WRITING

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.

Samantha Searles

Samantha Searles covers gun violence and prevention for WHYY, the major public media organization in the Greater Philadelphia area. Prior to joining WHYY, Searles was an on-air reporter for Suffolk University/New England Cable News and a contributor to Framingham Source, a news site covering Framingham, Massachusetts. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism with a broadcast concentration from Suffolk University. When she’s not reporting, she loves the performing arts, gardening and getting her dog out of trouble.

Theo Peck-Suzuki

Theo Peck-Suzuki covers childhood poverty in southeast Ohio for WOUB Public Media, a PBS and NPR affiliate based in Athens, Ohio. A recent graduate with a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University, Peck-Suzuki interned with WOUB as a multimedia reporter. Previously, he worked to advance sustainable community development in Appalachian Ohio with the nonprofit Rural Action, and studied cultural anthropology at Brown University and The University of Chicago. His desire to write about people in a way that would be meaningful to those outside the academic world is what led him to become a journalist. In his free time, he writes creatively and plays guitar.

Amir Khafagy

Amir Khafagy reports for Documented, a nonprofit news site that focuses on New York City’s immigrant communities. His beat explores the intersections of labor, race, class, immigration and urban policy. Khafagy’s writing has been featured in The Guardian, Vice, The New Republic, Bloomberg and Prism, among others, and he is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Ida B. Wells Fellowship and The International Center for Journalists COVID-19 Reporting Award. Khafagy holds a master’s degree in urban affairs from Queens College. A lifelong New Yorker, he hails from Jackson Heights, Queens. As a performer, Khafagy has appeared in Ping Chong + Company's “Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity” and in “Gun Country,” a Houses on the Moon Theatre Company production.