Fellowship Alumni
Kara Fox, digital producer, CNN International. Kara is a journalist whose work unpacks the why and how behind breaking news — with a reporting focus on women’s issues, geopolitics, culture and corruption.
Since 2016, Kara has worked as a digital producer at CNN International, crafting features from across the EMEA region ranging from alternative youth movements in Putin’s Russia, the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in Erdogan’s Turkey and the plight of Rwandan dissidents. Her work has been cited in US Congress and in the Irish Oireachtas.
Before that, she worked as a photographer and multi-platform visual journalist, documenting daily life in the isolated kingdom of Bhutan; political movements in Myanmar, Cambodia, Haiti and the UK. Kara began her career in New York, where she worked as a photo editor at National Geographic Adventure Magazine and the World Picture Network.
As a Ted Scripps fellow, she developed a project about climate change’s unique threats to women.
Rebecca Halleck is a senior editor at The New York Times, where she has covered elections, the pandemic, extreme weather events, policing, and racial justice protests. She contributed to The Times’ live coverage of the coronavirus, for which the paper won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Before joining The Times, she was a digital editor at the Chicago Tribune and an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois, and a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University.
During her fellowship year, Ms. Halleck examined the legal and policy frameworks surrounding climate change and climate action. She focused on the emerging patchwork of state environmental rights amendments, the climate justice movement, and other remedies for individuals in the realms of politics, public policy and domestic law.
Elliot Ross is a Taiwanese-American photographer rooted in the American West with a practice defined by long-term inquiries in service of understanding how landscapes – both natural and artificial – shape community and culture. Within this framework of cultural geography, his ongoing projects investigate the water crisis unfolding across the Western United States, how indigenous communities on the frontlines of climate change are confronting a physical and spiritual loss of home through self-determination, and how the artifice of geopolitical borders shape and divide identity. During his career, he has collaborated with a wide variety of journalistic outlets including National Geographic Magazine, TIME, The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Looking forward, he is incredibly grateful to have dedicated a year towards building his academic knowledge and growing his family of peers through the Ted Scripps Fellowship. He used this time and the incredible depth of the fellowship’s resources to build the foundation of the next chapter of his career as a journalist focused on water, climate change and Western American society. Specifically, he enroledl in classes concerned with topics of hydrology, Western historical context, and disruptive communication while also engaging with the vibrant community the University of Colorado hosts. Throughout these experiences, he continued to develop his long-term project, Geography of Hope, that explores a whole host of environmental and social issues through the lens of an ascendant Glen Canyon ecosystem.
Ishan Thakore is a multimedia producer and investigative journalist. His work has appeared in THE CITY, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Netflix, the BBC, National Geographic blogs and Al Jazeera. He is the recipient of IRE’s Journalist of Color Fellowship, a Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship, and a BBC/Sundance Institute Fellowship.
As a Ted Scripps fellow, he studied and reported on the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to protect the New York region from storm surges, and what that reveals about the federal government’s approach to coastal resiliency. His investigation questioned whether we can engineer our way out of coastal risks, and who gets to be saved when our tenuous control of coastlines is lost.
Clifton Wiens is an independent writer and filmmaker who previously worked at National Geographic in various capacities. He was senior script researcher/editor on such documentaries as Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ and the Edward Norton-narrated series ‘Strange Days on Planet Earth,’ which focused on climate change crises around the globe. He also was a development producer on numerous films including Egyptology, paleontology, archaeology, and many topics. Going freelance in 2011 he continued to produce and script films for various documentary outlets in southeast Asia, including post-producing ‘Malaysia from Below,’ which won best natural history/wildlife film at the Asian Television Awards in Singapore. He has also worked as a policy analyst, a congressional speechwriter, book editor, and as a development researcher and writer on factual-based scripted series.
During the fellowship, Clifton developed a documentary film exploring apocalyptic beliefs and their impact on attitudes and policy related to climate change and other environmental issues.
Jessica Camille Aguirre is a writer whose work focuses on climate change and extremes. Her reporting on ecoterrorism, utopian habitats, the business of climate change and culling to protect biodiversity has appeared in print and online at The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Vanity Fair, n+1 and The New York Review of Books. Before she started freelancing, she was a news correspondent in Paris for the German Press Agency (dpa) and a Fulbright fellow in Berlin. Aguirre is from California and grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border. She has been a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and received the 2018 Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award. As a fellow, she developed a project about recreating the Earth’s ecosystem for space travel.
Andrew Cullen is an independent photojournalist whose work examines the complicated relationships between the environment and human societies. His interest in the environment developed as a Peace Corps volunteer and then as a freelance journalist in Mongolia. He later lived in North Dakota, covering the state’s oil fields and protests against the Dakota Access pipeline. He has served as a newspaper reporter in Maine and as a photo editor at High Country News magazine. Currently based in Los Angeles, Andrew works on projects around the western US. His photography has been published by the New York Times, NPR, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed News and many others. As a fellow, he focused on the impact of climate change on migration in the Americas. Following his Scripps Fellowship, he received the 2023 Michael du Cille Fellow from the National Press Photographers Foundation to continue production of his Scripps project.
Gulnaz Khan is the climate editor at TED Talks and a former editor at National Geographic. She’s reported from five continents, and her work appears in Popular Science, The Economist, National Geographic, AFAR, and more. Before her journalism career, Khan worked on neuroscience research funded by the National Institutes of Health and behavioral psychiatry research at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Master of Science from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Certificate in Climate Change and Health from Yale University. As a fellow, she examined the complex relationships between climate change and religion, including the role of religious institutions in social movements, environmental stewardship, faith communities' responses to ecological crises, and the tension between science, religion, and politics.
Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi is a reporter exploring the intersection of wealth, ecosystems and society. Since 2015, she has worked as a finance correspondent based out of Reuters' Zurich bureau, covering stories ranging from the unwinding of Swiss bank secrecy to calls for greener finance and practices confounding sustainable efforts in the gold industry. In 2017, she was part of an international team reporting on the nascent cryptocurrency industry for an investigative series selected as a finalist for Reuters’ Story of the Year award and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s Best in Business Reporting. A former student of philosophy, she is deeply interested in understanding the 'why' of how things work and bringing this lens to the intersection of profits and environment. As a fellow, Brenna studied the financial industry’s efforts, during a decade deemed critical to mitigate climate change and address inequality, towards reform. She also examined the nexus of social movements, environmental advocacy and shareholder capitalism to pursue the question: Can the most disastrous effects of climate change be avoided, and social prosperity rebalanced, without sacrificing financial returns?
Mercy Orengo is a feature reporter who has been covering human interest stories in Africa. She has spent close to nine years reporting on science and development for several publications, including , a global online magazine that focuses on science and technology. She also worked as a long form writer for Standard Newspaper – the oldest newspaper in Kenya. Her work and commentaries have also appeared in the Oklahoman Newspaper. Her previous work has included features on climate change solutions as a means to reduce intertribal wars among pastoralist communities and research gaps in Africa that are hindering the continent’s participation in climate solutions. She was a 2020 Nieman Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, and an MA candidate at the Columbia Journalism School in New York. As a fellow, she explored how to use new media to tell environmental stories. She researched on how social media platforms and emerging technologies can be used to make environmental stories accessible to a wider audience, especially those from Africa that rarely feature in environmental stories.
Melissa Bailey is a freelance journalist based in Boulder. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR and other publications. She started her career in community journalism, spending eight years at the New Haven Independent, a startup that became a national leader in online-only, not-for-profit local news. She was a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard from 2014 to 2015. She later reported for STAT, a health and science publication affiliated with the Boston Globe, and spent three years on the investigative team at Kaiser Health News. She holds a B.A. in mathematics from Yale University. As a Scripps Fellow, she focused on the intersection of climate change and health.
Sasha Chavkin is an investigative journalist covering environmental crime and corruption. He is currently a Rainforest Investigations Fellow, a program by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, for which he is investigating deforestation in global supply chains for NBC News. From 2013 to 2020, he was a staff reporter for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and he has also conducted environmental investigations for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Sasha used the fellowship to examine how crime and corruption are fueling climate change, with a focus on deforestation. He applied the techniques and collaborative strategies used in cross-border investigations such as the Panama Papers and FinCEN Files to coverage of the global environment.
Marissa Ortega-Welch is an award-winning science and environmental journalist for KALW Public Radio in San Francisco. Her stories have been featured on such outlets as NPR, Latino USA, Reveal, Audubon, and Bay Nature Magazine. In addition to reporting, she is proud to manage KALW's many audio training programs which have helped others break into the industry. Before her journalism career, she worked as an environmental educator and naturalist. She's guided whale tours off the coast of California, surveyed songbirds in Alaska while armed with a bear rifle, and taught ecology to youth in national parks up and down the west coast. As a Scripps fellow, Marissa examined wilderness as a social construct, studying the history of wilderness as a concept and legal definition, the ways our relationships to wilderness are changing, and what real-world implications this has for the future of public land management.
Luke Runyon has covered the Colorado River Basin for public radio station KUNC in Greeley, Colo. since 2017. He produces feature stories for a network of public media stations in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Nevada. Before covering water at KUNC, Luke covered the agriculture and food beat in Colorado for five years as a reporter for Harvest Public Media. He has also reported for Aspen Public Radio in Aspen, Colo. and Illinois Public Radio in Springfield, Ill. His reports have been featured on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Here & Now and APM's Marketplace. His work has earned four regional Edward R. Murrow awards, along with awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists, Public Media Journalists Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the Colorado Broadcasters Association. He holds a master's degree from the University of Illinois Public Affairs Reporting program. As a Scripps fellow, Luke studied water policy and governance in the American West, with a focus on how communities are grappling with and adapting to intensifying shortages in the Colorado River watershed.
Anna V. Smith is an assistant editor at High Country News, a regional magazine that covers the people and places of the Western U.S. She has worked on the Indigenous Affairs Desk at the publication since its inception in 2017, at the time the first desk at a non-Native-owned media outlet devoted to coverage of Indigenous affairs. There, she has covered stories on Indigenous land rights and repatriation, anti-Indigenous hate groups, the suppression of the Native vote, and Indigenous immigrants navigating language barriers around COVID-19. Her most recent feature was on the Chinook Nation's efforts towards federal recognition, the process by which the U.S. formally acknowledges a tribal nation's sovereignty. During her time on the desk, she has won seven awards from the Native American Journalists Association, including Best Coverage of Native America, Best Feature and Best Environmental Coverage. In addition to her work at High Country News, she has freelanced for publications such as Slate, Audubon and the New York Times. She is an alum of the University of Oregon, where she received concurrent degrees in journalism and environmental studies; she regularly mentors journalism students at the UO and early-career journalists elsewhere. As a fellow, Anna focused on media theory, systems journalism and Indigenous studies and how to engage in humanizing, ethical storytelling, while working on a project aimed at aiding mainstream media in centering Indigenous voices and supporting Indigenous media.
Stacy Feldman is co-founder of InsideClimate News (ICN), a Pulitzer Prize-winning non-profit news organization providing reporting and analysis on climate change, energy and the environment. Serving as executive editor from 2015 to 2020, she’s spent the past 13 years helping to build and lead ICN as it transformed from a two-person startup to an operation with nearly 20 employees and a model for national and award-winning non-profit climate journalism. As a fellow, she studied new approaches to local journalism that could help people connect environmental harm and injustice to their own health and their communities’ well-being.
Grace Hood has covered water, science and energy topics across the American southwest as Colorado Public Radio’s environment and climate reporter since 2015. Throughout more than a decade in public radio, she’s profiled octogenarian voters worried about climate change, scientists tracking underground mine fires, a visually impaired marijuana farmer and a homeowner who lives next door to Colorado’s first underground nuclear fracking experiment. As a fellow, she studied how cities and states monitor air quality near oil and gas sites. She has a particular interest in the rise of citizen science when it comes to measuring air pollution across the West.
