WRITING

Claire Potter

Claire Potter reports on environmental issues for the Valley News in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. Previously, she was a research intern for the “The Axe Files,” David Axelrod's podcast on CNN's site. Potter graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree in American History and English Literature from The University of Chicago in 2021, where she was a managing editor and contributor to Expositions, the student-run magazine covering environmental issues. Potter has written about Illinois' child welfare and juvenile justice systems for the student paper, The Chicago Maroon, and reported on the Iowa caucuses for ABC's political news site during the summer of 2019. A Pulitzer Center fellow, Potter has reported on the activists and urban planners who are reintroducing wetlands and rivers into Mexico City. She grew up in Warwick, New York.

Jayna Omaye

Jayna Omaye covers ethnic and cultural affairs for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaii's largest daily newspaper. Born and raised on Oahu, Omaye recently worked as a staff writer at Honolulu Magazine, where she led one of its largest projects in recent years—a 19-page cover story and 20 individual pages online—about the life stories of Hawaii's Japanese-American veterans. The multimedia feature won two national first-place awards. Her work has also garnered three local awards. Omaye began her journalism career as a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, and then moved back home to work at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 2015. She earned her master's degree from Northwestern University, and her bachelor's from the University of Oregon. Omaye has danced hula for most of her life and recently began playing taiko, a percussion instrument, after a story on Honolulu's ethnic festivals inspired her to reconnect with her Japanese heritage.

Marisa Mecke

Marisa Mecke reports on environmental issues in western North Carolina for the Mountain Times, a newspaper based in Boone, North Carolina and also serving nearby counties. A 2021 graduate of Davidson College, Mecke was a feature writer for The Davidsonian, the student paper, and an intern for WDAV, a classical music public radio station, where she produced a video series of interviews with station volunteers and contributed to WDAV’s blog, “Of Note.” She was also the programming director of the student radio station, WALT. Davidson College awarded Mecke the Latin American Studies Prize in 2021 for “her groundbreaking study highlighting the often-silenced transnational relationships between Cubans on the island and in the United States since the 1959 Revolution.” Home for Mecke is Atlanta, Georgia.

Rose Varela

Rose Monique Varela Henriquez reports for El Nuevo Herald in Miami, focusing on the Spanish-speaking immigrant communities of South Florida. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Varela Henriquez is a bilingual multimedia journalist with experience covering social justice issues and economic disparities. She interned at the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo in Puerto Rico, where her in-depth investigation uncovered how the island’s government halted a plan meant to assist homeless people during the pandemic. She also created data visualizations and carried out fact-checks on Puerto Rico’s governor candidate for the 2020 election. While working for Pulso Estudiantil, a student-run news site at the University of Puerto Rico, Varela Henriquez developed her photojournalism skills, and she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, magna cum laude, in 2020.

Jesse Vad

Jesse Vad covers eastern Santa Cruz County for Nogales International, a local publication in southern Arizona. Previously, Vad worked as a reporting intern for SJV Water, a nonprofit online publication focused on water coverage in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where he covered all things water including agriculture, climate change and policy. Vad is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s class of 2020 where he specialized in visual journalism. He and his peers were finalists in the EPPY Awards for their pandemic coverage in the South Bronx. Vad has also worked as a remote reporting intern for The Jakarta Post where he covered Covid-19’s impact abroad. He was awarded the 2020 Correspondents Fund Scholar title from the J-School for his work with The Jakarta Post. As a freelancer, Vad’s work has appeared in NBC News, Gothamist, The Times-Standard and more. Before coming to journalism, Vad was an elementary school teacher. Over summer breaks, he worked on his own storytelling projects in New Orleans, Tajikistan and China.

Anna Bryson

Anna Bryson covers education in Henrico County, Virginia for the Henrico Citizen. Before this, she reported on law enforcement, courts and crime at The Daily Sun in Port Charlotte, Florida, covering federal court cases and exposing the rising number of suicides in the county jail. For the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Bryson dug into childhood literacy issues, and reported on child care, mental health initiatives and the legacy of busing, and she was the lead reporter on the 2019 Tampa mayoral race at Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. Bryson holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, her hometown. She was news editor at The Crow's Nest, the student-run newspaper.

Damakant Jayshi

Damakant Jayshi covers Hmong and other immigrants from Southeast Asia for Wisconsin's Wausau Pilot & Review, a nonprofit digital news organization with a focus on government accountability. This self-described accidental journalist is passionate about journalism's watchdog role, and feels there's a lot of opportunity for nuanced coverage of immigrants and refugees. As a reporter and an editor for two national dailies in Nepal, The Kathmandu Post and MyRepublica, a site he helped launch, and as special correspondent for The Hindu, a paper in India, Damakant has covered earthquakes, unequal citizenship for women in Nepal, human rights, insurgency, refugees, politics, parliament, foreign affairs and civil aviation. He is the founder of South Asia Check, a fact-checking news site that promotes transparency and accountability in politics and media. Jayshi is a 2007 Nieman fellow.

Jesse Bedayn

Jesse Bedayn reports on economic inequality for The Mercury News in San Jose, California. Before becoming a Report for America corps member, Bedayn studied investigative reporting and narrative writing at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where he wrote about health care and aging in California and investigated the fraught world of for-profit nursing homes for the Investigative Reporting Program. Bedayn has worked as a stringer for The New York Times and as a research and data assistant at KQED public radio, he plumbed through police use-of-force cases for The California Reporting Project. Bedayn holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Kent in England. As editor of the student paper InQuire, he won local awards and shared the paper's first national U.K. award since the paper's inception in 1965. Bedayn grew up in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada, and spends his free time rambling in the mountains.

McKenna Ross

McKenna Ross is a business reporter covering the nonprofit and charity sector for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Previously, she reported for MLive, a Michigan news site, where she focused on local government, community and health news in Jackson and Washtenaw counties. A Miami native, McKenna moved to Michigan in high school and got her start in local news as an apprentice at the Detroit Free Press. She has interned at The Oregonian, Gongwer News Service and The Palm Beach Post. McKenna graduated from Michigan State University in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science. While there, she interned at WKAR, a public radio station at MSU, and spent most of her time at the campus paper, The State News, where she led reporters as managing editor through coverage of the Larry Nassar sexual assault scandal and fallout at MSU.

Rose Wong

Rose Wong covers health care and mental health for the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. She interned for the paper in 2020, where she reported on breaking news, COVID-19 outbreaks in nursing homes and the pandemic's impact on service workers. As a cancer survivor, Wong has seen firsthand the complexities of life as a patient in the American health care system, thereby developing an interest in contributing clarity and justice through health journalism. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Duke University, where she was senior editor of The Chronicle, the student-run media organization. Her investigative series exposing a pattern of misdiagnoses and inadequate care within Duke Student Health earned her the Melcher Family Award for Excellence in Journalism's top honor, and her reporting became part of a national college health story published by The Washington Post. Home for Wong is Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.