RADIO / PODCAST

Lucia Starbuck

Lucia Starbuck reports for KUNR Public Radio, where she focuses on community reporting and the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in Reno, Nevada. Starbuck knows the area well. She is from Reno and graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, along with a minor in cinema and media studies. Local community issues are her passion, including the affordable housing crisis, access to oral healthcare and the challenges voters with disabilities face while participating in the election process. Along with radio, Starbuck reports in various formats, including digital storytelling and live reporting on social media. She has also directed and filmed two documentaries about homelessness. Starbuck contributed to KUNR’s coverage of hateful expressions at the University of Nevada, Reno, produced in 2019, which won a regional Edward R. Murrow award in the Best Continuing Coverage category and first place in the Associated Press Television and Radio Association (APTRA) broadcast contest for Continuing Coverage. Starbuck co-created and contributed to the series Spurs & Mud: A Century of Rodeo, which won first place from APTRA in 2019 for Best Sports Coverage.

Riane Roldan

Roldan reports for KUT in Austin, Texas and concentrates on the costs and benefits of suburban growth in Hays County. Roldan covered politics, immigration, and the environment during internships at The Texas Tribune and the Austin American-Statesman. She graduates from Emerson College in May with a bachelor's degree in journalism and grew up in Miami, Florida, where she attended Miami Dade College. Roldan has covered criminal justice for The Medill Justice Project and attended The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. Born to Cuban and Chilean families, she speaks Spanish and is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Roldan is also an alumnus of the Chips Quinn Scholars Program for Diversity in Journalism and won the first place award for in-depth reporting from the Florida College Press Association Miami.

Allyson Ortegon

Allyson Ortegon is working for KUT in Austin, Texas where she covers growth and development in nearby Hays County. Before that, she covered politics and policy, including the 86th Texas Legislature, during fellowships with The Texas Tribune and with Texas NPR affiliate stations. She wrote for The Alcalde, the award-winning alumni magazine published by The University of Texas at Austin since 1913. In an earlier stint at KUT, Austin’s NPR Station, she participated in  NPR's Next Generation Radio project. At UT, she reported across radio, television and print media for student publications including The Daily Texan and Texas Student Television. She will graduate with a degree in journalism and a secondary concentration in business. She is a two-time recipient of awards from The Headliner’s Foundation of Texas and she received the Jo Caldwell Meyer Scholarship from the Women Communicators of Austin, the Bob Schenkkan Endowed Presidential Scholarship, and the Carmage and Martha Ann Walls Foundation Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Journalism.

Erin McKinstry

Erin McKinstry reports for KCAW in Sitka, Alaska, a city and borough near Juneau with a population under 10,000. McKinstry brings experience to the KCAW post, where she concentrates on Sitka issues. She is an Alaska-based journalist and audio producer who has reported stories for Alaska Public Media, Edible Alaska, The Trace, The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, KBIA and Harvest Public Media. She’s a former host and producer for the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Radio Podcast and produces her own podcast called “Out Here” about life in rural Alaska. McKinstry has a master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She’s a fellow of Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), a Fulbright Scholar and an Edward R. Murrow Award Recipient from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).

Brenda León

Brenda Millicent León reports on undercovered Latino communities for Connecticut Public Radio. She covered the recovery efforts following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico during her internship at The Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico. A graduate from Lehman College at the City University of New York, she focused on broadcast journalism with a concentration in political science. During her time there she was a host at WWRL La Invasora 1600 AM. Her work has been published in The Gothamist, Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), El Deadline and The Mott Haven Herald. A Bronx native, León is a recent graduate from The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she obtained her master’s in Spanish-language journalism.  

Ali Oshinskie

Ali Oshinskie reports for Connecticut Public, the Constitution State’s only statewide public media resource and home to Connecticut Public Television and Connecticut Public Radio. Her focus is on the Naugatuck River Valley and the issues that affect blue-collar workers there. The Report for America assignment is terra firma for Oshinskie, who grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. She has produced live radio shows at every hour of the morning between 2 a.m.and 10 a.m. during internships and fellowships for New Hampshire Public Radio, Marketplace Morning Report and Connecticut Public Radio. She has written for The Hartford Courant and Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s The Arts Paper, and she has produced for Wondery’s Business Wars Daily and the New England News Collaborative’s weekly program “NEXT.” Later this year, her writing will be published in “Fast Funny Women,” an anthology of essays. After completing her undergrad at the University of Connecticut, Oshinskie founded a podcasting company, PODSTORIES. Most recently she was a program coordinator for the Yale School of Nursing.

Alejandra Martinez

Alejandra Martinez reports for KERA in Dallas as well as The Texas Newsroom, a journalism collaboration among the public radio stations of Texas and NPR, where she covers the impact of Covid-19 and its associated economic fallout on marginalized communities. Before joining Report for America, Martinez was a producer at WLRN, South Florida's NPR station where she covered immigration, marginalized communities, and the local arts scene. She would book, write, and produce stories for and the station’s daily talk show, “Sundial,” and she was part of Public Radio International’s (PRI) “Every 30 Seconds” election project, a collaborative public media reporting project tracing the young Latino electorate leading up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond. A native Texan, Martinez began her broadcast career working with KUT, Austin’s NPR station, first as an intern and later a producer. In Texas, Martinez participated in NPR’s Next-Generation Radio project, a week-long journalism boot camp, where she covered Houston’s recovery post-Hurricane Harvey in 2018. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism in 2017.  

Juanpablo Ramirez

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco covers substandard housing and police-community relations for WNIJ Radio in Illinois. An audio producer and journalist based out of Chicago, Ramirez-Franco has been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, he produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois, He is a graduate of Knox College.

Sarah Kim

Sarah Y. Kim reports for WYPR in Baltimore, where she focuses on the city’s housing and health crisis. Kim has spent her senior year at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore as editor-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, one of the oldest student newspapers in the country. It was through The News-Letter that Sarah fell in love with Baltimore and decided to pursue a career in local journalism. After becoming a staff writer in 2017, she served as news editor and opinions editor. Sarah is also a paid freelance researcher for Baltimore magazine and was an editorial intern there in the summer of 2018. Though born in Walnut Creek, California, Sarah grew up in South Korea for over 12 years, where she developed a passion for storytelling. She is an avid writer of fiction and poetry and graduates this spring with a B.A. in creative writing and international studies. Sarah is also an intern at the Baltimore division of international nonprofit Impact Hub, where she continues to expand her growing network of local entrepreneurs, activists and community members. She is excited to continue her career in journalism in Baltimore, the city she calls home.  

Chris Welter

Chris Welter reports for WYSO, the NPR station covering the greater Dayton, Ohio, area where he focuses on climate change and its impact on southwest Ohio and explores possible solutions. Welter is an Ohio lifer. He will graduate with a self-designed degree in environmental sciences from Antioch College in June 2020. He did boots-on-the-ground conservation work at farms and conducted extensive policy research on land-use issues in southwest Ohio as a Miller Fellow with the non-profit organization, Tecumseh Land Trust. He was editor-in-chief of Antioch College’s independent community newspaper, The Record. He also worked as a paralegal at a criminal defense firm in Chicago and a bankruptcy center in Philadelphia through the college’scooperative education department. He is originally from Columbus, Ohio. Chris has two cats, Beaver and Franklin, and is an avid disc golfer playing in tournaments across the country.