WRITING

Michaela Towfighi

Michaela Towfighi reports on struggling middle-class and working-class residents for the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire. Prior to joining the Monitor full time, she was a summer intern there. A 2022 graduate of Duke University with a degree in public policy and journalism and media studies, she covered education, COVID-19 and the 2020 election and helped edit stories about the Durham County Courthouse for The 9th Street, a Duke newsletter, and North Carolina’s Indy Week. Her story about a family grappling with a delayed trial for a fatal car accident in Concord, New Hampshire won top honors in Duke’s Melcher Family Award for Excellence in Journalism. Towfighi is an American expat who calls London home, despite not having picked up a British accent just yet.

Samantha Hendrickson

Samantha Hendrickson covers the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio for The Associated Press. Before joining Report for America, she was a general assignment and business reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Hendrickson is a proud alumnus of The Minnesota Daily, the University of Minnesota’s student-run paper, and covered the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the trial of Derek Chauvin and the police shooting of Daunte Wright. She also freelanced for The Intercept after discovering that a key witness for the defense in the Chauvin trial had a pending lawsuit against him involving the death of a young Black man. When she isn’t reporting, Hendrickson loves to craft, cook, read, do yoga and create the perfect playlist.

Teresa Homsi

Teresa Homsi is an environmental reporter in northern Michigan for WCMU public radio, which is based in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Homsi covers rural environmental issues, and their intersection with public health and Michigan commerce. Holding a bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University in environmental studies, journalism and anthropology, she was a beat reporter for Central Michigan Life, the student paper, and interned for the Huron Daily Tribune and for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy’s superfund program. Homsi helped start her university’s sustainability office, and implemented projects, policy and programming. Her work has gained national and international recognition from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Alice Herman

Alice Herman covers health care for Spectrum News 13, a cable news outlet in Orlando, Florida. Previously, she reported on labor and the workplace as a Leonard C. Goodman investigative reporting fellow with In These Times. Hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, Herman has covered Wisconsin politics for local and national political outlets including The Progressive. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Grinnell College.

Caroline Beck

Caroline Beck covers K-12 education in Indianapolis, Indiana for the IndyStar, reporting on all 11 school districts in Marion County. Prior to joining the IndyStar, she covered the state legislature for Alabama Daily News, and also reported on education, prisons and parole boards, unemployment benefits and health care. Her interest in journalism began in college where she reported for the student-run paper, including covering a Ku Klux Klan rally and cutbacks in college staffing, then becoming the paper’s editor. She has interned for In These Times magazine in Chicago. A native of Speedway, a town on the west side of Indianapolis, Beck has attended the Indy 500 every year since 2016.

DorMiya Vance

DorMiya Vance is a multimedia reporter for WABE, the NPR and PBS affiliate serving metro Atlanta. A recent graduate with a bachelor’s degree from the communications and media program at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, Vance was editor-in-chief of the student paper, The Voice, and has interned at The Fayetteville Observer. Vance says that she knew at an early age that she wanted to work as a writer, and she is passionate about telling stories.

Iris Kwok

Iris Kwok reports on climate and transportation for Berkeleyside, a nonprofit digital news site that covers Berkeley and the East Bay in California. As a freelance journalist, she has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Sfgate, a news site, and KQED public media, covering stories about race and diversity, music, and their intersection. Kwok was a 2021 Asian American Journalists Association Voices fellow, where she reported on the exodus of journalists of color from the news industry. A recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Kwok studied political science, music and journalism. Outside of journalism, she is a cellist with an affinity for cats and foggy weather.

Jorge Garcia

Jorge Garcia is a bilingual multimedia journalist for the Visalia Times-Delta in Visalia, California. He hails from Los Angeles, and his passion for storytelling and amplifying the voices of disenfranchised communities are several reasons why he pursued a journalism career. A graduate of California State University, Los Angeles, with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, Garcia has produced video, audio, text, and photojournalism work for various news outlets, including the University Times, Cal State’s student paper, and KQBH radio, and as an intern for EdSource and the Los Angeles Times. He enjoys playing soccer and collecting vintage vinyl records.

Lindiwe Vilakazi

Lindiwe Vilakazi reports for The Washington Informer, a multimedia news organization serving African Americans in the metro Washington, D.C. area. Previously, she was a contributing editor at Acumen Magazine, a Washington-based publication featuring investigative stories that examine eugenics, African-American history, social movements and popular culture. Vilakazi says that she is an investigative journalist whose work highlights the lives and stories of those groups of people who often go unnoticed in the mainstream news. Her freelance work has appeared in several digital and print publications.

Monica Cordero Sancho

Mónica Cordero Sancho is an investigative and data journalist for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, a news site based in Champaign, Illinois. Cordero’s work has been published by Univision, Bloomberg Businessweek, La Noticia, Radio Ambulante, NPR, openDemocracy and The New York Times. Born in Costa Rica, she is a graduate of the University of Costa Rica and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Cordero was the lead reporter, involving newsrooms from 12 Latin American countries, on the investigation into the evangelical movement’s political power in Latin America. Published in multiple outlets in the United States and in Latin America, this reporting won the 2020 Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award, the most prestigious journalism prize in the Spanish-speaking world, for best investigative reporting. Cordero is a member of a pub-run group in Brooklyn, New York and loves pastrami sandwiches and chocolate cake.