WRITING

Natasha Brennan

Natasha Brennan reports on Indigenous communities in Washington state for The News Tribune in Tacoma, and also provides coverage for other McClatchy newsrooms in the state. Previously, she worked as a freelance journalist and photographer focusing on Native American issues in Southern California. Her work has been published by Indian Country Today, The Associated Press and PBS Native Report. She became inspired to specialize in writing about Native American culture and issues as a child visiting her father's family on the Cahuilla Reservation in Southern California. Brennan, from West Covina, California, holds a master's degree in journalism from the USC Annenberg School, where she was an Annenberg Leadership scholar and Initiative fellow. Her 2019 book, “People of the Willow House,” has been featured in museums and libraries in Southern California, and Brennan says it “aims to dispel the myth that Native people and culture are extinct or ancient.”

Shaun Robinson

Shaun Robinson covers northwest Vermont for VTDigger, a nonprofit daily news organization dedicated to watchdog reporting. Previously, Robinson worked as a statehouse correspondent for the Cape Cod Times, and produced coverage of Newton, Massachusetts for The Boston Globe. He has interned at GBH, Boston public radio, and did a six-month co-op at The Patriot Ledger, a daily paper in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he covered hundreds of stories, from a subway derailment to an 84-day sanitation workers' strike. When Robinson was editor-in-chief of The Daily Free Press, the student-run paper at Boston University, it won the 2019 New England College Newspaper of the Year Award. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism, summa cum laude, in May 2021. Robinson was born in Seattle but grew up in central New Jersey. He's a lifelong soccer fan, and is steadily improving at solving The New York Times crossword puzzle.

Astrid Kayembe

Astrid Kayembe is a reporter for The Commercial Appeal, a paper based on Memphis, Tennessee, covering South Memphis. Most recently, she was a social media associate for L.A. Taco, a news site, and participated in The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. Kayembe earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in media and social change from the University of Southern California in 2021, where she was a reporter and editor for Intersections South L.A. Kayembe and a team partnered with L.A.Taco and won first place in a student innovation competition hosted by the University of Missouri School of Journalism. For a fellowship, she produced the “Truth Told” video series with a team of journalists as a part of the Google News Initiative. Kayembe calls South Central LA home, and when she isn’t reporting she can be found searching for the best fried plantains in the city (which are probably at her mom’s house).

Elizabeth Thompson

Elizabeth Thompson reports on gender and prison health for North Carolina Health News, a nonprofit news organization in Chapel Hill, North Carolina that covers health care in the state. Thompson has covered Texas politics for The Dallas Morning News' Washington bureau, reporting on the 2020 election and Texans in Congress. Prior to that, she was a freelance journalist and fact checker for The Raleigh News & Observer, covering North Carolina politics. As an intern for GrepBeat, the tech news website, Thompson wrote about startups and businesses in North Carolina's Research Triangle area. This classically trained opera singer is a native of Long Island, New York, but became a Tar Heel when she studied journalism and music at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Katie Hayes

Katie Hayes reports for The Daily Herald in Everett, Washington and covers issues that affect the working class. As a freelance reporter zeroing in on government accountability in the Northwest, Hayes reported on state laws that prohibit private militias. Her work appeared in InvestigateWest and Crosscut, Seattle-based nonprofit news outlets. In 2020, Hayes created a website dedicated to exploring police accountability issues in Olympia, Washington. She wrote in-depth stories and took photos for the site, along with editing stories submitted by other journalists. Hayes is originally from St. Louis and holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Missouri–St. Louis. She has reported on issues that affect rural western Washington communities as a reporter for both The Chronicle in Centralia and the Shelton-Mason County Journal.

Neil Strebig

Neil Strebig is a chef-turned-journalist, reporting on local business for Lookout Santa Cruz, a website devoted to covering community news. A former reporter for the York Daily Record in York, Pennsylvania, Strebig focused primarily on food, business, and issues in the hospitality industry. He has written about breaking bread with Amish and refugee families, and restaurant workers' financial struggles and lack of healthcare. His in-depth reporting highlighted problems surrounding the state liquor license laws, and how the state's tourism and restaurant industry can recover after the pandemic. Strebig's work has appeared in USA Today and throughout its network, and earned him an award. He grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, and was managing editor of The Northside Chronicle in Pittsburgh, which earned its first Golden Quill award from the region's Press Club during his tenure. Strebig holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Pittsburgh's Point Park University.

Sierra Clark

Sierra Clark reports for the Traverse City Record-Eagle in Michigan. Clark is Kichi-wiiwedoong Anishinaabe Odawa, and covers Indigenous stories in her ancestral lands in northern Michigan. She holds a bachelor's degree in freshwater science and sustainability from Western Michigan University, and has worked as a water quality analyst for conservation associations. In June 2020, she began a fellowship with the Mishigamiing Journalism Project, a partnership between the Record-Eagle and Indigenizing the News, a digital news organization devoted to Native American and Indigenous cultures, issues and histories. Through this fellowship, Clark developed relationships with several newsrooms, including NPR, and brought Indigenous representation to their stories. As co-editor of Indigenizing the News, she hopes to continue uplifting voices in her community by doing investigative reporting on contemporary and historical issues regarding the Anishinaabek in her state.

Atavia Reed

Atavia Reed reports on Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods for Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit news site dedicated to covering the city’s neighborhoods. Previously, Reed was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune Media Group covering suburban news for the Pioneer Press, including stories on the pandemic’s effect on senior living and education. A multimedia journalist, Reed says she was once described as “too nosey for her own good” and decided to make a career out of it. She’s covered culture and news for USA Today, VICE, the Chicago Tribune, South Side Weekly and the Chicago Reader. Reed holds a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was the assistant editor for the school’s culture magazine, Buzz, contributed a narrative feature to the local paper and spent a semester studying dramatic writing at New York University.

Emily Allen

Emily Allen covers West Virginia's smaller counties, towns and the people who live there as a community watchdog reporter for Mountain State Spotlight, an investigative and enterprise news site based in Charleston, West Virginia. Allen spent her first two years with Report for America at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, where she reported on government and public affairs in the southern part of the state. Prior to that, Allen was on the city hall beat for the Grand Forks Herald, writing about government and politics for communities in northeast North Dakota and northwest Minnesota. Allen earned her B.A. from the University of Minnesota. She grew up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Laura Brache

Laura Brache is a reporter for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, covering the effects of changing demographics on minority communities across the region. Brache spent her first year as a RFA corps member in Charlotte, North Carolina covering immigration and the Latino community for both WFAE public radio and La Noticia, a Spanish-language paper. She is a multilingual, multimedia journalist from North Carolina who was born in Massachusetts and raised in the Dominican Republic. Brache led the production of “Believe It, Do It, Earn It,” an award-winning documentary about the twice-undefeated field hockey team at her alma mater, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A recipient of the Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for social media, Brache was part of the news team at WFMY-TV in Greensboro that won for its bilingual coverage of a series of severe weather events. She holds a master’s degree from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.