WRITING

Paradise Afshar

Paradise Afshar covers Latino and Asian immigrant communities for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Before becoming a Report for America corps member, Afshar was a producer at Fox News, working on breaking news and feature stories that were distributed to the network's affiliate stations. In South Florida, she was a web and social producer for WPLG-TV and a freelance journalist for the Miami Herald. Afshar holds a bachelor's degree in communications from Florida International University and a master's in Near Eastern and North African studies from King's College London. She has also founded a nonprofit that's focused on giving financial aid to young athletes in South Florida, and when Afshar isn't working, she's usually hiking, traveling or doing literally anything to distract herself from screen time.

Stefania Lugli

Stefania Lugli is a watchdog and community reporter for The Wichita Beacon, a nonprofit online news outlet in Wichita, Kansas. She covers Wichita communities that have been forgotten by the local media. This multimedia reporter has worked as a metro correspondent for The Boston Globe, and earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Emerson College in 2020. Born into a Venezuelan family, Lugli grew up in Cape Coral, Florida, is fluent in Spanish and is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She interned with The GroundTruth Project and with the GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting in Boston. In 2019 she won a scholarship to participate in the Knight Foundation’s NAHJ Student Project. Lugli enjoys being a plant mama and is waiting for the day she can swim with the manatees.

Bridget Fogarty

Bridget Fogarty reports on the Latino community, especially COVID-19's impact, for The Reader and El Perico in Omaha, Nebraska. Previously, Fogarty worked for the documenters program at City Bureau, a civic journalism nonprofit, covering Chicago's public meetings. During this time, she also helped Milwaukee families navigate WIC, a public health nutrition program that helps women and their children, as an AmeriCorps member. A graduate of Marquette University, Fogarty holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and Spanish. She has worked as a multimedia reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, a nonprofit news site, reporting on a variety of topics, including the pandemic's impact on the city's Black and Latino residents. The Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report have also published her work. Fogarty calls Glenview, Illinois home.

Hannah Critchfield

Hannah Critchfield covers issues affecting people 65 and over for the Tampa Bay Times. A second-year corps member, she previously reported on conditions inside prisons and jails during the pandemic and gender-based health disparities for North Carolina Health News. Critchfield's investigation into the state's underreporting of incarcerated people who died of COVID-19 changed state prison policy. She has worked for the Phoenix New Times, covering immigration and criminal justice, and her reporting has also appeared in The New York Times, VICE, The Intercept, and PBS. Critchfield, from Normal, Illinois, holds a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on workplace abuse within undocumented communities and received the Melvin Mencher Award for superior reporting. Her investigation into the rehiring of university faculty accused of sexual harassment in 2019 earned her the Fred M. Hechinger Award for Education Journalism.

Liz Donovan

Liz Donovan reports for City Limits, a nonprofit investigative news site based in New York City. She covers climate change and its implications for the city, including the disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities. Previously, as a fellow for the Global Migration Project, Donovan investigated the exploitation of immigrant women in a health care workforce. For over a decade she worked as a magazine editor, then earned her master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. As an Émile Boutmy scholar, Donovan earned a master's at the Sciences Po Journalism School in Paris in 2020. There, she interned on the climate and environment desk at Agence France-Presse and reported on France's migrant population. Her freelance work has been published in The Intercept, Documented, and The Week. In the summer she has taught reporting and editing to high school students at The School of The New York Times.

Pauly Denetclaw

Pauly Denetclaw reports for the Texas Observer, an Austin-based nonprofit news organization, covering the state's Indigenous communities. Before coming to the Observer, she was a reporter for the Navajo Times in Window Rock, Arizona, covering youth, LGBTQ2S+, arts, culture, and more. Denetclaw is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and grew up in Manuelito, New Mexico. She's Haltsooí (Meadow People, her mother's clan), and Kinyaa'áanii (Towering House People, her father's clan). Denetclaw's work earned her the Arizona Press Club's top award for both breaking news in the community and coverage of social issues. A recipient of the Native American Journalists Association's award for investigative reporting, Denetclaw teamed up with a journalist to reveal the effects of the Gold King Mine waste spill on tribal communities in New Mexico for National Native News, which airs on radio stations in the U.S. and Canada.

Tiana Woodard

Tiana Woodard covers Black neighborhoods in and around Boston for The Boston Globe. A 2021 graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Woodard studied journalism and English, co-founded the university's only Black-interest publication, BlackPrint, and worked as the first diversity and inclusion director at The Daily Texan, the college paper. She was one of five student journalists selected for ProPublica's Emerging Reporters 2019-20 program and is a recipient of a Facebook Journalism Project Scholarship. You can find her bylines in The Dallas Morning News, The Texas Tribune and The Indianapolis Star. In her spare time Woodard enjoys binge-watching “Jeopardy,” feeding table scraps to her spoiled Airedale terrier Pierre or connecting any current event to Prince. She grew up outside of Nashville, Tennessee but has called Beaumont, Texas her home for 12 years.

Brittany McGee

Brittany McGee reports for the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Georgia. McGee covers healthcare, including COVID-19, and what healthcare and the community will look like after the pandemic. She was a reporter, then assistant city and state editor for The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a co-diversity, equity, and inclusion officer for the newspaper, McGee helped develop and launch Elevate, a special section that amplifies the voices of marginalized communities. She was born and raised in Arkansas, but has called North Carolina home for years. McGee graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2021.

Hurubie Meko

Hurubie Meko reports for The Kansas City Star, where she works as part of a team focusing on gun violence in Missouri. Previously, she was the data and visualizations reporter at LNP|LancasterOnline, which covers the news in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where Meko calls home. She has reported on the local criminal justice system's treatment of sexual assault cases in Plain communities, and the impact of COVID-19 on nursing homes. Her investigative series “What's Lurking in Your Well?” examined private well water in Pennsylvania, and won an award from The Lenfest Institute honoring a journalist's outstanding contributions. Prior to graduating from American University in Washington, D.C, in 2016, Meko interned at Amnesty International USA and studied abroad in Morocco.

Lynandro Simmons

DJ Simmons reports on communities of color for the Athens Banner-Herald in Athens, Georgia. He has worked as a reporter for the Westport News, where he covered local government and education in Westport, Connecticut. Simmons reported the news of Darien, New Canaan and Wilton, as well as statewide environmental issues, for Hearst Connecticut Media, a network of newspapers and websites. His work has earned him several awards from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists. Simmons was editor-in-chief of the student-run Southern News at Southern Connecticut State University. While in college, he helped document descendants of World War I veterans for the Connecticut State Library. His hometown is Columbia, South Carolina.