Fellows

Alisa Joyce Barba is an award-winning journalist, producer, writer and editor with 25 years experience in both network and public broadcasting.  For the past 12 years, she has served as the Western Bureau Chief for National Public Radio.  She was responsible for the editorial content and production of member station reporter and staff pieces for air on NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.  She developed multi-platform and web content for NPR’s digital news, to complement radio news stories.  While monitoring news in the western US, she specialized in covering border and immigration issues and won numerous awards for editing series and stories on issues ranging from failed US policies to fight a “war on drugs” to border corruption.  Prior to her work with NPR, Alisa was the Producer for ABC New in Beijing, covering, among other stories, the Tianamen Square uprising for ABC World News Tonight. From 1989-1995 Alisa was a Producer/Reporter for MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour in New York and Washington DC.

Francisco Barradas has worked as a journalist for two decades. In San Francisco, where he has lived since 2006, he is a regular contributor to El Tecolote, El Mensajero and Radio Bilingüe. His articles have also been published around the nation in others Impremedia newspapers: La Opinión (Los Angeles), El Diario (New York), and La Prensa (Orlando). He was granted two journalism awards from the National Association of Hispanic Publications in 2009 and 2010.

In 2009 he was awarded the New America Media-Irvine Foundation California Politics and Policy fellowship for ethnic media journalist.  The same year he became a fellow of the Knight Digital Media Center after been selected to participate in a multimedia news production workshop at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Before moving to the US, he was managing editor at Bi, Mexico bi national magazine, in 2003, and was executive director at the newspaper Imagen in Zacatecas, Mexico, from December 1997 to November 2002.  He was also founder reporter (1988) and then political editor at El Economista, the Mexico City newspaper, from 1992 to 1996.

Megan Buskey is the assistant editor of The Wilson Quarterly, a journal of ideas concerned with presenting the best writing and thinking of academics and specialists to a broad audience. She has also contributed to The Nation, the New York Times Book Review, and NPR’s All Things Considered. After graduating from the University of Chicago with a degree in English literature, she spent four years working on democratization, the rule of law, and human rights in the former Soviet Union.

Momo Chang is a freelance journalist based in Oakland, California. Her writings focus on Asian American communities, communities of color, and youth culture. She is a former staff writer at the Oakland Tribune, where she covered Asian American communities. Her stories range from uncovering working conditions in nail salons, to stories about “invisible minorities” like Tongan youth and Iu Mien farmers. Momo has received local and national awards including the Ida B. Wells Journalist for Justice Award from the Center for Media Justice. She has written for the East Bay Express, San Francisco Bay Guardian and ColorLines, among other publications. She is also an editor, writer and blogger for Hyphen, a national Asian American magazine focusing on arts, politics and culture.

Paloma Esquivel has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times since 2007. Before that she was a freelance writer who published stories in Colorlines, thenation.com and La Prensa in Riverside, Calif. Before turning to journalism she worked a variety of jobs including teaching at a group home for boys,  hawking clothing at the mall and multi-tasking at Spanish-language radio station KDIF in Riverside.

Marina Giovannelli covers the bizarre universe that is South Florida for WLRN, the NPR station in Miami. Before that, Marina was a 2009-2010 Metcalf Environmental Reporting Fellow at ‘The World’ in Boston.  Marina has reported from Venezuela, Mexico City and Coney Island. The Associated Press named her “Rookie Reporter of the Year” for 2008 in North Carolina and awarded her reporting “Best Use of Sound.” Marina got her start in radio at NPR’s Science Desk, where she worked on the award-winning series Climate Connections. A 2007 graduate of the University of California, San Diego, Marina received a B.S. in neuroscience, with minors in environmental chemistry and sociology of healthcare. Marina was born in Mexico City.

Ian Gordon is an Oakland-based freelance writer specializing in immigration, Latin America and sports. He is a former contributing editor at ESPN The Magazine and a recent graduate of the Master’s program in Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley, where he studied the effects of return migration and deportation on sending communities in western Guatemala. Ian first became interested in the movement of people across borders while living in the Guatemalan village of San Pablo in 2006, and his work has been informed by his travels throughout Latin America, particularly in Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico. His writing has appeared in ESPN, Slate and VanityFair.com, among other publications.

Suzy Khimm is a journalist based in Washington D.C., where she is a political reporter for Mother Jones. Previously a staff member at The New Republic, Suzy has written for The Economist, Slate, Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal Asia, and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. She’s also guest-blogged about national politics and domestic policy for The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein, The American Prospect, and Newsweek. From 2006-2007, she was an Associate Editor for the English-language Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She also spent two years in Rio de Janeiro, reporting on urban violence in Brazil’s prisons and shantytowns. In a previous life, Suzy wrote and produced Off-Off-Broadway theater. Suzy received her BA in literature from Yale University and bicycles most everywhere.

Sandy King has been producing and directing award-winning documentaries, news and public affairs programs – generally focused on issues of race, class and justice – for more than 30 years. She covered legal and social issues for most of her long news career, before launching NJN Public Television’s acclaimed justice series, “Due Process,” which she writes, produces, reports and co-hosts – and for which she has earned an unprecedented 18 New York and Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.

