WRITING

Isabelle Tavares

Isabelle Tavares covers environmental and public health impacts in Southwest Detroit at Planet Detroit. Before that, she spent two years in the Santo Domingo art scene exploring her heritage and making films about her experience as a Dominican-American. Her interest in film was spurred by her work as an associate archival producer for a PBS docu-series about public health. She holds a master’s degree in magazine, news, and digital journalism from Syracuse University, where she reported on the food apartheid. This reporting came after her time in Cuba learning climate resilience strategies from rural and urban farmers. In 2019, she wrote data-driven lifestyle articles for Reader's Digest as an intern with the American Society of Magazine Editors. She is co-editor of Clearline Magazine, a Detroit-based environmental textile art publication.

Jabari Gibbs

Jabari Gibbs covers Glynn County in Coastal Georgia at The Current. Before joining Report for America, Gibbs was an Emma Bowen Foundation Fellow at The Current, covering Savannah government and city politics. He graduated from Georgia Southern University in 2023, where he served as editor-in-chief of The Inkwell, the campus newspaper. Under his leadership, the paper received multiple awards for investigating neglected student housing conditions. When he is not writing, Gibbs enjoys watching the NBA and going on long walks.

Jack Brook

Before joining The Associated Press, Brook lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for three and a half years, initially arriving as a Henry Luce Scholar. He has since worked as a freelance journalist covering Southeast Asia with a focus on human rights and environmental issues. His reporting has appeared in a range of publications, including The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Nikkei Asia, Mongabay and Vice World News. He also served as an editor with CamboJA News, one of Cambodia's last independent media outlets at the time. He grew up in Palo Alto, California, and graduated from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in history. He speaks conversational Khmer and Spanish and once attended an elephant’s wedding.

Audrey Mei Yi Brown

Audrey Brown (they/them) covers environmental health equity and corporate accountability in the Bay Area for the San Francisco Public Press. Prior to joining Report for America, Brown covered environmental equity for the Bay Area climate news magazine KneeDeep Times. This followed a stint at the San Francisco Chronicle, where Brown worked on SFNext, a civic engagement initiative, covering a range of city issues spanning homelessness, digital inequity, and downtown recovery. Brown is a 2022 graduate of Columbia Journalism School. They grew up in San Francisco and still call the city home.

Kate Payne

Kate Payne covers government and politics for The Associated Press with a focus on the Florida Legislature and education. Before joining Report for America, Payne covered education for WLRN Public Media in South Florida, where she profiled students and pressed officials in some of the country’s largest school districts. Payne has spent her career in public media newsrooms in Florida and Iowa, where her reporting has spanned interviewing middle schoolers on the lunch line to presidential candidates on the campaign trail. In 2020, she and NPR’s Miles Parks broke the story that Iowa Democrats planned to use an untested and potentially vulnerable app to transmit their Caucus results. Payne has won awards for her political reporting, feature writing and sound editing, and has reported from the field in the aftermath of multiple natural disasters. Like a good Floridian, Payne has a love for the weird and the wild and makes an excellent Key lime pie.

Aydali Campa

Aydali Campa, a bilingual journalist, covers environmental justice and immigrant communities in Chicago for Borderless Magazine. She has written stories covering education, immigration, COVID-19, and climate change. Aydali is a 2024 Widening the Pipeline Fellow with the National Press Foundation. Previously, she was a reporter for Inside Climate News and earned the 2022 Shaufler Prize in Journalism for her series about efforts to remediate soil in Atlanta contaminated with lead. She has also contributed stories to The Wall Street Journal and The Arizona Republic and produced videos for Arizona PBS. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and mass communications and a master's in investigative journalism from Arizona State University, where she co-produced an award-winning documentary. In her free time, she enjoys baking, learning to play guitar, and watching sitcoms.

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.

Ben Jodway

Ben Jodway covers LGBTQ+ Ohioans living in rural communities at The Buckeye Flame. Before that, he covered education for the Midland Daily News, including a superintendent search and the resignation of Central Michigan University's president. Jodway was a reporter on Central Michigan University's student newspaper, CM Life, covering general assignments. At WCMU Public Radio, he covered libraries being criticized for displaying LGBTQ+ books. He has a bachelor's degree in history from CMU.

Lucas Dufalla

Before coming to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Dufalla interned at PublicSource, an investigative nonprofit newsroom in his hometown of Pittsburgh. There, he covered housing and economic development in the city and its surrounding boroughs. A summer before, he interned at the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest daily newspaper, where he covered small business in southern Maine. He attended Bowdoin College and wrote for the school’s student-run weekly newspaper, The Bowdoin Orient.

Berenice Garcia

Before joining Texas Tribune, Berenice Garcia covered local governments across various cities in the Rio Grande Valley, crime and general assignments, as well as spearheaded healthcare coverage at The Monitor newspaper. A Valley native, she traveled east to earn her bachelor's degree in journalism and politics from New York University. During her time there, she interned at NBC News, the Daily Beast and the New York Daily News. When she's not reporting, Berenice enjoys getting the wind knocked out of her at the gym.