Alec Luhn is an independent journalist with a focus on the changing communities and ecosystems of the far north. Previously a Moscow correspondent for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, he’s been published in The Atlantic, GQ, The Independent, MAXIM, The Nation, The New York Times, POLITICO, Reuters, TIME, Slate and WIRED, among others. During a decade abroad, he’s reported from the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth and covered the conflict in eastern Ukraine, annexed Crimea, war-torn Syria and Chernobyl reactor four, as well as covering oil spills, permafrost thaw, reindeer herding, polar bear patrols, Gulag towns and the world's only floating nuclear power plant in the Arctic. As a fellow, he studied how climate change and resource extraction are altering the fragile environment of the north, with deep repercussions for reindeer and caribou and the indigenous peoples that depend on them.
Amanda Mascarelli is the senior health and medicine editor at The Conversation US, a daily online publication that runs news and analysis pieces written by scholars and edited by journalists for the general public. As a 2020-2021 Ted Scripps Fellow, she explored the role of air pollution in exacerbating health disparities in vulnerable Denver communities. From 2015 to 2020, she was the founding managing editor of Sapiens, an award-winning magazine focused on anthropology. Prior to that, she spent more than a decade as a freelance science journalist, covering health, neuroscience, the environment, and more. Her work was published in outlets such as National Geographic, Nature, Science, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
RJ Sangosti has been a photojournalist at The Denver Post since 2004, where he’s covered events spanning from Hurricane Katrina to presidential elections. Over more than a decade, he has documented the people and landscape of eastern Colorado, where years of drought and a loss of agricultural earning power continue to hurt farmers. Most recently, he completed a story about a Denver neighborhood in one of the country’s most polluted urban zip codes, whose residents continue to be impacted by a huge interstate construction project. His work was included in the 2012 Time Magazine top 10 photos of the year, and he was honored to be part of the 2016 jury for the centennial year of The Pulitzer Prizes. As a fellow, he reported on the effects pesticides and fertilizers have on aquifers and groundwater.
Sarah Craig is an award-winning radio journalist and documentary photographer. She has worked for Gimlet Media, KALW Public Radio and KQED Public Radio in San Francisco and reports on topics such as climate change, immigration, and health. Her work has been supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation, the California Humanities, and the Society for Environmental Journalists to report on climate migration and issues of water quality and quantity in California’s Central Valley. While she was a Scripps Fellow, she built off this work and studied the role of climate change on migration patterns, both domestically as well as internationally. Sarah has received numerous awards for her work, including a 2017 Excellence in Journalism Award from the Society for Professional Journalists as well as the 2017 Untold Story Award from Narratively to report on the inability of Marshallese immigrants to access healthcare in the U.S. She is also a 2018 Climate Solutions Reporting Fellow as part of the New Economies Reporting Project. Her work has been published by NPR’s Morning Edition, Marketplace, KQED, KALW, KCRW, High Country News, Water Deeply, and others. She received a B.A. in Geography from Vassar College and studied at the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies.
Joe Fassler is deputy editor of , an independent nonprofit newsroom covering the economics, politics, and culture of food. A former 11th Hour Food and Farming Fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, his work has appeared in publications like Longreads, Smithsonian Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and Catapult, and his reporting has twice been a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism. As a longtime contributor to TheAtlantic.com, he also editsa series of interviews about literary influence and the way writers face creative challenges. The column formed the basis for his book, (Penguin, 2017), which has been translated into five languages.
As a Scripps fellow, Joe studied the environmental implications of a range of approaches to meat production—from grain-based feedlots to regenerative ranching and emerging technologies like cell-cultured meat—with an eye towards each method's economic and social consequences.
is an award-winning energy analyst, author and investigative journalist specializing in oil. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, Newsweek, CNN.com, The Advocate, The Atlantic, Grist, The Guardian, High Country News, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and Pacific Standard Magazine, among many others. She was a 2017 Yale University Poynter Fellow in Journalism and a 2012-2013 Investigative Journalism Fellow of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She is the author of three books: Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill (Wiley 2011), The Tyranny of Oil (HarperCollins 2008), and The Bush Agenda (HarperCollins 2006). She holds a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Brown University. Antonia founded and runs the (Un)Covering Oil Investigative Reporting Program, funded by the Society of Environmental Journalists. Her Harper’s Magazine feature article appears in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016. Reporting from the frontlines of fossil fuels and climate change, her investigations have taken her from a mile below the ocean surface in the Gulf of Mexico to the rainforests of the Ecuadoran Amazon, from the deserts of Afghanistan to the fracking fields of North Dakota, from the Alaskan Arctic to the oiled beaches of Santa Barbara, and many more places in between.
As a Scripps Fellow, Antonia worked on her next book, tentatively titled The End of Oil. She investigated an epic global confrontation underway, centered on oil, by tracking the activities of two groups: those working to transition away from fossil fuels and those seeking to maintain them as the world’s dominant resource.
Jori Lewis is an independent journalist who writes about science, the environment, agriculture and sustainable development. She was born in downstate Illinois, studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. From 2011-2012, she was a fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs where she wrote about food systems and agriculture in Senegal, and she has been based in that country ever since. Jori’s work has appeared in Discover Magazine, Pacific Standard, Hakai, PRI’s The World and the Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. She is currently finishing her first book, Slaves for Peanuts (The New Press), a narrative history that tells the captivating story of how peanut agriculture supported the rise and fall of slavery in nineteenth-century West Africa.
During her Scripps fellowship, Jori studied how insect infestations have shaped and altered agriculture throughout history, including how land use changes, agricultural methods, changes in climate, and global trade contributed to and complicated infestations.
Sharon Udasin is an independent journalist who has extensively covered environmental issues in Israel and the surrounding region, with a particular focus on water politics, the natural gas sector, and renewable energy. After launching her career as a staff writer at The New York Jewish Week, Sharon spent many years as the environment and energy reporter at The Jerusalem Post in Israel and later moved on to a science writing position at the Weizmann Institute of Science. In addition to lecturing extensively on the region’s environmental concerns, Sharon has often appeared as an expert on these subjects in both local and international broadcast media. She received a Pratt Prize for Environmental Journalism – Israel’s highest honor in the sector – in recognition of her comprehensive work. Sharon comes to the University of Colorado with a passion for learning, having earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School.
As a Scripps fellow, Sharon analyzed the potential of water swaps and desalination as a purveyor of regional stability. She explored the Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian case as a model for other tense, yet increasingly thirsty, border zones, such as the US-Mexican beneficiaries of the Colorado River Basin. Ultimately, she hopes to understand whether the environmental and political benefits of pursuing such complex infrastructural projects outweigh the enormous financial and unintended ecological costs.
Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Wired, Aeon, The Boston Globe, Slate and The Guardian among other publications. His book, The Ends of the World, about the science behind the five major mass extinctions in Earth's history, was published by Harper Collins in 2017. It was named a New York Times Editor's Choice and one of the 10 Best Environment, Climate Science and Conservation Books of 2017 by Forbes.
Peter focused his fellowship on the study of paleoclimate and climate change over geological time scales. In particular, he sought to gain a deeper understanding of the earth system processes and the interactions between life, the oceans and atmosphere that modulate the habitability of the planet. He hopes to produce a multimedia project on paleoclimate to illustrate how better understanding earth's past provides our best window into its uncertain future.
Chris Lett is an Emmy-nominated journalist and yogi who grew up in Atlanta where he managed to work his way up from CNN tour guide to aeditorial researcher and eventually to field producer. During his tenure at the Network, he contributed to award-winning films and journalism series that spanned the nation, including coverage of the initial ISIS-affiliated terror attacks in the U.S., the deadly Pulse Nightclub mass shooting and the most recent presidential elections. On the environmental front, he reported on the historic aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, the fallout over air pollution in Louisiana's Cancer Alley and the impact of hydraulic fracturing. As a Ted Scripps Fellow of Environmental Journalism, the Guilford College graduate and former AmeriCorps VISTA will delve into the global impact of overfishing in West Africa. His goal is to create a digital-media project documenting the devastation left by unchecked industrial fishing vessels on communities and marine life along the Canary Current in the Atlantic Ocean.
While at the Center for Environmental Journalism, Chris explored the systemic issues connected to oceanic overfishing with a focus on West Africa. In addition to investigating the threats to healthy fisheries, his documentary project intends to highlight the human toll that illegal overfishing is having on the more than 13 million fishers and processors in Africa. He enjoyed attending classes, connecting with the community and gleaning from the expertise of seasoned environmental science communicators at the Center and the University at large.
is an independent journalist and editor whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Pacific Standard, Discover, Sierra Magazine, High Country News and elsewhere. His stories about climate change, adaptation and wildlife conservation have taken him from his childhood home in the Sonoran Desert to the Arctic tundra and Ganges Delta. Before making the questionable leap into freelance, he was senior editor of environmental justice for YES! Magazine and managing editor for a Washington state-based community newspaper publisher. Stephen has received honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, Native American Journalism Association and Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. Although primarily a features writer, he has also produced video reporting, digital packages and a series of comics journalism. As a Scripps fellow, he examined the psychology of climate change adaptation, considering social, political and economic transitions, as well as the history of adaptation. He writes from a Highland cattle ranch at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
Hillary Rosner is a Scholar in Residence in the journalism department at Ƶ Boulder, where she teaches science writing and other courses and works with the Scripps Fellows and the Center for Environmental Journalism. She is also a freelance journalist and editor whose stories have been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, Wired, Men’s Journal, Scientific American, High Country News, and many other publications. She has traveled the world writing about the environment, from the rainforests of Borneo to the slums of Kenya to the deserts and subdivisions of the American West. She is a two-time winner of the AAAS-Kavli Science Journalism Award, as well as the recipient of an Alicia Patterson Fellowship. She is also a contributing editor at the publication bioGraphic, where she helps shape its in-depth coverage of Earth’s biodiversity. Before moving to Boulder in 2002 for a master’s program in environmental studies, she lived in New York, where she worked at the New York Post, The Village Voice, and New York Magazine. As a Scripps Fellow, Hillary focused on corridors as tools for wildlife conservation—and on the direct and indirect ways humans have altered the movement of other species.
Elizabeth Royte is the author of . Her previous books – and – were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her writing on science and the environment appears in Harper’s, National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, and other national publications. Royte is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and a contributing editor at Smithsonian, OnEarth, and . Her work is included in The Best American Science Writing and The Best American Essays (multiple years) and other nonfiction anthologies. A former Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow and recipient of Bard College’s John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service, Royte lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their daughter. During her fellowship, Elizabeth studied environmental history and environmental law, which lead to a feature assignment exploring the Mining Law of 1872 in the context of an ongoing battle over an Arizona copper mine; the story won an from the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation.
Sadie Babits has had a long career in public media where she’s focused her reporting on public lands, water, climate change and western issues. She's currently a professor of practice at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication where she is the sustainability director in the Cronkite News/ Arizona PBS newsroom. She works with students to learn how to cover environmental stories as multimedia journalists. Previously Sadie was the News Director at Colorado Public Radio where she guided and edited daily and long-term coverage for this statewide network. Her work has aired on National Public Radio shows including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and has been recognized nationally with an Edward R. Murrow award for investigative journalism and by the Society of Environmental Journalists. She’s reported from Kenya, Israel and many places in between but she calls the West home where she can often be found exploring trails on her mountain bike.
Jeff Burnside has led an accomplished 20-year career in TV news in Miami, Seattle, Boston, Kansas City, and Spokane, most recently as Senior Investigative Reporter for KOMO TV Seattle, his hometown. He's been awarded more than 25 honors for his journalism including national awards from the Investigative Reporters and Editors, National Press Club, Clarion and others as well as 10 regional Emmy's. His work has played a role in the arrest of more than a dozen people, multiple class action lawsuits and Attorneys General cases, the closure of unscrupulous businesses, new laws in several jurisdictions, a U.S. Supreme Court case and the return of millions of taxpayer dollars. He is the immediate past president of the Society of Environmental Journalists. His focus has often been on corruption, the environment and animal welfare. Jeff is a national judge for the Scripps Howard Foundation Meeman Award and the Columbia University Oakes Award for environmental journalism.
