Announcing the 2025 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellows

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The Pulitzer Center is excited to announce its 2025 cohort of 49 Reporting Fellows. Their projects address some of the most critical and underreported stories in today’s world, including migration, global health, and climate solutions.

"This year's cohort of Reporting Fellows is proof positive that young journalists are actively engaged in telling stories that matter," said Karima Haynes, Reporting Fellow program director. "It is a great privilege to support their reporting projects."

Every year, the Pulitzer Center awards fellowships to students attending our Campus Consortium partners—these include liberal arts colleges, community colleges, state universities, historically Black colleges and universities, and graduate schools of journalism and public health in the U.S. and Qatar.

Each Fellow is paired with an adviser, a Pulitzer Center grantee with special expertise in the Fellow's topic or reporting destination. Pulitzer Center editors also provide mentoring in reporting, writing, and multimedia. Explore the projects of our 2025 Reporting Fellows below:

Global Health

One in seven people in the United Kingdom identify as neurodivergent, yet many struggle with inadequate support from early childhood through adulthood. Boston University School of Public Health Fellow Erin Johnston will explore what people, places, and systems are creating spaces for the neurodiverse community in the UK by centering neurodivergent researchers. Johnston is a candidate for a master's in public health at Boston University School of Public Health, with a concentration in health communication and promotion. She is passionate about mental health, neurodiversity, and the intersection of the two.

Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Fellows Chelsea Casabona and Surabhi Sundaram will continue their work on Mettle, a documentary film that follows Liana Mutia, a blind Filipino-American judoka, in her quest to make history at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Casabona is currently a cinematographer and editor with the production A World of Difference: Embracing Neurodiversity, a series produced by Beacon College and available on PBS. Sundaram's reporting experience spans pivotal events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Delhi riots, and over 15 state elections in India.

In an era where loneliness is a public health crisis and the U.S. population is older than ever, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Fellows Claudia Rosel and Nicola Sitch's documentary follows a group of older adults in New York City as they confront aging, grief, and isolation through the transformative power of dance. Rosel is a Spanish photographer and filmmaker with experience working in newsrooms, nonprofits, and international organizations across East Africa, Europe, and North America. Sitch is an audio producer with a graduate diploma in radio and podcasting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health Fellow So Hyun Park will travel to South Korea, where she will report on the experiences of North Korean migrant women. Approximately 70% of North Korean defectors are women, but their stories remain largely untold and shaped by international tensions. Park is a part-time external affairs manager at Rights For Female North Koreans (RFNK). 

Natanya Friedheim is this year's Missouri School of Journalism Fellow. Her project takes her to Mexico, where she will report on U.S. combat veterans seeking psychedelics abroad for mental health treatment. Friedheim is a reporter with the Statehouse Reporting Network, where she leads a coalition of journalism schools covering trends in state legislation nationwide.

South Dakota State University Fellow Jenny Albers will report within the U.S. on the mental well-being of those who are pregnant again after miscarriage or pregnancy loss. This is not Albers' first time covering this topic. She published her short story "Courageously Expecting: 30 Days of Encouragement for Pregnancy After Loss" in 2022.

Despite being a staple for millions of people around the world, white rice has been linked to rising diabetes rates. Southern Illinois University Carbondale Reporting Fellow team Lylee Gibbs and Enan Chediak will travel to a village in Peru, where an average family consumes nearly 22 pounds of rice a week. They will document researchers attempting to find healthy alternatives for those who rely on rice. Gibbs previously contributed to the Pulitzer Center-supported project The Rural Dilemma: Inside America’s Fastest-Shrinking County. Chediak is a photojournalist who worked as a staff photographer while receiving his associate's degree from John A. Logan College in Carterville, Illinois.

Tanesha Golding, the 2025 Spelman College Fellow, will travel to Ghana, where she will explore how poverty and societal norms shape young women’s reproductive choices. In addition to her Pulitzer Center Fellowship, Golding was recently selected as a 2025 Liman Undergraduate Fellow through the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School.

George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health Fellow Shawn Bayrd will report on community mental health efforts in Uganda. Bayrd is a graduate research assistant at GW’s Center for Global Mental Health Equity.

