WRITING

Lizzie Ramirez

Lizzie Ramirez interned at The Nevada Independent before joining The Times-Independent. At The Indy, she helped cover the 2025 legislative session, aiding the legislative team in writing live blogs, monitoring hearings, and connecting pending legislation to Nevadans to illustrate how potential laws could impact the state. Prior to graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno with her master's degree, Ramirez worked for Teen Vogue where she served as Nevada’s correspondent. She reported how young people were mobilizing in battleground states in an attempt to swing the election. Ramirez also worked for The New York Times as a freelance reporter and collected data throughout the week of the election. Her passion for reporting began when she was the news editor at the student-run newspaper, The Nevada Sagebrush, before she graduated with her bachelors degree in journalism.

Allie Pitchon

Allie Pitchon covers nonprofit and public institutions for Charlottesville Tomorrow. Pitchon is a half-Argentine and half-American award-winning journalist, born and raised in Buenos Aires. She has worked as a reporter in Argentina, at the Miami Herald, The New York Times, and a local USA TODAY paper in Virginia. Allie has a degree in international relations from Pomona College and a Master of Science from Columbia Journalism School. She specializes in investigating abuses of power in government and the criminal justice system.

Jorgelina Manna-Rea

Jorgelina Manna-Rea is an environmental reporter for the Kingsport Times News. Before joining the team in Kingsport, she was a producer at NPR and WAMU's live talk show 1A. There, she produced a variety of conversations ranging from how communities recover from disasters to what it means to love. She also produced and reported at NPR and WBUR’s "Here & Now" and NPR member station WUSF, respectively. While studying at the University of South Florida, she was a staff writer and assistant news editor at The Oracle, the student-run newspaper.

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.

Kennedy Edgerton

Before applying to RFA, Kennedy Edgerton covered the real estate and housing industry as a reporter for Forbes and HousingWire.com. At Morehouse College, he honed his journalism and media production skills, fueling a career to launch a full-suite media production company. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Cinema, Television, and Emerging Media Studies with a minor in Journalism. While at Morehouse, he served as president of the Rugby Football Club and was a staff reporter for the Maroon Tiger Student Newspaper. Edgerton has also contributed to the Harvard Business Review and gained experience in film production, journalism, and project management.

Safura Syed

Safura Syed was a newsroom fellow at Verite News in New Orleans before continuing as an education reporter through Report for America. During first year at Verite News, Syed reported on environmental justice issues and energy sustainability. Born and raised in Metro Detroit, Syed covered health and culture stories in the city as an intern for WDIV, the local NBC affiliate. Syed's journalism career started in high school and continued into college at the University of Michigan's student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, where she was an editor. Syed holds a bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology and creative writing.

Hallie Claflin

Prior to joining the Commonwealth Beacon, Claflin covered state government, politics and rural homelessness for Wisconsin Watch. Her journalism career started in her home state of Wisconsin, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in both journalism and political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds a minor in Asian American studies. In college, she interned at a number of local publications, including The Badger Project and Madison Commons. In 2023, she covered national and international affairs as a visual news intern at Voice of America in Washington, D.C. Claflin is a U.S. history buff, and she is thrilled to be reporting in Massachusetts, where her distant relative William Claflin was the 27th governor from 1869 to 1872.

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.

Isabela C. Lisco

Prior to joining KOLD-TV, Lisco pursued and published investigative video stories in Chicago and Washington, D.C., on issues like foster care, environmental health and citizen militias. As a multimedia journalist in northern Wisconsin, she covered everything from childcare funding cuts to car shows. Lisco also reported for the student news station at Northwestern University while completing her undergraduate degree in journalism and Middle Eastern studies. Isabela speaks four languages fluently (English, Spanish, German and Arabic) and is committed to using these linguistic and cultural competencies to cover underserved communities.

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.