Lindsay Fendt is a freelance reporter and photographer covering the environment and human rights. During the fellowship Lindsay traveled to the Philippines to cover killings of anti-mining activists on the island of Mindanao. Her reporting appeared in World Politics Review and will become part of her book on the global rise of killings of environmentalists. She is now living in Denver, freelancing for publications like The Guardian, BioGraphic and The Huffington Post. Before the Scripps Fellowship she spent five years based in San José, Costa Rica where she covered stories throughout Latin America.
is a Denver-based freelance journalist whose writing has appeared in High Country News, Reveal, CityLab, Ars Technica, Washingtonian, HuffPost and Undark, among others. Before moving to Denver, he covered energy and environmental policy for National Journal and E&E Publishing in Washington, D.C., including coverage of Congress and two administrations. He also reported from Brazil in 2014 as part of an International Reporting Project fellowship. As a Scripps fellow, Plautz reported on air quality problems in Western states and how changes to federal policy could affect high ozone levels, and reported a cover story for High Country News on an explosion at a fracking site with former fellow Dan Glick.
Lynette Wilson is working to build a freelance career and also writes about human rights and social and environmental justice issues for a nonprofit news service. She has reported from more than 25 countries on topics such as Brazil’s land conflicts, forced displacement in El Salvador and Congolese refugees living in camps in Rwanda. Previously, Lynette reported on education for The Meridian Star in Mississippi and The News Star in Monroe, Louisiana. And she was an environmental reporter for the Pensacola News Journal in Florida.
Jenny Barchfield is a native of Tucson, Arizona. She studied Comparative Literature at Barnard College and has an MA in Spanish and Portuguese from Columbia University and also a Masters of Journalism from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, a program run in conjunction with Spain’s leading newspaper, El Pais. After interning with Newsweek in Spain and France, Barchfield joined the Associated Press’ Paris bureau in 2005, splitting her time between general news coverage and the bureau’s culture and fashion beat.
In 2012, she was named AP’s Rio de Janeiro correspondent and moved to Brazil to chronicle the country’s tumultuous preparations for the 2014 World Cup and this year’s Olympics. Her focus shifted to environmental stories, and her yearlong coverage of the un-kept promises to clean up the city’s sewage-polluted waterways led to an ongoing project testing Rio’s recreational waters for sewage-borne viruses and bacteria. The testing results story won the 2016 Headliner Award for the top environmental story and also the AP Sports Editors’ story of the year.
As a Scripps Fellow, Barchfield researched the Zika virus, the medical mystery thought to have caused thousands of babies in Brazil’s hardscrabble northeast to be born with microcephaly. Since the fellowship, she relocated to Lisbon, Portugal, where she works as a multilingual freelancer, writing for outlets including the New York Times, The Guardian, Brazil’s Piauí magazine and NPR’s Spanish-language show, Radio Ambulante.
Scott Carney is an investigative journalist and anthropologist whose stories blend narrative non-fiction with ethnography. He has been a contributing editor at Wired and his work also appears in Mother Jones, Foreign Policy, Playboy, Details, Discover, Outside and Fast Company. Carney holds a number of academic appointments including as a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. In 2010 he won the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for the story Meet the Parents, which tracked an international kidnapping-to-adoption ring. His first book, The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers, was published by William Morrow in 2011 and won the 2012 Clarion Award for best non-fiction book. His second book, A Death on Diamond Mountain: A True Story of Obsession, Madness and the Path to Enlightenment, was published in 2015 by Gotham Books. Also in 2015, Carney founded , a website that aims to add transparency to the business of journalism with Yelp-style reviews of magazines and editors. Carney holds an MA in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lives in Denver, CO.
Amy Martin is the founder and executive producer of Threshold, a podcast and public radio program. Each season, takes a deep dive into one story of pivotal change in the natural world. Founded in 2016, Threshold has earned some of the highest honors in journalism, including a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Overseas Press Club, and more.
The first season of Threshold told the story of the near-extinction and ongoing restoration of the American bison. Season two took listeners to all eight countries of the Arctic to learn about climate change through the eyes of people who live in the polar north. Season three investigated the battle over drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2020, Amy also launched a new series, Threshold Conversations, featuring interviews with environmental thought leaders like J. Drew Lanham, Peggy Shepard, and Bill McKibben.
Prior to founding Threshold, Amy’s new stories were featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, PRI’s The World, Here and Now, and other national outlets. She has also been invited to present her work at the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway, the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital, TEDx at the University of Montana, and at a universities around the country. In 2016, she was selected for the Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Amy was raised on an Iowa farm and has lived in Missoula, Montana since 1999.
Joanna B. Pinneo’s career as a freelance photojournalist has taken her to 66 countries, from Tierra del Fuego in the south to Grise Fiord in the Arctic Circle. Pinneo has covered immigration, global climate change, land disputes, ancient African trade routes, and native peoples worldwide. Her work has been published in National Geographic, New York Times, Smithsonian, Time, St Petersburg Times and Geo among others. Pinneo was nominated for a Pulitzer, won an Alfred Eisenstadt award and featured in National Geographic’s 50 best photographs. Her story on the Palestinians for National Geographic won a 1st Place Magazine Feature award in the Washington Journalism Review. Pinneo received an NPPA/Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant for her project exploring girls’ coming of age in America. As a Scripps Fellow, Pinneo researched and reported on the effects of household air pollution and the implementation of clean cookstoves. To cover issues surrounding clean-cooking globally, Joanna followed Solar Sister Entrepreneurs in Tanzania working in villages to provide clean cookstove and solar lanterns, gathered interviews and photographs about a CSU epidemiologic cookstove research team studying the cardiometabolic effects of second-hand smoke, traditional cooking and cleaner alternatives. In May of 2016, Joanna traveled to northern Ghana to report on work by Dr. Katie Dickinson and CIRES at Ƶ Boulder examining the demand for cleaner cookstoves and measuring and evaluating emissions. In the fall of 2017, Joanna traveled to Delhi, India for the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves to speak at the Clean Cooking Forum. After the conference Joanna went throughout northern India, urban and rural, to produce several stories on air pollution for the Global Strategic Communications Council, part of the European Climate Foundation. In May 2018, Joanna joined the staff as Marketing and Communications Assistant for Native Edge Landscapes in north Boulder. Native Edge promotes stewardship and uses sustainable landscaping practices, water conservation, and native plants.
Autumn Spanne is a freelance journalist who writes about science, the environment, sustainability and human rights. Her work appears in National Geographic News, The Guardian, Reveal, the Daily Climate, the Christian Science Monitor, InsideClimate News, mental_floss and CNN. Prior to her journalism career, Spanne taught English and journalism on the Navajo Nation. She later worked as an editor at Youth Communication, a pioneering educational publishing company that trains young people in writing and journalism and publishes their stories in two award-winning magazines and a book series.
Spanne has traveled and reported widely in Latin America, Europe and the United States. As a Scripps fellow, she studied environmental and American Indian law, public health, climate science and data journalism to produce deeply reported stories pertaining to Native American water rights and tribal water contamination.
Jess Chamberlain is a Seattle-based freelance writer, editor, and content strategist. She’s reported on design and environmental lifestyle topics for 12 years, covering subjects ranging from minimalism and small space living to the locavore movement and the sharing economy. She is a contributing editor for Sunset magazine, where she was previously a staff writer in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. Her work has also been published in The New York Times, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, San Francisco magazine, and on Ozy.com and NPR.org, among other publications. Chamberlain’s 2011 article for Sunset entitled “The Zero-Waste Home” helped spark a national dialogue about consumerism in America and motivated her efforts to humanize environmental issues. She is working on a book focused on environmental lifestyle design (think homesteading, tiny homes, off-the-grid living).
Ciara O'Rourke is a freelance journalist based in Austin, Texas, and a contributing writer for PolitiFact. A former reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, she has written for publications including , , and . She was a 2017 recipient of the Mayborn Emerging Writer award. She is on Twitter at @ciaraorourke and her website is .
Amanda Paulson spent 20 years as a staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor, including six years as their Midwest Bureau Chief. Following the Scripps Fellowship, she became their chief environment and science reporter. Before switching to the environment beat, she wrote both features and news pieces and covered a wide range of topics, including education reform, presidential elections, natural disasters, immigration, agriculture, mining, and social issues. In 2020, she left the Monitor to join the Bobolink Foundation, which supports conservation and biodiversity projects in the Americas. Among other projects, she’s been focusing on their work in the Amazon and on grasslands conservation. She also serves on the boards of the World Wildlife Fund-US and the Colorado chapter of The Nature Conservancy.
Julie Rehmeyer’s memoir, Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s Odyssey into an Illness Science Doesn’t Understand, will be published by Rodale on May 23, 2017. She wrote much of the book, which describes how she navigated the science and politics of poorly understood environmental illnesses, while a Scripps fellow.
She is also a contributing editor at Discover magazine. Her work as a math and science journalist has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Discover, Science News, Aeon, Wired, High Country News and many other publications. Much of her writing has been about mathematics, aiming to show her readers how mathematics can reveal hidden facets of the world.
Scott Wyland is a reporter and photographer in Naples, Italy for the international military publication Stars and Stripes. Previously, he worked as a journalist covering environmental issues in several states, including for The Oregonian, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Daytona Beach News-Journal and Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. Among many stories, Wyland has written about how flawed environmental oversight has led to the degradation of Florida waterways. His story about a Miami dredging project destroying coral reefs appeared in National Geographic. He also is working on a book on how the clear-cutting of Pacific Northwest forests inflicted ecological devastation that spurred tree-sitting protests.
Sena Christian is an independent journalist in Sacramento, California, and the project manager of , a journalism collaborative. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, High Country News, YES! Magazine, Newsweek, Ensia, Civil Eats, Sacramento Magazine and elsewhere. As a Ted Scripps Fellow, she wrote a series of articles on American farming and food systems. Sena has been a reporter at two community newspapers, and a writer at an alternative newsweekly. She was also the executive editor of Comstock's, a regional business magazine. She is an adjunct professor of journalism at Sacramento City College. Read more at .
Sonya Doctorian is an independent photo and video journalist and the former senior photo editor for the Washington Post Magazine. In addition to the Washington Post, she has worked as an online video journalist at the Rocky Mountain News, and was photo director for the St. Petersburg Times, The State (Columbia, S.C.) and the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Doctorian was part of the team at the Rocky Mountain News that published “Beyond the Boom,” a print and online series documenting the impact of natural gas exploration. She spent her fellowship reporting on drought in California and the historic 1930s Dust Bowl region.
is a journalist, editor and producer, in both radio and print, and co-founder of . Her podcast, has received critical acclaim from Scientific American, Rolling Stone, and The Atlantic. Wild Thing is also the inspiration for a series of non-fiction, middle-grade books from ABRAMS Kids, including (October 2022) and Is Anybody Out There? (Fall 2023). In addition to Wild Thing, her recent work includes editing and production work on several podcasts including The Syndicate (Imperative Entertainment/Foxtopus), Side Door (Smithsonian), Air/Space (Smithsonian). Laura spent a decade editing and producing at NPR in Washington, DC, and at KPCC in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in Popular Science, Smithsonian Magazine, Outside, High Country News, Newsweek and, her personal favorite, the.
is an editor for the Stockholm Environment Institute. While attending CEJ, she was a science and environmental journalist based in Stockholm, Sweden, covering diverse topics -- from earthquakes to pharmaceuticals in the environment -- for publications such as Nature, New Scientist and others. She has worked as a staff reporter and editor at Environmental Science & Technology and Geotimes (Earth) magazine, and served as founding editor of Rethink (), an online publication from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the first international news editor for Eos.
Scott Wallace is an independent writer, photographer, television producer, and public speaker. Wallace has written five feature stories for National Geographic from the Amazon rainforest and is a former correspondent for Newsweek, the Guardian, and CBS News. He is the author of the widely acclaimed book, “The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes,” for which he trekked through the land of a never-before-contacted indigenous group in the depths of the Brazilian rainforest. Scott is currently researching a new book about his grandfather, who claimed to have discovered a 'lost tribe' in the Himalayas in 1931, for which he recently traveled to the northern Indian state of Sikkim, near the border of Tibet.
