TV / VIDEO

Ismael Lele

Before joining the Oklahoma Eagle, Lele worked as a reporting intern at the Tulsa World, serving audiences with stories related to homelessness, housing costs and gun violence. The previous summer, he contributed to a multimedia project analyzing the state of American democracy through Carnegie-Knight's News 21 program. At the University of Oklahoma, he earned a degree in journalism and worked for the independent student newspaper — The OU Daily — as a city reporter and editor. His interest in news writing stems from his high school days, when he wrote movie reviews and sports content for his high school paper, the Tiger Tribune.

Andy Lusk

Andy Lusk is the mid-cities communities reporter for NPR member station KERA in Dallas. He is a returning Report for America corps member, having spent two years with KUCB, the NPR member station serving Alaska's Aleutian and Pribilof Islands. While in Alaska, Andy was an award-winning general assignment reporter with a focus on local and tribal government. He previously reported for InvestmentWires, a financial trade publication based in New York City. Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Andy grew up on Carolina barbecue but is willing to give Texas dry rubs a try. He spends his free time hiking and writing fiction. If you run into him in the wild, tell him about your favorite book. Andy is an alumnus of New York University with a bachelor's degree in sociology.

Grant Ritchey

Prior to joining the Racine County Eye, Grant Ritchey covered K-12 education at Knox Pages in Ohio for three years, writing solutions-journalism-focused stories on Knox County's public schools. He also covered local government and crime at the Ashland Times-Gazette.

Roxanne De La Rosa

Prior to joining Arizona PBS, De La Rosa reported on education, immigration issues and covered local politics. She worked as an intern at Arizona PBS and the Arizona Republic. She ventured off into a journalism career after working as a receptionist at a local NPR station. De La Rosa has a master's degree in mass communication from the Walter Cronkite School of Mass Communication, where she earned her bachelor's in journalism. As a student she was a news reporter for the Cronkite Newsroom. She went on to travel to the Dominican Republic to report on immigration issues, as well as the border wall built along Haiti. Her other passion is sharing onstage stories about her life experiences.

Rose LaForest

Rose LaForest is a video journalist and documentary filmmaker at WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia. She recently earned her master’s degree in broadcast and video journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where she produced short documentaries on topics ranging from dementia-related wandering to juvenile incarceration advocacy. While at Medill, LaForest also reported from Argentina, covering shifting cultural attitudes toward women in male-dominated sports. Previously, she interned with Detroit PBS, produced work for their program One Detroit, and served as digital content coordinator for Great Lakes Now. LaForest's career began at Michigan State University, where she studied media and information with minors in documentary production and graphic design. LaForest is passionate about reporting solution-oriented stories, arts and culture, and advancing the conversation around media ethics, as well as exploring new ways to approach storytelling to help audiences better understand how to engage in their communities.

Jorgelina Manna-Rea

Jorgelina Manna-Rea is an environmental reporter for the Kingsport Times News. Before joining the team in Kingsport, she was a producer at NPR and WAMU's live talk show 1A. There, she produced a variety of conversations ranging from how communities recover from disasters to what it means to love. She also produced and reported at NPR and WBUR’s "Here & Now" and NPR member station WUSF, respectively. While studying at the University of South Florida, she was a staff writer and assistant news editor at The Oracle, the student-run newspaper.

Gerard Edic

Gerard Edic covers the effects of gun violence on LeFlore County in the Mississippi Delta at The Greenwood Commonwealth. This marks his second stint at the newspaper, where he began his journalism career as a general assignment reporter. Most recently, Edic worked at PBS News, where he assisted with research and editorial production for PBS News Weekend and Washington Week with The Atlantic. He also co-produced various segments for PBS News Weekend, including tensions in the South China Sea, gang violence in Haiti, and school lunch junk fees. Edic has also edited pieces submitted by incarcerated writers for Prison Journalism Project and wrote about policy issues at The American Prospect. Edic earned his master’s degree in journalism, focusing on business and economics reporting, at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Edic has won several awards from the Mississippi Press Association’s Better Newspaper Media Contest, including the Bill Minor Prize for General News Reporting for a piece assessing the community impact of record-high homicides in Leflore County in 2020. Edic is an avid runner and loves to cook.

Lia Portillo

Lia Portillo is a recent graduate of Northwestern State University of Louisiana. She has interned at news stations in New Orleans, such as Telemundo 42 New Orleans and WDSU 6 News. As a student journalist, she worked for her student newspaper, The Current Sauce, throughout her college career, starting as a features reporter. In her junior and senior years, she led the newspaper as editor-in-chief.

Isabela C. Lisco

Prior to joining KOLD-TV, Lisco pursued and published investigative video stories in Chicago and Washington, D.C., on issues like foster care, environmental health and citizen militias. As a multimedia journalist in northern Wisconsin, she covered everything from childcare funding cuts to car shows. Lisco also reported for the student news station at Northwestern University while completing her undergraduate degree in journalism and Middle Eastern studies. Isabela speaks four languages fluently (English, Spanish, German and Arabic) and is committed to using these linguistic and cultural competencies to cover underserved communities.

Fabianna Rincón

Prior to joining El Tiempo Latino, Fabianna graduated from American University with her bachelors in journalism, bridging politics and the media working at the School of Communications and studying mis- and disinformation with the University Honors Program. Throughout her time at AU, she worked as a digital journalist for NBC10 Boston and worked with in the student newsroom of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She also received scholarship opportunities from The LAGRANT Foundation, and continued exploring political communications as an intern with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Raised in a household of Venezuelan journalists, her passion for reporting began at just seven years old when she was first publishing Spanish-language interviews with musicians, politicians, and public figures. She is thrilled to return to Spanish reporting with El Tiempo Latino, and cannot wait to cover the local government and communities that welcomed her into the world of local journalism.