Catherine Carroll, this year's University of Wisconsin-Madison Fellow, will travel to Austria, where it's anticipated that 200,000 nursing positions will need to be filled by 2050. Facing this urgent reality, Austria has increasingly turned to international recruitment as a lifeline. Carroll's project will explore the ripple effects of this workforce migration on the Philippines. Carroll is a journalism student who has received other fellowships from the UW–Madison Center for Journalism Ethics and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship program.

Westchester Community College's Tsisnami Sakvarlishvili will report on the mental health challenges facing immigrant caregivers in the U.S., with a focus on those from the country of Georgia. Sakvarlishvili is the author of two books in the Georgian language, including A Diary of the Red-Haired Girl and Red-Haired Girl’s Recipes.

Climate and Environment
 

Elon University’s Lilly Molina will cover illegal hammerhead shark fishing in Costa Rica. Two years ago, Costa Rica banned the hunting of hammerhead sharks due to their ecological importance. Yet, loopholes in the law allow fishing companies to continue capturing them. Molina works at the Elon News Network, where she has gained experience as a lifestyle and news reporter, audience engagement manager, and news editor.

Flagler College Fellow Olivia Lockett will cover the Black Mambas, an all-female, anti-poaching unit in South Africa. Instead of using weapons, the team is challenging norms by utilizing surveillance, community engagement, and education to prove that conservation can be a sustainable alternative to crimes against wildlife. This fall, Lockett will begin working with the North American Language and Culture Assistant Program in Granada, Spain.

Evelyn Allen, from Forsyth Technical Community College, will cover the Indigenous Kalinago community on the Caribbean island of Dominica, which has been struggling to rebuild after Hurricane Maria. Its efforts to address abject poverty and climate change have been made more difficult after a near-total freeze on USAID aid to foreign countries. Allen is an organizer with the renters' rights group Housing Justice Now.

Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism Fellow Justin Price will travel to rural Uganda, where a different kind of climate leadership is emerging—one that doesn’t rely on vast government funding or corporate backing, but on community-driven innovation. Price is a journalism student at Northwestern, where he has held internships, volunteer positions, and organizational leadership roles.

When San Diego State University Fellow Alina Ajaz's mother called a cousin in Lahore, Pakistan, and joked, “Hold your arm out. Can you see past your wrist?” the answer was no. Lahore ranks among the most polluted cities in the world. Yet, Pakistan lacks real-time air quality data, strong environmental policies, and consistent enforcement. Through their project, Ajaz hopes to find tangible solutions to the crisis. Ajaz has worked with Voice of San Diego, KPBS, and KCR College Radio, among other outlets.

Environmentalists warn that a proposed 5,000-acre limestone mine could devastate Andros, the largest island in the Bahamas. Southern Illinois University Carbondale Fellow Jackson Brandhorst will cover how future development could impact the island nation's environment. Brandhorst is the former editor-in-chief of The Southern Illinoisan. Under his leadership, the newsroom earned multiple awards, including honors from the Illinois Press Association and the Associated Press.

Kelly Liu is a documentary journalist pursuing her master's at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Her Pulitzer Center project will document the Guna Indigenous community facing displacement due to rising sea levels in Panama. The Guna people, living on the low-lying islands of the San Blas Archipelago, are among the world’s first climate refugees. With the Panamanian government planning their relocation to the mainland, Liu's film will explore how this forced migration impacts their cultural identity, traditions, and way of life.

Gertie Zwick-Schachter, the 2025 University of Chicago Fellow, has spent two years covering Chicago as a sanctuary city. In that time, she’s learned that U.S. sanctuary city policies are often unreliable, burdensome, and under threat. With her Pulitzer Center Fellowship, Zwick-Schachter will travel to Sheffield, England, to explore how the city has implemented a new model to welcome migrants.

Evan Harris, our Wake Forest University Fellow, will document the issue of overtourism in Bali. Last year, 6.33 million people visited the region, outnumbering the island’s population of 4.4 million. Harris is a photojournalist who has previously worked as the photography editor and multimedia director at Wake Forest's Old Gold & Black newspaper.

