RADIO / PODCAST

Gerard Albert

Gerard Albert

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.
Jess Savage

Jess Savage

Jesse Savage reports on clean air, water, and agricultural systems in northern Illinois at Northern Public Radio-WNIJ, part of the Mississippi River Basin Project. They recently graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Jess was awarded the Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Fellowship, where they will be reporting on landscape-scale ecological restoration in England and its effects on local farmers. They studied ecology at the University of Vermont as an undergraduate. Jess is based in Chicago, and they love to ride their bike.  

Sierra Pfeifer

A native of Hillsborough, North Carolina, Sierra Pfeifer is a mental health and addiction reporter for KOSU in Oklahoma. Previously, Pfeifer served as the audio editor for The Daily Tar Heel, where she led a team covering everything from local politics to the UNC-Duke rivalry. She also served as the producer for Carolina Connection, a student-run radio show covering higher education, and worked as a reporter for local radio station WCHL. Pfeifer was a part of NPR’s Next Generation Radio fellowship, where she put together a non-narrated audio story covering modern ties to “home” in the American South, and won first place in the National Hearst Audio Competition this year. In her free time, she likes making collages and wading through creeks.  

Julie Freijat

Prior to joining Report for America, Freijat served as a data reporter for Kansas City PBS through the Dow Jones News Fund, where she produced data-driven articles about local and state issues. She also held two internships at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she gained valuable experience in science communication working across platforms. Freijat was also heavily involved in her campus newspaper at Kansas State University, where she served in multiple leadership roles and won awards for her design and writing at the state and national levels. While at Mizzou, Freijat worked as a research assistant for Investigative Reporters and Editors and served as a student staffer at the Reynold’s Journalism Institute Innovation Lab. Freijat received her master’s in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2024, and graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in biology in 2022.

Kathryn DePauw

Kathryn DePauw covers Indigenous and tribal communities in Northern Michigan for the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Before this, she editor-in-chief for the White Pine Press, Northwestern Michigan College’s newspaper. There, she earned awards for her photojournalism and reporting on local stories, COVID-19, and the 2020 election. In 2022, the Michigan College Press Association named her the Janet Nellis Mendler Student Journalist of the Year. DePauw earned a degree in freshwater studies and has worked with many local nonprofits as a water quality monitor, geographic information systems specialist, and digital content creator. She was awarded the 2021 Student Environmentalist of the Year award from the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council for establishing a chloride monitoring program.

Macy Lipkin

​Macy Lipkin covers the Hispanic/Latino community in Ogden, Utah. Her reporting also will include Weber State, Utah's fourth-largest university and the nearby Hill Air Force Base, the area's largest employer. This region is the heart of the manufacturing, aerospace, and defense industries. Before joining Report for America, Lipkin worked as the associate producer for Basic Black at GBH News in Boston, freelanced in Ecuador, and interned with Connecticut Public Radio and a local newspaper in Lisbon, Portugal. She is fluent in Spanish, conversational in Portuguese, and working on deciphering the language of dogs. She holds a bachelor's degree in peace and justice studies from Wellesley College.

Paul C. Kelly Campos

Paul C. Kelly Campos covers democracy and community engagement for The Public's Radio in Rhode Island. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Campos is a writer, poet and translator of Irish and Nicaraguan descent. His bilingual work has appeared in NPR’s Next Generation Radio, The Washington Post, KQED Forum, KALW, Prism, The Golden Gate Xpress, Seen and Heard, The San Franciscan, and Borderless magazine. He graduated from SF State with a B.A. in journalism and a minor in English literature in 2021. In his spare time he can be found consuming pupusas, reading poetry, or playing with his cat 'Dr. Otto Octavious Phd.' all while “The Damned” plays loudly in the background.

Rose Schnabel

Rose Schnabel covers agriculture, water, and climate in North Central Florida at WUFT News. Before joining Report for America, Schnabel worked as a bilingual AAAS Mass Media Fellow at El Nuevo Día in San Juan, Puerto Rico, covering science and the environment. She holds undergraduate degrees in biology and Spanish from Indiana University, where she completed an honors thesis on the rhetoric of science in the 1950s birth control trials in Puerto Rico. During her time at Indiana, Schnabel worked as a science writer for their College and led the online creative content team of their undergraduate academic journal.

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.

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.