WRITING

Hibah Ansari

Hibah Ansari reports for Sahan Journal, a news organization based in Minnesota’s capital, St. Paul, that focuses on the state’s immigrants. At Sahan Journal, Ansari covers immigration policy, especially affecting Hmong, Somali, and Latino communities. Born and raised in Wisconsin, she holds a master of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism student. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, she was a reporting intern for USA Today Network in Wisconsin and Fox Cities Magazine in northeast Wisconsin. She has also contributed to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Bryan Anderson

Bryan Anderson covers the North Carolina statehouse for The Associated Press where he focuses on health care, education, and politics. Most recently, Anderson was a political reporter for The Sacramento Bee where he created and hosted the “California Nation” podcast and received an award for his investigation of numerous breakdowns of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles automatic voter registration program. He was an investigative reporting fellow for News21 where he unearthed information on how little polluters have spent to clean up the nation’s superfund sites. Anderson has won a slew of awards including being a Regional Finalist for a Society of Professional Journalist General News Reporting honor. He was an enterprise manager for the student paper at Elon University and wrote stories for North Carolina publications including The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer.

Farnoush Amiri

Farnoush Amiri covers the Ohio statehouse for The Associated Press, where she concentrates on issues related to abortion, gun control and opioids. She’s worked at The AP in New York City, helping with the wire’s global response to the coronavirus pandemic. Before joining The AP, she worked as a digital reporter at NBC News, where her reporting on Hurricane Maria took her to Puerto Rico to cover the problems with federal aid in San Juan. Farnoush graduated with her master’s degree from New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in early 2019. Born in Iran, Farnoush grew up in southern California and began her journalism career as a stringer for The Orange County Register. She serves on the board of the South Asian Journalists Association.  

Alex Acquisto

Alex has been a reporter at the Bangor Daily News in Maine, first covering the state’s lobster and tourism industries on the midcoast, then leading the paper’s metro coverage in Bangor, before finally reporting on Maine politics in the state capital. She has uncovered problems with the Legislature’s mandatory sexual harassment training that led to the ousting of its trainer, and her reporting on the deaths of children in Maine, prompted a legislative investigation into the state’s over-burdened child services agency. Her work has earned her several first place awards in education, news analysis, and law enforcement reporting from the Maine Press Association. Born and raised in Kentucky, Alex first spent time in Maine as a canoe instructor and returned to study writing. She has also reported for the Kennebunk Post and the Forecaster, and she was a teaching artists at The Telling Room, a non-profit organization that teaches storytelling skills to Maine youth. Alex is a graduate of Western Kentucky University and the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies. Watchdog reporting on public health in Kentucky Alex focuses on the region’s health problems, exposes flaws in Kentucky’s social services programs, gives voice to people struggling to care for themselves and their loved ones and offers potential solutions to problems that have plagued the area for a century. In particular, Alex serves as a watchdog of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, a government agency that wields enormous power over Kentucky’s most vulnerable citizens with  little scrutiny and transparency. She is based in Lexington, but spends extensive time in the Capitol bureau, especially during legislative sessions, and reports from communities in Eastern Kentucky.  She is directed by the newspaper’s deputy editor for accountability and engagement, who has overseen numerous award-winning projects and guides the paper’s coverage of state government and Appalachian Kentucky. 

Mara Abbott

Mara is an Olympic-athlete-turned-journalist. As a freelance journalist in Colorado, she has been published in The Wall Street Journal, espnW, The Colorado Independent, Runner’s World, and Westword. For her hometown paper, Boulder’s Daily Camera, she reported on everything from agricultural policy to the influence of local political advocacy groups. She has won multiple Colorado Associated Press Awards. Before her career in journalism, she was a professional cyclist — the two-time U.S. National Champion, winner of women’s Giro d’Italia and a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team where she placed fourth.