Brian Calvert, a fourth-generation Wyoming native, grew up in Pinedale and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 1994 with a BA in English liberal arts and minors in writing and media studies. He has worked as a foreign correspondent, writer, audio journalist, and most recently, a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado. After extensive time in Cambodia, China and Afghanistan, Brian has a new appreciation for the West and is thrilled to be back. When he's not working, you can find him outside, trying to regain his mountain hardiness.
is the photo editor for High Country News, and a photographer whose work explores the impacts of globalization, development, and social and environmental justice issues on communities often underrepresented in the media. His images, photo essays, and multimedia stories have been published by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Le Monde, the BBC, NPR, Orion Magazine, High Country News, University of Texas Press and many others; and have been exhibited widely. He has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Photojournalism in 2010; a Blue Earth Alliance project photographer; and was a 2013-14 Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado. Originally from San Antonio, TX, Bear has worked extensively throughout Latin America, and now lives in Tucson, AZ, with his wife, journalist Ruxandra Guidi, and their daughter. Guerra and Guidi often work together (under the name Fonografia Collective) and in recent years have been collaborating with media outlets, non-profit and arts organizations, and city and county entities to create in-depth, multi-platform storytelling projects.
Colin McDonald formerly worked as the water and environment reporter at the Express-News in San Antonio, Texas, where he led investigations documenting corruption at local water utilities and violations of the Clean Water Act. McDonald graduated from Western Washington University in 2004 with a degree in environmental journalism. During his time as a Scripps fellow, McDonald studied the conflicting laws that oversee the allocation of the waters of the Rio Grande, the history of civilization along it, and the water conservation measures being taken to deal with dwindling supply. He then followed the river by foot and small boat from source to sea to produce about the disappearing river. He now works for the as a policy analyst.
James Simms, a freelance reporter and television and radio commentator in Tokyo, has covered the Japanese economy and politics for nearly two decades. Previously, he was The Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street columnist analyzing corporations, policy issues and the economies in Japan and South Korea. In 2011, he won the highest writing award at Dow Jones for a series on Japan’s budget and bureaucracy. He has conducted hundreds of interviews for print and television, including for CNBC, and covered Asia’s financial crisis and the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. As a Scripps fellow, his studies focused on issues related to Fukushima, including the effects of seismology on reactor safety; the impact on people and the environment of radiation, especially long-term exposure to low doses; how to increase the use of renewable energy; and disasters. In April (2021), his chapter titled “The Road to Fukushima: A US-Japan History,” including a discussion of Japan’s nuclear-industrial complex and atomic regulation, was published in (University of Pennsylvania Press) on the tenth anniversary of the nuclear disaster, and is partly based on his research and interviews during his fellowship.
Chandra Thomas Whitfield joined CPR as a host and producer of its daily interview show, Colorado Matters, in 2022. Whitfield has produced stories for NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Essence, Ebony and a number of other national media outlets. She also hosted and produced the award-winning podcast “In The Gap” from In These Times magazine, which explored how the gender pay gap and pay discrimination affects the lives and livelihoods of Black women who work in America.
A New Orleans native by way of Atlanta and Clark Atlanta University graduate, she is also an alumna of a diverse mix of journalism fellowship programs, including the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at the Ohio University and Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. Most recently she completed the Medill and The Garage Media Entrepreneur Fellowship with Northwestern University’s esteemed Medill School of Journalism.
Tony Barboza is a reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He has worked for the paper’s metro section since 2006. In the last two years Barboza has taken on the California Coast beat, writing about oceanfront development, water pollution, marine life, public beach access and rising sea levels along California’s 1,100-mile coastline. He previously worked at The Claremont Courier and as an intern at High Country News. Barboza earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Pomona College.
Tristan Baurick is a coastal environment reporter for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. He reports on Louisiana's disappearing coast, the Mississippi River Delta and the Gulf of Mexico. He previously worked as a public lands, outdoors and environment reporter for his hometown paper, the Kitsap Sun, in Bremerton, Wash. He has a graduate degree in journalism from Concordia University in Montreal and a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from Evergreen State College.
Katy Daigle is the Climate Change Editor for Reuters, where she has overseen global environment coverage since joining the company in 2020. She previously worked as deputy news editor at Science News and guided the magazine's coverage of climate change. In the two decades up to 2018, Daigle worked for the Associated Press, including more than seven years as AP's South Asia Correspondent and environment writer based in New Delhi. She also worked as an editor with AP's international operations in New York, London and the Caribbean. Earlier, Daigle was a stringer for Newsweek International, a reporter for The Moscow Times and a copy editor on journals of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She has a BS in journalism from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Daigle served on the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists in 2018-2020.
Becky Kramer is the natural resources, energy and health reporter for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. Some of her favorite reporting topics include wolves, the Columbia River Treaty and Superfund cleanup in Idaho’s Silver Valley. Kramer previously worked as a reporter for two other Washington-based papers: The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin and The Highline Times News. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications from Pacific Lutheran University.
Visual journalist Jerry Redfern covers the environmental and humanitarian issues across Southeast Asia and other developing regions. His work ranges from the aftermath of American bombs in Laos to agroforestry in Belize to life amid logging in Borneo. Jerry’s photos have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Der Spiegel, among others. He has contributed to four book projects, including Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (co-authored with Karen Coates), which was a finalist for the IRE Book Award.
After graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Montana, he spent several years as a staff photographer at newspapers in the American West. He began his freelance career in Cambodia where he shot news, features and investigative stories for Agence France-Presse, The New York Times, The Cambodia Daily and other publications. These days he works with video as well as photos, and he is in the final stages of post-production on his first feature-length documentary film, Eternal Harvest, an extension of the book project.
Jerry was a 2012-2013 Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
Tasha Eichenseher has been covering science and environment stories for over a decade for a variety of print and online outlets, including E/The Environment Magazine, Environmental Science & Technology online news, Greenwire, Green Guide, Nautilus, and National Geographic News.
Tasha has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and a master’s degree in environmental management from Yale University, and is currently back in Boulder, CO, editing and creating online courses for Yoga Journal. In her free time she does as much biking, climbing, and skiing as possible. She can be reached at tasha.eichenseher@gmail.com.
Jody Jenkins is a journalist, producer and documentary filmmaker. Before becoming a Scripps Fellow, he was an editor at France 24, a Paris-based, 24-hour news network that broadcasts in English, French, and Arabic. Jenkins covered Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, reporting on the Russian, Czechoslovakian, and Romanian revolutions as well as the Serbo-Croatian and Bosnian wars. His first feature film,, is a look at militant Islam through the eyes of an African-American convert who fought in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Bosnia. Jenkins and former Scripps fellow Bill Adler are in post-production on, a documentary about a group of Quakers from Alabama who left the U.S. in 1950 to protest American militarism. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He can be contacted at jodygjenkins@gmail.com.
Kari Lydersen After the fellowship, Kari Lydersen continues her reporting (as a freelancer) on her fellowship project area—the resurgence of hard rock mining in the Southwest and Great Lakes region, along with reporting on other energy and environmental issues. She teaches an environmental journalism program for Chicago youth from marginalized communities, through the non-profit We the People Media and Michigan State University; and she teaches journalism as an adjunct at Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Previously, Kari covered a wide range of stories for The Washington Post, where she was a staff writer for the Midwest Bureau until the bureau’s closing in 2009. After that she worked as a staff writer with the Chicago News Cooperative, a non-profit news outlet that provided content to the local edition of The New York Times. She is the author of three books related to labor, immigration and tangentially environmental issues. Lydersen is a national champion in marathon swimming and completed her first Ironman triathlon during the fellowship—thanks to the high altitude training in Boulder. She has a BS in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at kari.lydersen@gmail.com.
Dave Philipps is a correspondent for The New York Times and has twice been awarded The Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of three books, including Wild Horse Country, which he began researching during his fellowship in 2012. David started as a journalist at The Gazette in Colorado Springs, where he wrote about the environment, the outdoors and the military. In 2014, he moved to The New York Times, where he covers the military, veterans and the western United States.
Jonathan Thompson has spent most of his 25 years as a professional journalist covering environmental, cultural and economic issues in the Western U.S., and he continues to do so as the founder/editor of the Land Desk, a thrice-weekly public lands newsletter. Thompson was editor/publisher at the Silverton Standard & the Miner, served as editor-in-chief at High Country News, where he is now a contributing editor, and has freelanced for various publications. Thompson is the author of River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster (Torrey House, ’18); Behind the Slickrock Curtain (Lost Souls Press, '20); and Sagebrush Empire: How a remote Utah county became the front of America’s public land wars (Torrey House, 8/2021). Thompson has also been a bike mechanic and artisan baker. He has a bachelor's degree in math and philosophy from St. John’s College in Santa Fe. He can be contacted at jonathanthompson70@gmail.com and .
Karen Coates is an independent author, editor, and media trainer who covers food, environment, health, and human rights globally. She and her husband, Jerry Redfern (Scripps Fellow 2012-13), are in post-production on a documentary film about unexploded ordnance in Laos decades after history’s largest bombing campaign. Karen is a fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, president of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and a contributing editor for Archaeology Magazine. She is also at work on a long-term project to investigate child labor in US agriculture, which began with a long-form story for Pacific Standard and will continue as an audio documentary. She is the author of four books, including (with Jerry) Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos, which was a finalist for the IRE Book Award. Karen conducts international journalism trainings, and, most recently, participated in an IREX media exchange between journalists in New Mexico and the country of Georgia.
Erin Espelie is executive editor at Natural History magazine and a filmmaker. At the magazine, she covers the interactions between humans and Earth’s natural processes and writes a monthly column, “The Natural Explanation.” Espelie makes poetic nonfiction films about environmental issues, and recently premiered new works at the New York Film Festival and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. She is currently a visiting instructor at the Center for Documentary Studies and the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
Leah McGrath Goodman An award-winning journalist, Leah McGrath Goodman has written for The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, The Financial Times, Fortune, Institutional Investor, The Guardian, ABC News, USA Today, National Public Radio, Bloomberg, and Forbes. She has appeared on CNBC, MSNBC, Fox, and Bloomberg Television. Her first book, was published by HarperCollins in 2011 and was called "a riveting tale of greed gone mad" by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and "twice as crazy and outlandish as any plot that Hollywood could concoct" by Fortune magazine. The book was nominated for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Book of the Year Award. A member of the London Speaker Bureau and writer-at-large for Absolute Return magazine, she is working on her next book based in the Channel Islands.
Ryan L. Nave is a state government reporter for Mississippi Today, a nonprofit digital news organization. He was previously news editor at the Jackson Free Press, where he also reported on local, state and national issues. Before coming to Mississippi in 2011, he was a freelance journalist in Albuquerque, N.M., Boulder, Colo., and Seattle covering environmental-business issues. Prior to that, he covered local and state government and Barack Obama’s presidential campaign for the Illinois Times. He was a 2010-2011 Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism Fellow at the University of Colorado-Boulder and a 2004 Academy for Alternative Journalism fellow at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. A native of University City, Mo., he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
is the author of and , which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the winner of the Colorado Book Award for general nonfiction. He wishes he could afford to live in Norway.
Laura Frank is president and general manager of news at Rocky Mountain PBS. She is the founder of , which was developed during her Scripps Fellowship and then merged with Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting in 2013. I-News delivers in-depth multimedia reports to news outlets across the Rocky Mountain region. Frank, a Denver native, spent two decades at daily newspapers, radio, and public television. She is a founding member of the national nonprofit Investigative News Network.
Frank was an investigative reporter at the Rocky Mountain News until it closed in 2009. While there, she worked on multipart stories on Colorado's natural gas rush and the U.S. government's empty promise to provide medical aid to nuclear workers. Frank also has worked at The Tennessean in Nashville, Tenn., the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., USA Today and the Gannett News Service.
Her stories have won top awards in both print and broadcast, and helped release innocent people from prison, protect abused children, and win aid for sick nuclear weapons workers. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois.
Michael Kodas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, best-selling author, senior editor of the oldest climate-focused newsroom in America and former director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado. He was the winner of the 2018 Colorado Book Award for General Nonfiction for his book, Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame, which was also named one of the 20 best nonfiction books of 2017 by Amazon. He is also the author of High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed, which was named Best Non-Fiction in USA Book News’ National Best Books Awards of 2008 and was the subject of a question on the game show Jeopardy. In 1999 he was part of the team at The Hartford Courant awarded The Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting for their coverage of a mass shooting at the Connecticut Lottery. He has been honored with awards from the Pictures of Year International competition, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, the National Press Photographers Association, the Associated Press Managing Editors, the National Headliners Awards and many other journalism competitions.
