2024-2025 Fellows
Xuandi Wang
Xuandi (Aaron) (he/him) is a freelance journalist based in Chicago.
Gabriela Barzallo
Gabriela (she/ella) is a freelance journalist based in NYC & Latin America.
Jovi Dai
Jovi (he/him) is a data reporter at The Center for Public Integrity, based in Merced, California.
Kang-Chun Cheng (KC)
KC (she/her) is a freelance photojournalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Shi En Kim
Kim (she/her) is a freelance journalist and a founder of Sequencer Mag, based in Washington, DC.
Trisha Mukherjee
Trisha (she/her) is a freelance journalist based in New York, NY.
Wufei Yu
Wufei (he/him) is a freelance journalist based in Beijing, China.
2023-2024 Fellows
Jordan Gass-Poore’
Jordan (she/her) is a freelance journalist based in Long Island City, New York. Her two-part multimedia project will investigate the threats to public health and the environment in New Jersey from leaking underground storage tanks.
Jamal Jordan
Jamal (he/him) is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. His multimedia fellowship project will center storytelling about LGBTQ communities, particularly exploring the Radical Queer Faeries and their relationship to nature.
mónica teresa ortiz
mónica (they/them) is a freelance journalist based in Lubbock, Texas. Their audio & video fellowship project will focus on a species of oak tree recently found inside Big Bend National Park, exploring how it symbolizes narratives of survival along the US-Mexico border.
Taylar Stagner
Taylar (she/her) is an intern at High Country News Magazine, based in Riverton, Wyoming. Her fellowship project will explore Yellowstone National Park’s management of bison herds and its impact on tribal hunting.
Published story: Buffalo bounty bolsters young Wind River food pantry system
Anjan Sundaram
Anjan (he/him) is a freelance reporter. His fellowship project will focus on indigenous frontline environmental defenders.
Published story: Indigenous activists are risking their lives for butterflies
Erin X. Wong
Erin (she/they) is a freelance reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Her project will explore the personal stories and global connections of waste-pickers, and illustrate how informal workers around the world will be affected by international policies that seek to end plastic.
Published story: How waste pickers are fighting for recognition in the UN global plastics treaty
2022-2023 Fellows
Farha Akhtar
Farha Akhtar is a former CBC Radio Producer with the award-winning show The Current in Toronto, Canada.
Over the years she has worked as a freelance contributor for a variety of other CBC programs and has worked in Calgary, Singapore, Toronto and New York.
Currently, Farha is a Podcast Producer for What About Water with Jay Famiglietti. The podcast connects water science with the stories that bring about solutions, adaptations and actions for the world’s water realities. Her Uproot Fellowship will focus on the ways large-scale dams impact Indigenous Communities in Canada and the Americas.
Published podcast: Submerged: Indigenous Communities and Mega-Hydro Projects
Mark Armao
Mark is a Diné (Navajo) journalist who hails from the high desert in northern Arizona.
Now based in California, his recent work includes covering environmental issues facing Indigenous communities for Grist. In his free time, he practices sustainable fishing in that he never catches anything.
As an environmental justice fellow for Uproot, Mark will explore the impacts of oil and gas extraction near Native communities (but that’s all he’s willing to give away for now).
Published article: The long tail of toxic emissions on the Navajo Nation
Eleanore Catolico
Eleanore Catolico (she/her/hers) is the environment and energy fellow for Planet Detroit and the Energy News Network.
Eleanore covers how environmental policies impact communities of color as well as local environmental justice movements. She previously covered Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit and served as the civic reporter for WDET 101.9 FM, Detroit’s NPR station. Her project will focus on the asthma crisis in Detroit.
She has also won reporting grants from The Pulitzer Center and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to cover education issues. Follow her on Twitter: @e_catolico.
Published article: As agencies seek more environmental justice data, longtime residents are skeptical
Cameron Oglesby
Cameron Oglesby is an environmental justice advocate, ecologist, artist, and multi-media storyteller who is passionate about the integration of community-driven, place-based perspectives in conservation, environmental policy solutions, and corporate decision-making.
She is a 2022 Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis, a 2021 McKinsey Achievement Award recipient, a Memorial Foundation Social Justice Fellow, and a Doris Duke Conservation Scholar alumna who has written for Grist, Southerly, Scalawag, Environmental Health News, The Wilderness Society, and the 9th Street Journal/INDY Week. Cameron is currently a graduate student at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, and serves as Associate Editor at Earth in Color and Project Coordinator/Creative Lead for The Environmental Justice Oral History Project.
Cameron will be working with the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) and Sampson County residents to report on the under-covered impacts of the Sampson County landfill – one of the largest solid waste dumps in North Carolina – coming up on its 50th anniversary.
Published article: Waste, Race, and Place
Shantal Riley
Shantal Riley is a freelance health and science writer.
Her reporting has been featured by Washington Post Magazine, Frontline PBS, NOVA PBS, Vice, Gothamist / WNYC and Chemical and Engineering News.
During her fellowship, she’ll report a story about mining waste that threatens fish in Lake Superior. The fish are a staple food in the diets of local Ojibwe tribes.
Published article: The Toxic Sands Threatening Fish in Lake Superior
Nahima Shaffer
Nahima Shaffer is a video journalist located in California.
As a second-year master’s student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, her recent work has focused on the intersections of public health and human interest.
Through the fellowship, Nahima will be completing a short experimental film on the environmental impacts of noise pollution in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico.