interviewed Syrian migrants about their experiences in Germany. She started her career as an education reporter at The Missoulian, where she led an investigation into private residential treatment programs for teenagers that led to changes in state law and the closure of many of the programs. She speaks Spanish and holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Montana.

Alex Cox

Alex Cox is a graduate from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. They worked at a variety of newsrooms in the Missouri News Network, with their primary newsroom being KBIA, the NPR affiliate for Mid-Missouri. In their many jobs, they've wore many hats, but their favorite type of reporting is working with audio and data. They believe in trying to take themselves out of the story as much as possible to let their sources tell the story.

Jonathan Aguilar

Before joining Milwaukee Neighborhood News, Jonathan Aguilar was a photojournalist for The Blade in Toledo, OH. As a bilingual multimedia journalist, he was first inspired by a trip to Mexico in 2017 and he has been telling stories with his camera ever since. He attended DePaul University for his bachelor’s degree in journalism and attended the Medill School of Journalism for a master’s degree in journalism. Aguilar’s passion for visibility through journalism led him to help establish the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at DePaul University and he helped establish the first Spanish-speaking newsroom at DePaul University.