His photography was featured in the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary The Vietnam War and he has appeared on the HBO program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, in the American Experience documentary The Big Burn on PBS and in numerous other television and radio programs. His photojournalism and reporting have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Denver Post, Newsweek, National Geographic News, Outside, Mother Jones and various other publications around the world.
From 2013 to 2019 Kodas was Deputy Director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, home to the prestigious Ted Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism, which brings five mid-career journalists focused on environmental topics to the university for an academic year. Students and fellows he has taught and mentored have gone on to top jobs at national and international news outlets, such as the New York Times, National Public Radio and Reuters.
Kodas serves on the board of The Society of Environmental Journalists, the world’s largest membership organization for journalists covering environmental issues. Kodas was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, a Davidoff Scholar at the Wesleyan Writers Workshop and is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, where he completed programs in photojournalism and news writing.
Suzie Lechtenberg is the producer of Freakonomics Radio. She's been a public radio journalist for almost a decade, covering politics, the environment, economics and pop culture for outlets like New York Public Radio, Southern California Public Radio, NPR, APM, and PRI. In 2010 she was the senior producer of the midterm election series Pop & Politics with Farai Chideya, which was produced by WNYC. She was one of the original producers hired at Weekend America, a magazine show produced by APM, where she worked for almost five years. Her work has been featured on public radio shows like "Marketplace," "Day to Day," and "Studio 360." She started her career at the fashion and pop culture magazines Dazed & Confused and Nylon. Lechtenberg is a Kansas native, currently living in Brooklyn.
Jim Mimiaga writes about environmental issues, tribal politics and outdoor recreation for the Four Corners Free Press, a news magazine in Cortez, Colo. He recently won a second-place prize in general reporting with editor Gail Binkly and columnist/reporter David Grant Long for a collection of articles about medical marijuana. He has also worked at The Cortez Journal, Inside/Outside Southwest Magazine, The Durango Telegraph, Independent Native News, and The Southern Ute Drum newspaper. He recently covered along the New Mexico-Arizona border and to the Grand Canyon. He has won several awards in news and photography from the Society of Professional Journalists and Colorado Press Association. He has a bachelor's degree in political science from Fort Lewis College.
Anne Minard's journalism career included science and environmental coverage in Indian Country Today, National Geographic News and The New York Times, among other publications. Her first book, "Pluto and Beyond: A Story of Discovery, Adversity, and Ongoing Exploration," was published in 2007 and she was a contributing author on two others. Her writing earned accolades including first place in environmental reporting from the Arizona Associated Press Managing Editors' Association, a Clarion Journalism Award, and a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for radio journalism. During her fellowship year, Anne focused on pollution from phosphate mining that has caused extensive environmental damage in southeast Idaho as well as ongoing health impacts to members of Idaho's Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.
Anne enrolled in law school in 2013, thanks in large part to the call to action she experienced as a Ted Scripps Fellow and especially in Charles Wilkinson’s natural resources law classes. Upon graduation she clerked for Chief Justice Charles W. Daniels on the New Mexico Supreme Court and Judge Harris Hartz of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. She then served as an Assistant Attorney General for the state of New Mexico before joining the Department of Interior, Office of the Solicitor, in 2021. She lives in Albuquerque and enjoys swimming, whistling with her parrots, and getting outside with her dogs.
Jad Davenport is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker with National Geographic Creative, mostly focusing on wildlife and remote areas. Since 2014, he has been working on a long-term project in the arctic documenting polar bears and wolves. He has two novels coming out in summer 2020: “All The Mountain Ghosts,” and “The Spirit Coast.” Follow his work on Instagram: @jaddavenport. He can also be reached at jad@jaddavenport.com.
Deborah Fryer is an environmental filmmaker and founder of Lila Films (). She has created broadcast content for PBS, Nova, Frontline, MSNBC, Discovery, History Channel, U.S. Fish & Wildlife and the National Audubon Society. She has also created education videos for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the American Public Health Association, the National Ecological Observatory Network, and other non-profits. Deborah is also a highly sought-after business coach who works with artists, writers, filmmakers and healers. Deborah integrates filmmaking, narrative and neuroscience in her coaching practice. Go to to learn more about this inner environmental work.
Joanna Kakissis A journalist currently based in Athens, Greece, Joanna contributes to TIME magazine, NPR, The New York Times, Marketplace, PRI's The World, The Financial Times Magazine and other outlets. She has also written for Al-Jazeera English, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., where she was an award-winning staff writer from 1998 to 2004. She contributed to a News & Observer series on Hurricane Floyd that was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news.
She has been awarded several fellowships. In fall 2009, she reported on with the help of a grant from the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Most recently, in 2011, she was awarded a Knight Luce Fellowship from the University of Southern California's Annenberg School to report on religion in migrant communities, especially the Hazara Afghans. Contact her at joanna@joannakakissis.com.
Keith Kloor is a magazine journalist based in New York City. A senior editor at Audubon magazine until recently, Kloor has been published as a freelancer by Audubon as well as Science, Nature, Archaeology, and Smithsonian, among others. His work reflects a multidisciplinary approach to environmental issues, examining science and public policy through a historical, social, and political lens. His recent projects include examining the impacts of environmental constraints on prehistoric Indian cultures. Reach Kloor at kkloor@msn.com.
Chris Welsch is a writer and photographer working for the Microsoft Stories team in Europe. He's based in Champigny-sur-Yonne, a small town in northern Burgundy. Between 2011 and 2016, he was a staff editor at the International Herald Tribune and The International New York Times in Paris, and before that, a senior reporter at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. photocw@gmail.com
Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock formerly worked as the host and producer of Independent Native News and as a reporter for the Alaska Public Radio Network. With the help of a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, she continues to report on that took place in Interior Alaska in 1999. The stories titled, Who Killed Durga? have aired as a series on Alaska Public Radio.
She also writes short stories and fiction which have appeared in The Los Angeles Review and The Sonora Review. Her first novel for teens, The Smell of Other People's Houses, was published in 2016 by Wendy Lamb Books/Random House in the US and Faber and Faber in the UK, and has also been translated into German. She can be reached through her website:.
Sean Markey is a Vermont-based journalist, photographer and editor whose work explores the intersection of science, culture and the environment. He is a former senior staff writer and editor for National Geographic News and the current editor in chief of N/R magazine.
Todd Neff is a freelance science, environment, healthcare and business writer living in Denver. Prior to his fellowship, he was science and environment reporter at the Boulder Daily Camera, where he covered everything from climate change and air quality to physics Nobel Prize winners. His book “The Laser That’s Changing the World” (Prometheus, 2018) covers the history of lidar, a vital environmental-science tool as well as key enabler of self-driving cars. He won the Colorado Book Award in History for , which he largely researched and wrote during his Ted Scripps fellowship. He can be reached via .
Joseph Sorrentino is California Philanthropy Writer for The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit organization that creates parks and protects land for people. He uses his environmental journalism experience to raise funds to protect our natural resources and heritage and to create parks and other resources for underserved communities. After serving as managing editor of The Orange County Reporter, San Diego Commerce, and Riverside Business Journal, Joe worked as a freelance journalist for High Country New, California Coast & Ocean and other environmental publications. He can be reached at jhsorren@gmail.com.
Florence Williams is the author of The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier and More Creative (W.W. Norton, 2017). Based in Washington, D.C., she is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for the New York Times, National Geographic, and numerous other publications. She is also the writer and host of a 2017 podcast series, The Woman Factor for Outside Magazine, and her recent audio series for Audible, Breasts Unbound, won a 2017 Gracie Award. Her previous book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, won the L.A. Times Book Prize in Science and Technology in 2013. A fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature and a visiting scholar at George Washington University, her work focuses on the environment, health and science. She serves on the boards of High Country News and the Ted Scripps Fellowships at CEJ. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C.
Bruce Barcott is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America. His features and cover stories have appeared in TIME, National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. His previous books include The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw and The Measure of a Mountain. Bruce has been the Deputy Editor of Leafly, the world's leading cannabis information resource, since 2015. He lives on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, with his wife Claire Dederer and their two children, Lucy and Willie. Bruce can be reached at bruce.barcott@leafly.com.
Leslie Dodson has worked as a reporter, correspondent, anchor, producer, and writer for a number of network news organizations, including CNBC, MSNBC, Reuters, CNN, and NHK-Japan. She has been posted to Tokyo, London, New York, and throughout Latin America for international broadcasters and has worked in independent production in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Nepal, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic. Dodson's work has focused on international business and economic news and regularly has drawn connections between business and the environment. She was awarded special recognition by Reuters for her coverage of the financial crisis. Dodson co-founded , a multimedia journalism consortium covering international development and environmental issues. Currently, she is a PhD student in the ATLAS program in Technology, Media & Society at Ƶ-Boulder. Her area of research is information and communication technology for development (ICTD). Dodson can be reached at lesliedodson@mac.com.
Anne Keala Kelly is a filmmaker and journalist focusing on Hawaiian political and cultural issues, indigenous peoples and the environment. Keala co-produced “The Other Hawai’i,” a 30-minute television news program for Al Jazeera English’s “Inside USA”; she has filed stories from Kathmandu, Geneva, and her home in Hawai’i, and her articles and essays have been published in The Nation, Indian Country Today, American Indian Quarterly, The Honolulu Weekly, and other journals. Keala has also produced documentaries and short features for radio, which have aired on the Pacifica Network’s Free Speech Radio News and NPR’s The Environment Report. Keala’s first feature length film, , has received international film festival awards. She can be reached at keala.kelly@gmail.com.
Anne Raup is the visuals editor and a photojournalist for the Anchorage Daily News. Her career has been centered in Southcentral Alaska with assignments taking her all over Alaska and the contiguous 48 states. In 2020 the Anchorage Daily News, in partnership with ProPublica, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for “,” a yearlong examination of the failures of the criminal-justice system in communities across Alaska. Following "Lawless", ADN and ProPublica published a series called "" which profiled people who had experienced sexual assault (Alaska has the highest rate in the nation). The series was awarded the 2021 Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma. When not making or editing photographs, she'll be found riding her mountain bike, hiking, or skiing in the mountains of Southcentral Alaska. Raup can be reached at araup@adn.com.
Jerd Smith is a writer and editor who specializes in land, water, and climate issues. She was an award-winning environmental and business reporter at the Rocky Mountain News prior to its closure in early 2009. She led a team of journalists who covered the science, money, politics, and ecology of water in Colorado from 2002 to 2005. During that time, her team won awards from the Colorado Press Association, the American Planning Association, and the University of Colorado's Wirth Chair Media Award for Environmental Coverage. Smith and two colleagues also won Stanford University's 2005 Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism for a five-part series titled She holds a bachelor's degree in public administration from the University of Evansville in Indiana and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Smith can be reached at jerd.e.smith@gmail.com. Jerd is launching a non-partisan news initiative on water in Colorado and the American West. It will be housed in the Water Education Colorado and funded, at least initially, by the Walton Family Foundation. Here's .
Bebe Crouse is the director of communications for The Nature Conservancy in Montana. Before moving to Montana, Crouse was the western and environment editor for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. Among her journalism honors are the 2003 National Headliner Award for Investigative Reporting for a team-produced look at malfeasance within the U.S. Border Patrol and the 2001 Peabody Award for NPR's team coverage of 9/11. She also received a Casey award for a documentary on the rise and influence of Evangelicals in Guatemala. Crouse's career includes five years at CBS News writing daily news analysis and commentary for Dan Rather and producing other feature and live segments for the network. She spent three years as a Mexico City-based independent producer and reporter. Her work includes award-winning documentaries for television and radio. She earned a bachelor's degree in environmental studies and natural science from the University of California–Santa Cruz and a master's certificate in international journalism from the University of Southern California/El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. Contact Crouse at bcrouse@tnc.org.