Julia McEvoy works with the station’s news production team to bring vital news of the region to KQED’s audience on multiple platforms. Julia got into radio side-bar fashion after returning from Dakar, Africa in 1986. While covering Chicago’s Latino communities for a Spanish-language TV news station, she began freelance reporting Latino-centric stories for public radio. That reporting work for NPR and WBEZ lead to radio documentary work, then to editing, and eventually executive producing Chicago Matters, an award-winning public affairs series. While heading the series, Julia began the Ear to the Ground mentorship program, bringing community contributors to WBEZ on air and on-line. During Julia’s tenure as executive producer of Chicago Matters, and as Senior Editor of WBEZ’s Education and Urban Affairs Desk, her editorial work received a Peabody Award, a Casey Medal for Coverage of Children and Families, several Edward R. Murrow awards, as well as awards from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. and the Society for Professional Journalists.  Julia joined KQED in 2010 and lives in Berkeley with her husband Chris and three teenagers.

Claudia Núñez completed her studies in Journalism at the Universidad Autónoma de
la Laguna in México in Coahuila, in Mexico. She began her career in journalism in 1998 as a reporter. Later, in 2000, she was a correspondent in the United States for the Mexican States Editors Association (AEE), that includes 20 Mexican publications. In 2005 she joined La Prensa, Spanish-language branch of the Press-Enterprise. Since May 2007, Claudia has been working as a staff reporter of the daily La Opinion, in Los Angeles, California, were she has been publishing special investigations about immigration, environmental justice and drug policy. For her outstanding work, Claudia has been recognized with six national awards.

Matt O’Brien has worked as a newspaper reporter for eight years and writes about immigration, the census and demographics for the Contra Costa Times, the Oakland Tribune and their sister papers in the Bay Area News Group. Along with covering the East Bay, a diverse region home to about 2.5 million people, he has reported stories from Mexico, Guatemala and South Asia. He lives in Oakland.

David Olson reports on immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise, which covers Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California. He was previously a reporter at The Herald in Everett, Washington, Windy City Times in Chicago, Pioneer Press newspapers in suburban Chicago and City News Bureau of Chicago. Olson has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.

Tony Paniagua joined KUAT-TV Channel 6 in 2005, but he’s returning to Tucson for the second time in his career.   Originally from Colombia, Paniagua has lived in New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas in addition to Arizona.  After he graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville, he worked at a cable television station in Miami, the Univision affiliate in Phoenix, the NBC affiliate in Tucson and the NBC affiliate in Houston.  In 2004 he took several months off to visit his family and to travel to different parts of the United States and Mexico.  Paniagua has traveled to Mexico, Nicaragua and Kazakhstan as part of his professional responsibilities and he has also visited several other countries including Canada, France,  the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Suriname.  He served in the United States Army prior to receiving his degree at the University of Florida and was stationed in Germany.  He’s a fan of different cultures, foods and languages and enjoys jogging, racquetball and swimming.  He speaks Spanish fluently and has studied French, German and Portuguese.

Víctor Manuel Ramos is a bilingual writer with significant experience in daily journalism. He has been writing about Hispanic issues, immigration policy and minority affairs for the Orlando Sentinel since 2004. He also covers community issues in east Orange County. Before moving to Orlando to become a staff writer for the Orlando Sentinel, Ramos had worked as a reporter for the bilingual edition of The N.Y. Daily News, for Spanish-language daily El Diario/La Prensa and for Newsday in New York. He has covered communities, crime, education and government throughout his career.

Rubén Rosario, born in Puerto Rican and raised in New York City, spent the first 11 years of his 30 plus years in journalism as a staff writer for the New York Daily News. While there, he covered the nation’s largest police force, organized crime, courts as well as some of the most well known and high profile crime stories. They included the Central Park jogger rape case, subway gunman Bernie Goetz and the beating death of Lisa Steinberg, which raised international awareness about child abuse. Rosario joined the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1991 as city editor and launched an award-winning metro column in 1997 that focuses on topics ranging from criminal justice and public safety to human interest and immigration. Honors in recent years include multiple first place awards for general column writing from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists.

Rosalba Ruíz is a bilingual multimedia journalist based in Washington, D.C. Her experience includes writing for daily, weekly and online publications covering local, national and international issues, producing video for Spanish and English news outlets, and working on a Pulitzer-nominated project as a translator. Rosalba is currently a writer for Hispanic Link News Service and a producer for Reuters.

Julie Shaw is a reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News, where she writes about crime, court cases, the lives of immigrants and immigration. She started there in January 2007. Before the Daily News, she worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer; the News Journal in Wilmington, Del.; a Gannett newspaper in Newark, Ohio; and the Financial Times in New York. She spent two years with the Peace Corps in Honduras. She received her undergraduate degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and her master’s degree at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Dianne Solís is a senior writer at the Dallas Morning News, where she reports frequently on immigration and the noisy debate over what to do about it. Her stories have looked at the sedation of deportees by the U.S. government, green-card Marines and mixed status families split by deportations. She’s also examined the meat-packing industry, and the illegal and legal immigrants who endure dangerous working conditions to cut up cows. She’s reported on the corrosive rise of narcotics cartels and the U.S. consumers and addicts who keep them in business. Her assignments have included suburban government, energy, minority business, and media and marketing. She’s worked for the Wall Street Journal, the Fresno Bee, KSEE-TV and served on the board of Radio Bilingue Inc.  Ms. Solís studied at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow, and holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University, and a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Fresno.

Lee Wang is a documentary filmmaker who has worked for PBS, MSNBC and Newsweek. She is currently a fellow with the Investigative Reporting Program at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism where she is pursuing a story on immigration detention. Before moving to Berkeley, Lee served as associate producer on the PBS Frontline documentary “Facing Death,” which examines the difficult choices patients face at the end of life. As an independent director, Lee has produced several short documentaries, including “Someone Else’s War,” an investigative piece on the treatment of Filipino workers in Iraq which recently aired on PBS. Lee is a graduate of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Yale University.