WRITING

Megan Valley

Megan Valley covers education for the Belleville News-Democrat in Belleville, Ill. She covered K-12 and higher education for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa for a year and a half. A 2018 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, she double-majored in English and the Program of Liberal Studies, and worked for The Observer, the student paper, first as a news writer and eventually as assistant managing editor. She was an intern at Ave Maria Press, a Catholic publisher, in Notre Dame and wrote on music for Exclaim!, a monthly Canadian music magazine. The summer after graduating, Valley attended New York University’s Summer Publishing Institute. She grew up in Flushing, Michigan, a suburb of Flint.

DeAsia Sutgrey

DeAsia Sutgrey covers East St. Louis for the Belleville News-Democrat in Belleville, Ill. She has been an intern and fellow for The Nation, VICE and the Detroit Free Press and blogged on culture for Blavity, a media company created by and for black millennials. At The Nation, she was part of the magazine’s “Vision 2020 Project” reporting on how young people are approaching the 2020 presidential election. She’s due to graduate in 2020 from the University of Kansas’ William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, with a B.S. in Journalism with a minor in African and African-American Studies. Additionally, Sutgrey was a reporter for The University Daily Kansan, the University of Kansas’ student newspaper, for four years.

Ricky Rodas

Ricky Rodas reports for The Oaklandside, where he focuses on immigrant-owned and operated businesses in Oakland, California. The beat covers economic and neighborhood change, barriers to entry, minimum wage struggles and much more. Rodas is a Los Angeles native who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley to Salvadorean parents, studied at California State University-L.A. and was the first investigative reporter for his campus newspaper, The University Times. During his time at the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Rodas was awarded Radio Television and Digital News Association’s (RTDNA) Pete Wilson Scholarship and a Jonathan Rodgers Fellowship. He also worked as a research assistant for the Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at Berkeley where he was part of investigations into L.A.’s s child welfare system and the national sex offender registry. Through years of listening, determination and speech therapy, he overcame a childhood stutter. A multimedia journalist, he concentrated in audio at Berkeley and has experience in radio hosting, producing audio reports, working as a studio engineer, writing breaking news and investigative reporting.

Jake Wittich

Jake Wittich covers Lakeview/Boystown/Lincoln Park areas of Chicago, for Block Club Chicago. He has covered local news with an LGBTQ focus as a weekend reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and as a freelancer for Block Club Chicago, and various LGBTQ publications including the Windy City Times. His investigative reporting on racism in the Boystown neighborhood was recognized as a finalist in the 2019 Chicago Journalists Association awards. Wittich previously worked as an overnight breaking news reporter for the Sun-Times after completing a summer internship for the newspaper's city desk. He attended Columbia College Chicago, where he was managing editor of its student-run newspaper, The Columbia Chronicle.

Heather Mongilio

Heather Mongilio writes for the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. She concentrates on military affairs, in particular, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and nearby Ft. Meade, home to the National Security Agency. Her reporting focuses on the locals who staff these nationally known institutions and how their work affects the region. Mongillo previously covered health, social services and Fort Detrick for The Frederick News-Post in Maryland. She also reported on crime and courts for the Carroll County Times. More of her work can be seen in Environmental Health News and PBS NOVA Next. She earned her master’s degree in science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her bachelor’s degree in journalism and psychology from American University, where she was editor-in-chief of its student newspaper, The Eagle. Mongilio grew up in Ellicott City, Maryland. Her reporting has been recognized by the Maryland, Delaware, and D.C. Press Association, including first and second-place awards for crime, health and investigative reporting. Among those honors was First Place investigative reporting for “What Happened to Amy Metz?” a project that raised questions about a woman found dead outdoors during a blizzard.

Jordan Wilkie

Jordan Wilkie writes and reports for Carolina Public Press in Asheville, North Carolina, where he covers election integrity and conditions of confinement in jails. He has previously written for Carolina Public Press, and his work has also appeared in The Guardian, the Raleigh/Durham IndyWeek and WhoWhatWhy.org. In 2018, Wilkie graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his previous life, Wilkie worked as an administrator and instructor of educational programming in prisons and juvenile detentions in Oregon. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon.

Jose Encarnación

José Encarnación is a journalist for Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, a Puerto Rican publication, where he concentrates on education issues that include massive school closures even before the coronavirus pandemic as well as various scandals involving the island’s education budget. As a journalist and graduate student at the University of Puerto Rico, Encarnación knows the island well. He specialized in Caribbean history and the intersection of sports and society. He has worked as a news and sports reporter for Diálogo UPR, NotiCel and Metro Puerto Rico. In 2019, Encarnación received awards for Best Feature Article and Best Interview granted by the Puerto Rico Association of Journalists. (Its Spanish acronym is ASPPRO.) In 2016, Encarnación completed his B.A. in Journalism at the University of Puerto Rico and is currently working on his master's thesis, which focuses on the political persecution that surrounded the 1966 Central American & Caribbean Games that took place in Puerto Rico.

Douglas Soule

Douglas Soule reports for The Mountain State Spotlight. His in-depth business and economic coverage promotes more extensive coverage of issues affecting the state. Soule has served as the editor-in-chief of the Daily Athenaeum, West Virginia University’s independent student newspaper, for two years. His byline has gone far and wide, including on the front page of The Washington Post and in PolitiFact. He participated in the 2019 Politico Journalism Institute. Born and raised in West Virginia, his hometown is Bridgeport, which is in the northern part of the state.

Lauren Peace

Lauren Peace covers public health threats for the Mountain State Spotlight. She was a reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle/USA Today Network in Rochester, New York, where she helped lead coverage of a sexual harassment case at the University of Rochester. In 2018, she received a Fulbright research grant and moved to Kosovo, where she produced an interactive documentary project highlighting the stories of women throughout the country. Peace is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, where she played soccer, and is a soon-to-be graduate of Columbia University, where she studied in the Stabile Investigative Journalism Program. During her time at Columbia, Peace covered New York State and New York City politics for Uptown Radio, and Pelham Parkway for The Bronx Ink. She is originally from Morgantown, West Virginia, and is excited to get back to the state.

Teddy Rosenbluth

Teddy Rosenbluth covers health care and related issues for the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire. Rosenbluth has covered science and healthcare for Los Angeles Magazine, the Santa Monica Daily Press and the Daily Bruin. Her investigative reporting has brought her everywhere from the streets of L.A to the hospitals of New Delhi. Her work garnered First Place for Best Enterprise News Story from the California Journalism Awards, and National Finalist for the Society of Professional Journalists' Best Magazine Article. She graduated from UCLA with a B.S. in psychobiology.