Don Hopey has covered the environment for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette since 1993. He’s written about through-hiking the Appalachian Trail; an 80-mile canoe trip on the federal Wild and Scenic section of the Allegheny River; baseball and politics in Sandanista, Nicaragua; post-Soviet era pollution in Eastern Europe; and in southwestern Pennsylvania, the destruction of historic homes due to subsidence caused by longwall mining, increased mortality downwind from coal-burning power plants, and water, air, and radiation issues related to Marcellus Shale gas drilling and fracking. He has been a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists since 2000, on the board of directors since 2004 and board president in 2013 and 2014. Hopey is co-author of, one of five guidebooks in a series that highlights the trail’s social and natural history. He teaches an environmental issues and policy class with a writing component at the University of Pittsburgh, and for the last six summers has been an instructor for the public lands issues and fly-fishing segment of the Pitt Honors College Yellowstone Field Course. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and studied law at Duquesne University, journalism at Pennsylvania State University. Contact Hopey at dhopey@post-gazette.com.
Jeff Johnson is senior editor for Chemical and Engineering News in Washington, D.C. He covers energy, the environment, science policy, chemical accidents, and economics for this weekly science news magazine.
The range of topics he has written about include all elements of energy, such as hydraulic fracturing, carbon capture and sequestration at coal-fired power plants, solar and wind energy, the electric grid, and nuclear energy, as well as inherently safer design of chemical plants and refineries.
Previously, Johnson worked for Environmental Science & Technology, a monthly environmental science magazine, and before that for the Daily Environment Reporter, a Bureau of National Affairs publication where he covered the environmental activities of Congress. He earned a BS in industrial engineering at California State Polytechnic University and a master's in journalism at the University of Oregon. Contact Johnson at j_johnson@acs.org.
Greg Stahl has been writing about public land and conservation issues in the western United States for 25 years and has worked as a journalist, editor, author, copywriter and public relations professional. His journalism has been recognized with more than 50 state, regional and national awards. Stahl is author of two books: , a Rocky Mountain mystery about a retired smoke jumper who returns to the wilderness to look for a missing young man; and , a guidebook about kayaking, rafting, canoeing and SUPing the rivers and lakes of Idaho. Stahl concentrated his fellowship studies in Ƶ’s School of Law, with a focus on water law, public land law, and natural resources law. Before his current position working for the state of Idaho to help communicate about the COVID-19 pandemic, he worked as communications director with the nonprofit river advocacy group Idaho Rivers United, senior editor at Sun Valley Magazine and as assistant editor at the Idaho Mountain Express newspaper in Ketchum, Idaho. Contact him or see more of his work at .
Andrea Welsh After a decade in journalism, Andrea Welsh now works on climate and carbon policy issues in Washington, D.C. She is currently outreach manager for the VCS Program, one of the most widely used programs for accounting for carbon credits in voluntary markets. As outreach director, Welsh develops online and print communication strategies and materials to engage a range of global policy makers and carbon market participants.
Previously Welsh worked as international media director for Environmental Defense Fund, where she influenced media coverage of international climate talks. Before that she worked as environmental correspondent for Reuters in Brasilia, writing about Brazil's role in global climate talks and its efforts to slow Amazon destruction while easing poverty in the rainforest. In her decade as a journalist, Welsh covered economic, political, environmental, and social issues as a correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires in Mexico, Chile, and Brazil. She also covered international energy markets for Petroleum Argus, a trade publication covering the politics and economics of the global oil trade. Welsh holds a bachelor's degree in communications from Temple University in Philadelphia and a master's in Latin American studies and communications from the University of Texas at Austin. Contact Welsh at andreawelsh@yahoo.com.
Sam Eaton is National Correspondent for EW Scripps’ 24-hour national news network, Newsy. His reporting and documentary films from the western US and beyond focus on climate change, the environment, and the communities struggling to adapt to a rapidly warming planet. Before that Sam was the founding Senior Reporter for sustainability coverage at Marketplace, a Pulitzer Center grantee, and a contributing Special Correspondent for PBS NewsHour, The Nation magazine, and PRI’s The World. His reporting and filmmaking have taken him to more than two dozen countries around the world. Sam’s films have screened at Washington DC’s Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital, DOC NYC, The World Economic Forum, and the United Nations Secretariat. He is a three-time winner of the Society of Environmental Journalists Awards for Outstanding Beat Reporting and Outstanding Investigative Reporting in a large market and is currently serving on the SEJ board. Sam can be reached at Sam.Eaton@Newsy.com.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C. correspondent for Alaska Public Radio Network, covering Alaska politics, elections, and natural resource issues in Congress and the federal agencies. Before taking the job in late 2013, she spent seven years as a freelancer, in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Colorado. She previously worked as the Washington correspondent for the Anchorage Daily News. She began her career at Homer (Alaska) News. She has been a National Press Foundation Paul Miller Fellow and has won two Best of the West reporting awards and numerous Alaska Press Club awards. Ruskin has a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri and a bachelor's in political science from the University of Washington. She can be reached at lruskin@AlaskaPublic.org.
Andrew Silva is now a government relations analyst for the County of San Bernardino, which at 20,000 square miles is geographically the largest in the contiguous U.S., and comprises urban, suburban and rural communities, an expansive portion of the Mojave Desert, national forests, including the highest peak in Southern California, and is home to the three new national monuments designated in 2016. In that role, he is responsible for researching and monitoring issues related to public lands, endangered species, renewable energy, air quality and transportation, among others, and then informing and advising senior county staff and the elected county supervisors. Classes taken during the fellowship have been valuable in this position. Before moving into the governmental and legislative affairs office, he worked as an analyst and speechwriter for the supervisor who represented much of the county’s rapidly growing High Desert. Before and after the fellowship, he was the environment and transportation reporter at The Sun in San Bernardino. During his 17-year newspaper career, he was recognized by the California Newspaper Association for a first place environmental story, and by the Inland Empire Society of Professional Journalists with first place stories in the science and environment categories. Silva has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Humboldt State University. Contact Silva at aesilva4@earthlink.net.
Rachel Odell Walker is a freelance writer based in Boulder, Colo. where she covers environmental issues, adventure travel, and parenting for outlets ranging from High Country News to Babble.com. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Backpacker, 5280, and Mountain Magazine. Following the fellowship, Rachel joined the staff at Skiing Magazine. She launched her journalism career as the environmental reporter at the Jackson Hole News in Jackson, Wyo., in 1998 after graduating with a double major in French and environmental studies from Middlebury College in Vermont. Reach her at rjodell@gmail.com.
Nadia White is an assistant professor at the University of Montana's School of Journalism. Prior to her fellowship, she was state editor at The Casper Star-Tribune, where she oversaw development of statewide news through bureaus across Wyoming and in Washington, D.C. She currently teaches a variety of classes including advanced reporting, sports reporting, and environmental reporting. Her environmental reporting class last spring provided live blog and Twitter coverage of the criminal prosecution of W.R. Grace Co. on charges including knowingly endangering the people of Libby, Montana, through the mining of asbestos- contaminated ore. The project was a groundbreaking use of new media coverage using old media values. White has a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's in psychology from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. She can be reached at white_nadia@hotmail.com.
Eric Frankowski is executive director of the Western Clean Energy Campaign, which works to facilitate the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy throughout the Interior West. WCEC coordinates coalition work focusing on the retirement of coal-fired power plants, ensuring that capacity is replaced with wind, solar and storage resources and securing resources to assist impacted communities and workers with the transition to post-coal economies. Prior to taking the helm at WCEC, Eric was the energy program director with Resource Media in Boulder, Colo., where he worked mainly with other nonprofit environmental groups, helping them develop and implement media and messaging strategies. From 1995-2006, he served as a reporter and city editor at the Longmont Daily Times-Call. During his tenure, the paper received several prestigious awards, including the Colorado Press Association's General Excellence Award in 2001 and 2002, and the Scripps Foundation's National Environmental Reporting Award in 2004. He also has received individual awards for his science and environment reporting. He and a colleague won the Society of Environmental Journalism's top award in 2004 in the 'Small Market Reporting-Print" category for their series on the Cotter Corporation, a uranium milling company near Cañon City, Colorado. Eric has a bachelor's degree with a double major in biology and Spanish, and an MA in journalism and graduate certificate in environmental policy from the University of Colorado Boulder. Contact him at efrankowski@gmail.com.
John Kotlowski is a Seattle-based freelance photographer and filmmaker. His work explores the cultural landscape and man's relationship to the found environment. He is currently in Australia working on "Balanda People", a photo-based project that takes a critical look at Australia's early colonial history. Other projects in the works, or in post-production, include a photo project on America's national parks, and a video documentary on his brother Lionel, titled "Mr. K". In 2009, Kotlowski was a nominee for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography. His work can be seen on his website , and on his road blog, . Contact Kotlowski at info@johnkotlowski.com.
Kim McGuire became the Houston Chronicle's new science writer in February 2016. The focus of the beat is space exploration given NASA's presence in Houston, non-medical research and extreme weather, mostly flooding and hurricanes. During the first few weeks on the job, she got to interview Astronaut Scott Kelly while he was aboard the International Space Station and back on Earth at the Johnson Space Center. Kim is thrilled to be writing about science again after a brief detour in education reporting at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In 2015, Kim and a colleague won the National Headliners' Award for best education story of the year for a year-long investigation into the increasing costs of special education in schools across the country.
Alex Markels is an investment research analyst and occasional contributor to National Geographic magazine. A former Wall Street Journal staff reporter, Markels has also worked as a supervising editor at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report Magazine, and a contributing writer at The New York Times. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Contact him at alex@markels.com.
Vicki Monks is a prolific multimedia freelancer who works as a writer, reporter, photographer, and radio and TV producer. Her articles and documentaries have tackled global environmental subjects, from the deforestation of Irian Jaya to the problem of plastic trash in the ocean, to industrial contamination of a Native American community in Oklahoma. Her work has appeared on National Public Radio, BBC Radio, CBS's "60 Minutes," PBS Online, and in National Wildlife magazine and the American Journalism Review. Monks is now living in Oklahoma where she is working on a book about Indian Country in Oklahoma 100 years after statehood and reporting on environmental threats to Indian lands. She is also currently working with the Oklahoma City-County Health Department as community relations coordinator.
She is author of , a book that explores how the American Farm Bureau's financial ties with big business drive its lobbying efforts, which often work against the interests of family farmers. Monks has won a long list of national and international awards and was a Professional Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. In 2006, she taught broadcast writing as an adjunct instructor at the University of Oklahoma. And, OU's School of Art honored her with a first place award in the Native American Alumni, Faculty and Student art show. The award was for photographs that will be used in her forthcoming book. A member of the Chickasaw tribe, she has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. Contact her at vicki.monks@gmail.com.
Elizabeth Bluemink spent more than a decade covering environmental and natural resource issues for newspapers in Alaska and the Lower 48 before transitioning to communication roles at Alaska agencies and organizations. Since 2019, she has worked in communications for Calista Corporation, which manages land and natural resources for the Alaska Native people of the Yukon Kuskokwim Region. In 2021, she began a two-year term as president of the non-profit Alaska Native Plant Society. Before 2019, she was the communications director for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (2011-2018), following stints as business reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, covering oil, mining, and Native corporations (2006-2011) and reporting on logging, fishing, and mining for the Juneau Empire (2004-2006). In 2011, she won the Society of Environmental Journalists' David Stolberg Meritorious Service Award, after many years of volunteering for the organization on SEJournal and First Amendment issues. She won Alaska Press Club awards for her environmental stories in 2004, 2005, and 2008. She also has worked in the past as the environment reporter for The Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, where she wrote about health concerns, Superfund sites, air pollution, and a paper plant. Bluemink previously worked for The Anniston (Ala.) Star where she broke a number of stories on PCB, lead and mercury contamination by the Monsanto Corporation in Anniston, and reported on the multi-million-dollar litigation against the company. She has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Virginia. Bluemink may be reached at ebluemink@yahoo.com.
John Flesher retired in 2023 after a 42-year career with The Associated Press, including 31 years as a correspondent in Traverse City, Michigan. He was a member of a multi-media team with the news cooperative that reports on environmental issues around the world, including climate change and water quality. His assignments included breaking news coverage, short-term enterprise and in-depth investigations. He won an AP award for a year-long project revealing that the nation’s oil and gas drilling boom had caused tens of thousands of briny wastewater spills. His other investigations focused on topics such as toxic algae blooms in the nation's waters, pollution from factory farms and the degraded condition of U.S. flood-control levees. He was part of an AP team that covered the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. He teamed with colleagues on stories involving COVID-19, including an award-winning report showing how state agencies, encouraged by the Trump administration, had relaxed enforcement of environmental regulations during the pandemic. His primary focus was on ecological topics involving the Great Lakes region, including lead contamination of the drinking water supply in Flint, Michigan. During three decades on the Great Lakes beat, he wrote extensively about wetlands, oil pipelines, toxic waste cleanups, the battle to prevent water selloffs to arid regions, PFAS pollution, threats posed by invasive species such as Asian carp and quagga mussels, and removal of gray wolves from the endangered species list.
After one year as a reporter with the Goldsboro News-Argus in North Carolina, Flesher joined the AP in Raleigh, where he covered state government and politics. He spent nearly three years with AP’s Washington bureau before transferring to Traverse City in 1992. He was named AP's Michigan Staffer of the Year in 1995 and a Great Lakes Environmental Issues Fellow at the Michigan State University School of Journalism in 1997. He was awarded more than a dozen fellowships from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. Flesher has a bachelor's degree in English from North Carolina State University. He can be reached at jeflesher@yahoo.com or jeflesher@gmail.com.
Douglas MacPherson is a veteran public radio reporter. He currently lives in Cape Neddick, Maine. He served eight years as a reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio in Concord where he specialized in science and natural resource issues. His stories appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition," "All Things Considered" and "Weekend Edition," and Public Radio International's "Marketplace." Doug started in radio at NPR's Boston affiliate, WBUR. He holds a bachelor's degree is in literary studies from Middlebury College in Vermont. Doug can be reached at douglasjmacpherson@gmail.com.
Natalie Phillips passed away in September of 2007. Prior to her death, she served as the associate producer of , a documentary about living with metastasized breast cancer. The film won first place for documentaries at the Los Angeles Reel Women Film Festival. More information available at Affinityfilms. Natalie retired from her job as a senior staff writer at The Anchorage Daily News in 2003. Her assignments with the paper had focused on science and environmental issues including the class action Exxon Valdez oil spill trial. She was a reporter and assistant managing editor at The Bozeman (Montana) Daily Chronicle, and a staff writer at The Colorado Springs Gazette, Telegraph and The Vail (Colorado) Trail. A recipient of numerous state, regional and national journalism awards, she also freelanced for a range of publications including TIME magazine, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Phillips received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Montana and studied in language programs at the University of Salamanca, Spain, and Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City.
David Wilson lives in Boulder, Colorado. After ten years of journalism work, David changed career paths in 2005. Inspired in part through the courses he took while a Scripps Fellow, David decided to go to law school. Today, he works as a patent attorney at Holland & Hart LLP. He has also worked in Denver at one of the nation's leading intellectual property firms, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, where he worked with inventors, drafting patent applications based on their inventions, and getting the applications issued as patents, both in the U.S. and internationally. He works with numerous clients including several local companies that focus on alternative energy and smart grid technologies.
David studied law at the University of Colorado, where he continued to develop his interest in federal Indian law. During law school, David had the opportunity to study more under Charles Wilkinson, Sarah Krakoff, and Rick Collins. David also was editor-in-chief of the Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law. He received the Silicon Flatirons Writing Competition Award in 2008 for his paper "Weaving the Navajo.Net: Advanced Telecommunications Services, Cultural Adaptation, and the Navajo Nation's "Internet to the Hogan"Technology Plan." The article was published in volume 7 of the JTHTL.
During David's journalism career, he freelanced as a radio producer focusing on science and environmental issues. He produced more than 100 news stories and documentaries that have appeared on programs such as "Soundprint," "Marketplace," "Living on Earth," "High Plains News," and "Pacifica Network News," as well as on Boulder's community radio station, KGNU. In 2005, he worked as a Capitol reporter, providing daily news coverage of the Colorado state legislature for 12 community radio stations in Colorado. He was previously managing producer at Alternative Radio after several years filing in as substitute news and public affairs director for KGNU. His "Exploring the Universe" program was awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Whitaker Award for best radio documentary series in 2000.
David taught both mathematics and journalism at the University of Colorado, along with overseeing KGNU's training program. David holds both a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a juris doctorate from the University of Colorado and earned both a bachelor's and master's in physics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. David continues to keep a hand in radio as a member of KGNU's board of directors, along with being involved with Ƶ's Silicon Flatirons telecommunications program. David also regularly hosts KGNU's Kabaret, featuring local musicians, which airs each Monday from 7 to 8pm. David may be reached at david.wilson@colorado.edu.
Bill Adler’s articles have appeared in Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Pacific Standard and many other publications. He has also written three books of narrative nonfiction. He recently moved back to Denver after three years in a small town in Costa Rica, where he co-founded a community radio station and produced a documentary film about the US Quakers who founded the town. He is working with and documenting a new immigrant-owned mushroom cooperative in the San Luis Valley. Adler can be reached at wmadler@gmail.com.
Rebecca Huntington, a multi-media journalist, is a regular contributor to Wyoming Public Radio. She has reported on a variety of topics, including the National Parks, wildlife, environment, health care, education and business. Rebecca’s reporting for Wyoming Public Radio can be accessed . She wrote the documentary film, “Far Afield,” which begins airing in April 2016 as part of Earth Day programming on public television stations in 40 states and the District of Columbia. “Far Afield: A Conservation Love Story” features conservationist Bert Raynes, 91, whose wit and passion has fostered a community’s love for wildlife and citizen science. This can be viewed at. She co-wrote the one-hour, high-definition documentary, “The Stagecoach Bar: An American Crossroads” (2012). This documentary can be viewed at. She has written for daily and weekly newspapers and produced video news stories for the PBS series “This American Land” () and for “Assignment Earth,” broadcast on Yahoo! News and NBC affiliates. Contact her at rahuntington@gmail.com.
Ron Meador returned to his post as an editorial writer at The Minneapolis Star Tribune after his fellowship, where he had been employed since 1980 in various editing and management roles. Following sale of the paper to a private equity investment group in early 2007, he resigned to pursue interests in freelance writing and environmental advocacy; in mid-2007 he began work as executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. In September 2008 he became director of the Media Center at Fresh Energy in St. Paul, where he led a media relations and journalism training program for an eight-state network of nonprofits and foundations, and created a new online newsmagazine, Midwest Energy News, which was launched in early 2010. In October 2010 he resigned that position to return to a writing/editing/teaching career closer to the journalistic mainstream, including creation of a new online environmental news venture, Earth Journal, at the Twin Cities' leading online news source, MinnPost.com. In 2015, Earth Journal was honored by the state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists as the best independent news blog in Minnesota on any subject. His 35-year newspaper career also included stints at The New York Times and The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, and his many awards include the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing, presented by The Wilderness Society in 2000. Meador holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and sociology from Indiana University. Reach him at ronmeador@gmail.com.
Susan Moran lives in Boulder, Colo., where she is a freelance writer and editor, covering conservation, water, climate change impacts and solutions, energy development, agriculture, environmental health, and other issues. Her work has been published in The New York Times, bioGraphic, The Economist, Popular Science, Discover, Ensia, Nature, Science News for Students and other publications. Susan is also a host and producer of a science show on KGNU community radio, called “.” She served on the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists for six years (2014-2020).
In 2020 Susan worked as a consultant to The Water Desk, a journalism initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at Ƶ Boulder. She worked as an adjunct journalism instructor at the University of Colorado Boulder for several years (2002 - 2009, and 2020). She was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT for the 2009-2010 academic year. Susan went to Palmer Station, Antarctica, on a Marine Biological Laboratory science journalism fellowship in late 2010. Before coming to Boulder, she was based in San Francisco, where she was a senior editor at Business 2.0 magazine. Previously she worked at Reuters —in Tokyo, New York, and Silicon Valley—and other news organizations. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, a master's degree in Asian studies from the University of California at Berkeley, and a bachelor's degree in political science from UC Santa Cruz. Contact Moran at susankmoran@gmail.com. Her website is.
Ted Wood is an award-winning photojournalist, who specializes in natural history and environmental stories. He wrote, "I am now an officially censored photojournalist in Wyoming!!" The project he started during his Ted Scripps Fellowship on the coal-bed methane boom in Wyoming bore fruit, as well as notoriety, for Wood. An exhibit of his photos opened in early 2007 at the gallery of the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming's Powder River basin. The show, "," which featured his work and that of three other photographers, was scheduled to travel to the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, Wyoming's largest museum. But after pressure from the energy industry, the museum cancelled the show. This created a huge press interest, says Wood, and the effort backfired. The show is now booked two years out, and will travel throughout the Rockies and to the coasts. Recent projects have included shoots for Vanity Fair, Outdoor Life, and The Nature Conservancy Magazine, the latter spread part of a story on a cooperative bison ranch in South Dakota. Wood also shot a February 2003 feature story by Jim Robbins in The Los Angeles Times Magazine on environmental impacts of coal-bed methane extraction in Wyoming, the subject of Wood's fellowship project. He traveled to Mongolia in the summer of 2003, where he and Institute on the Environment alum Jeremy Schmidt are launching a nonprofit venture called Conservation Ink. The organization will develop interpretive publications for national parks and ecological preserves in third world countries that are financially unable to produce support materials on their own. Wood took a group of patrons on a trip to Hovsgol National Park in Mongolia in association with the project, which is funded with a grant from National Geographic magazine. He headed back to Mongolia in July 2007, where he put the final touches on a second set of map/guides and postcards to promote responsible tourism in Mongolia's national parks. He is also an author/photographer of nine children's books that feature nature and environmental themes. He has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. His work can be seen on his website. Contact Wood at twood@thestorygroup.org.
Carie Call is an environmental planner and LEED-certified builder for green buildings and communities. She owns and runs Pine Island Consulting, in Bokeelia, Florida. Call serves on Lee County's Smart Growth planning committee, Lee County's 20/20 land preservation committee, Lee County's Local Planning Agency, the sutainability IFAS committee and is a member of a women's philanthropy group on Pine Island, Fla., where she lives. Call is currently the Mango Queen on Pine Island, a Chamber of Commerce election promoting local organic agriculture and green business. This year was the first-ever green Mango Mania event, with recycling being implemented for the first time. Call writes environmental and socio-economic columns for the local newspapers. In 2011, Call plans to travel to Saudi Arabia where she and her husband, Darin, are working on a LEED airport in Jeddah. She plans to write about the experience for publication. The Florida Press Club honored Call with second place in environmental reporting in 2004, while she took third place in the same category from the Florida chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The Florida Society of Newspaper Editors also recognized her in 2004 with a third-place award for best body of work, environmental reporting. Most recently she garnered a NAMI of Collier County award for Outstanding Media for a 2005 series on the mentally ill. Prior to opening her own firm, Call worked as a reporter for The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press, five associated dailies in neighboring Charlotte County, Fla., and The East Oregonian in Hermiston, Ore. Call can be reached at clcall@live.com.
Daniel Glick is co-founder of, a multimedia journalism company based in Boulder. He served as one of the editors of the 2014 National Climate Assessment, and The Story Group independently produced a series of climate change videos about the report’s findings. Dan has published in more than 50 national and international periodicals, including National Geographic, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, PARADE, The Weekend Australian, and Harpers. From 1989 - 2001, he served as a Newsweek Washington correspondent and roving Rocky Mountain special correspondent. He has also worked as a private investigator looking into the death of an American gay man in Australia, a story that was highlighted in the in February 2016. His second book,, was published in June 2003 by Public Affairs and won a Colorado Book Award. Glick is also the author of, and contributed a chapter on climate change science to The Last Polar Bear. In 2006 he was named a Knight International Press Fellow and taught journalism in Algeria. For more about his books and magazine work, visit his website,, or The Story Group's website,. He can be reached at daniel@danielglick.net.
Katy Human is the public affairs specialist for NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in Boulder. She works with scientists and others to get news out about the cool and critical weather and climate research taking place here. She's been with NOAA (and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences) for four years now, writing for general public and Congressional audiences. Formerly The Denver Post's science and then medical reporter, Human still misses daily journalism and other journalists, but loves her new colleagues and new challenges. She also loves more family time with husband Gregg, son Miles and daughter Macy. Human can be reached at katyhuman@msn.com.
Dave Mayfield is a former environmental reporter for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., and during his time in that job wrote about oyster lease disputes in the Chesapeake Bay, a surge in Virginia's seal population, the battle over a proposal to begin oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic and a proposal to fight sea-level rise by injecting treated wastewater into an aquifer. He also founded a citizen-science project known as , in which nearly 2,000 coastal Virginia residents have measured flood tides. The project was recognized by Guinness Book as the world’s largest environmental survey and has been nationally featured in newspaper, magazine and reports. Mayfield won numerous writing awards on Virginian-Pilot beats covering business and the military, and spent many years there as an editor as well. He had a story published in the fall 2001 issue of OnEarth magazine (formerly Amicus Journal) that stemmed from his Ted Scripps Fellowship. The story, "A Farewell to Arms," was about a former Army ammunition plant in Wisconsin that has become a sanctuary for grassland birds. Mayfield can be reached at dmzmay@yahoo.com.
Paul Tolme Roving magazine journalist Paul Tolme has been busy learning and writing about the wildlife of the Northwest following his move to Leavenworth, WA. Tolme has recently penned articles about, the effort to, efforts to and theTolme spends much of the winter exploring the mountains and ski destinations of the West as a contributor to Ski, Mountain and Squaw magazines, and he is a frequent contributor to National Wildlife.
Tolme's freelance work can be work can be seen at his hopelessly outdated website,. In addition to his journalism work, Tolme works for a range of brands in the bicycling and outdoor industry to provide marketing materials and copywriting, and he also provides media strategy to brands and environmental organizations. Prior to launching his magazine career, Tolme was a staff writer for 10 years for The Associated Press, covering state legislatures, politics, and the environment and outdoors beats in the New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and Northern Virginia bureaus.
He can be reached at ptolme@gmail.com.
Lisa Busch is the director of the Sitka Sound Science Center, a non-profit organization committed to scientific research and science education in the Gulf of Alaska. The Center operates a teaching salmon hatchery and a small aquarium. The Center is well known for its community engagement activities. She produced "Encounters," a radio program that combines native ways of knowing with western science. She received her masters in Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Busch can be reached at lisajeanbusch@gmail.com.
Dan Grossman After earning a BS in physics and a PhD in political science at MIT, Dan has been a print journalist and radio and web producer for more than 20 years. He has reported from all seven continents, including from within 800 miles of both poles. He has produced radio stories and documentaries for National Public Radio, Public Radio International, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Germany’s Deutsche Welle radio, the BBC, and a number of other broadcast outlets. Dan has written for The New York Times, Boston Globe, Discover, Audubon, and Scientific American and MSNBC. He is coauthor of the book A Scientist’s Guide to Talking with the Media: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has also produced three extensive micro-websites, all on environmental topics. More recently, Dan has been producing multimedia posts for National Geographic’s NewsWatch blog, for which he is a contributing editor. His work has received many awards, including from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the National Science Writers Association. For more about Dan and his work, visit his website. He can be reached at dangrossmanmedia@gmail.com.
Patrick Joseph lives in Oakland, Calif., with his wife and two kids. He is the editor of California Magazine, the award-winning alumni publication of the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to editing and writing for California, he continues to freelance for various publications. Joseph can be reached at patjoseph@gmail.com.
Emily Murphy is vice president and managing editor of Mother Nature Network, a mainstream environmental news and information website based in Atlanta. The site launched in January 2009. Previously, Murphy was multimedia director for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website, www.ajc.com. Before moving to Atlanta, Murphy was part of USA TODAY's web team that won three awards in the University of Missouri's Picture of the Year International contest for their coverage of the Bush Inauguration, Hurricane Katrina and soldiers in Iraq. Prior to working for USA TODAY, she was a multimedia producer and editor at nationalgeographic.com and a television producer at CNN. Murphy can be reached at emilymurphy@rocketmail.com.
Rebecca Ramsey
David Baron is a science journalist, broadcaster, lecturer, and author. His 2017 book,—praised by the Wall Street Journal as “a sweeping, compelling portrait of the scientific and social aspirations of Gilded Age Americans”—tells the story of a total solar eclipse that traversed the American West in 1878. The book and Baron’s related (viewed well over a million times online) helped spur public excitement for the recent total eclipse that crossed the nation on August 21, 2017. A former environment correspondent for NPR and former health and science editor for the public radio program The World, Baron has reported from every continent and has earned some of the top honors in broadcast journalism—including the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club of America, the Alfred I. duPont Award from Columbia University, the National Academies Communications Award, and, on three occasions, the annual journalism prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Baron’s written work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Outside, Daily Beast, Lonely Planet, and Reader’s Digest. While a Ted Scripps Fellow at Ƶ in 1998-99, Baron began research for his first book, . An exploration of the growing conflict between people and wildlife in suburban America, it investigates events that culminated in Colorado’s first fatal mountain lion attack, in 1991, and was honored with the Colorado Book Award in 2003.
Jennifer Bowles, a veteran journalist, is now the executive director of the Water Education Foundation in Sacramento, California, an impartial nonprofit that raises awareness of water issues in California and the Southwest through a quarterly magazine, tours of watersheds, conferences and workshops, and other educational means. The Foundation devotes a significant amount of time examining issues associated with the Colorado River by writing the twice-yearly River Report and hosting an invitation-only symposium every other year in Santa Fe, New Mexico, among other projects.
In December 2016, she led an international journalism workshop on water issues for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Held in Tehran, the workshop included participants from Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Oman and Malaysia. You can read her blog about the experience here.
Previously, Jennifer served as the senior writer/communications strategist for a major California law firm that specialized in environmental and water law, subjects she took a strong interest in during her fellowship at Ƶ-Boulder when she studied with Charles Wilkinson and David Getches at the law school.
Prior to joining the law firm, she was a reporter for nearly 20 years in Southern California, beginning her career with The Associated Press in Los Angeles. After the fellowship, she became the environmental reporter at The Press-Enterprise, in Riverside, Calif., where she covered an area of Inland Southern California that is a hotbed for endangered species, contentious water supply issues, earthquakes, pollution, and a bevy of public lands issues. She won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and other organizations. She and a co-worker received a second-place award in the public service category from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for their 2001 "Troubled Waters" series, which revealed that a plume of MTBE, long in the making from a fuel tank farm, was heading toward a major drinking water well and threatening other wells.
Jenn received her bachelor’s degree in journalism and history from the University of Southern California.
Contact her at jennscribe@aol.com or jbowles@watereducation.org.
Paula Dobbyn is a reporter for Honolulu Civil Beat based on Hawaii island. She covers energy and environmental stories, among other topics, from her base on the Big Island. After her fellowship year, Dobbyn reported for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska's News Source. She completed a cross-border master's degree in international human rights law at Queen's University Belfast and National University of Ireland, Galway, and spent several months in Timor Leste working for an Irish humanitarian aid agency as a media advisor. Dobbyn has taught journalism as an adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage and has worked as a communications director for Trout Unlimited Alaska, Victims for Justice and Alaska Sea Grant at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. She's thrilled to be working as a reporter for Hawaii's leading investigative news organization which she joined in February 2022. You can follow her work on Instagram at @bigislandreporter or on Twitter at @pauladobbyn. Recent stories can be found at .
Cate Gilles earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she graduated Cum Laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After receiving her master's degree Summa Cum Laude in political science at Northern Arizona University, she worked as editor of the Din* Bureau of the Gallup Independent and as a correspondent for The Navajo Times. In 1994 she received the Bojack Humanitarian Award for Reporter of the Year. Gilles passed away on August 4, 2001. At the time of her death, she was editor of The Yaqui Times, the newsletter of the Pascua Yaqui reservation. A Web site has been established in her memory.
Todd Hartman has moved his environmental journalism career into a new phase since 2009. With the closure of the storied Rocky Mountain News, he landed outside his beloved field of 24 years and took his passion for environmental and energy issues into the public sector. He currently resides as the communications director for Colorado's Department of Natural Resources, coordinating with the agencies' six divisions on matters ranging from state water supplies, to its parks and wildlife and oversight of the mining and energy development industries. Prior to his role at DNR, he managed media relations for the Governor's Energy Office and Gov. Bill Ritter's New Energy Economy efforts until late 2010. While not journalism, the work is interesting, fast-paced and requires building new skill sets and stretching old ones. And, at its heart, the job still involves educating the public on these important issues, in large part by keeping the conversation factual, a mission in many ways similar to the news biz. Hartman began his journalism career more than 20 years ago and worked at four newspapers – three of them in Colorado. His work earned 11 national journalism awards, including recognition from the Scripps Howard Foundation, the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, the National Headliner Award and, most recently, from the Taylor Family Award for Fairness, awarded through the Nieman Foundation. Hartman's reporting also garnered five regional prizes for journalism in the West and has won or placed nearly two dozen times in state contests. He is living just outside Denver, married with two children, two cats and a border collie mix. He has a BA in History from the University of Colorado. Hartman can be reached at toddhartman@mac.com.
Michael Milstein is a public affairs officer and science writer for NOAA Fisheries' West Coast Region, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, and Southwest Fisheries Science Center. He previously worked at the Bonneville Power Administration and before that covered natural resources at The Oregonian. Before joining The Oregonian, he worked out of his basement in Cody, Wyoming, as the Wyoming Bureau reporter for The Billings Gazette. There he covered science and environmental issues in and around Yellowstone National Park. Milstein also freelanced for Air & Space, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and others. He lives in Portland, Ore., with his wife and son. Contact Milstein at mmilstein@msn.com.
Bruce Ritchie is a senior writer covering growth and the environment for The Florida Tribune, which launched in March 2009. He also is editor of FloridaEnvironments.com, which covers growth and environmental issues from Florida's capital.
Bruce previously covered growth and the environment for the Tallahassee Democrat from 2000 to 2008 and for the Gainesville Sun from 1993 to 1997. He has extensively covered water wars among Alabama, Florida and Georgia, Florida's revision of its growth management laws, coastal development, and nitrate pollution in groundwater and in springs at Florida's state parks.
In June 2006, he co-wrote a three-day series on the threats to Florida's springs. The Tallahassee Democrat received a first-place award from the Society of Environmental Journalists for outstanding reporting on the series. In 2001, his series on competing water needs along the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system in 2001 was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Ritchie can be reached at brucebritchie@gmail.com.
Christine Shenot is working in a variety of capacities to promote sustainability, with a particular focus on walkability, transit-oriented development (TOD), and urban agriculture in her home state of Maryland. In addition to freelance writing on these topics, she serves as an associate with TND Planning Group, a Baltimore-based planning firm that works with communities in Maryland and other states to promote integrated land use and transportation planning and innovative civic engagement strategies. Shenot has helped the firm develop its Envision Baltimore initiative with a weekly newsletter and blog promoting sustainable community design and development. She also helps plan and facilitate public workshops and visioning sessions to promote sustainable community design and development, working with both TND Planning Group and the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute () She can be reached at cshenot@yahoo.com.
Jenni Vincent
Dan Whipple is the editor of the Natural Hazards Observer, published by the University of Colorado's Natural Hazards Center. Most of his non-work writing is directed toward literary efforts—he's completed one novel and has two others in the works. His 2002 novel, , published by the University Press of Colorado, was one of three finalists for the Colorado Book Award and was selected as a "best mystery" that year by the Rocky Mountains News. He is currently residing most of the year in Nairobi, Kenya, with occasional extended stays in Boulder. He's married to Kathleen Bogan, who is the group design editor for East Africa's Nation Media Group—hence the Nairobi address. In Kenya, he is serving as a volunteer editorial consultant to the Kibera Mirror, a start-up newspaper covering underreported news in Africa's largest slum. Reach Whipple at dan.whipple@colorado.edu or dswhipple@gmail.com.