Yash Roy and Giri Viswanathan, our Reporting Fellow team representing the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, plan to document the condition of New England oyster farms as a microcosm of a shifting aquaculture sector at large. Roy and Viswanathan will report from several states along the New England coastline. Roy is a reporter for Bloomberg News, covering financial regulation in Washington, D.C. Viswanathan has most recently served as a public health reporter and as a science and technology editor for the Yale Daily News.

Peace and Conflict
 

In the sugarcane plantation communities of San Pedro de Macorís, a quiet crisis is escalating. Informal sanctuaries for both Haitian migrants and stateless Dominicans of Haitian descent, known as the bateyes, are under siege amid rising xenophobia and withdrawn support for immigrant communities in the Dominican Republic. Shandra Back, this year's Boston University College of Communication Fellow, will document the human rights emergency. Back is a multimedia storyteller with a travel-inspired podcast, Sunshine on a Dime.

Press freedom in Georgia is increasingly under threat, as journalists face direct government crackdowns and indirect pressures from Russian influence. Davidson College Reporting Fellow Maggie McCabe will travel to Georgia to study the resilient media environment firsthand. McCabe will spend her summer interning at CNN with Inside Politics with Dana Bash in D.C.

Nicole Abudayeh is our Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs Fellow. She will explore the role of faith-based social activism in protecting vulnerable migrant populations from human trafficking in Ceuta, Spain. This comes after a 2023 report from the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking called for Spain to increase its protection of migrants. Abudayeh, a student at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, previously interned at the Jordan Embassy in Washington, D.C.

This year's Howard University Fellow, Lauren Nutall, will report on the educational-to-carceral pipeline system through an examination of disciplinary alternative education programs (DAEP) in Texas. Nutall was recently named an Ida B. Wells Society Investigative Reporting Intern and will spend her summer interning with the Dallas Morning News.

Julia Wysokinska, this year's Hunter College Fellow, will cover recent efforts by the Argentine president to minimize historic institutions that many believe stand in remembrance of the country's darkest times. Wysokinska, who studies in Buenos Aires, is a reporter for her school newspaper.

University of Pennsylvania—Penn in Latin America and the Caribbean Reporting Fellow Graham Owens will explore how young people in Santiago, Chile, navigate their identities, resist injustice, and merge activist movements of the past and present. Owens' reporting aims to showcase the resilience and ingenuity of a generation that uses culture and public spaces to challenge inequality and imagine a more inclusive future. Owens is a Bostonian passionate about international relations, law, research, and rock climbing.

Human Rights 
 

Europe’s only recognized Indigenous group, the Sámi people, are the original inhabitants of Sápmi, a region that spans northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Glendale Community College Fellow Carissa Coane will visit Sweden to investigate the unique set of challenges facing Sámi women there, including issues of gender violence and discrimination. Coane is a poet whose work has been recognized by the Bergen International Literary Festival, the European Cultural Foundation, and others.

Sabrina Li Qiu is this year's Guttman Community College Fellow. She will apply her educational background in social science research and involvement in cultural organizations to investigate how violent hate crimes against Asian and Pacific Islanders on the West Coast have been handled by government officials and law enforcement, and the impact it has on the long-standing local API communities.

This year's Hampton University Fellow, Morgan Norris, will report on skin-whitening methods in South Korea. The International Journal of Women’s Dermatology reports that around 40% of South Koreans have attempted to whiten their skin with synthetic agents. Norris is an aspiring broadcast reporter and an Emma Bowen Foundation fellow.

From Huston-Tillotson University, Dominic Polidor will explore Portugal's complex relationship with racial justice. The first European nation to engage in the transatlantic slave trade, Portugal has long struggled with the legacy of its colonial past. Through an examination of the Afro-Portuguese community, Polidor will document how systemic racism, rooted in Portugal’s colonial history, continues to shape Black identity, social mobility, and cultural expression. Polidor is an African American Male Teacher Initiative Scholar at HTU.

Northwestern University in Qatar Fellow Manahil Naveed will highlight an underreported aspect of Pakistan’s Sheedi community: its resilience in the face of social exclusion and discrimination, as community members celebrate their African heritage and empower themselves through an annual festival, the Sheedi Mela. Naveed speaks five languages and has worked with Al Jazeera, LAPP Magazine, HELLO! Pakistan, and other outlets.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago Fellow Yeefah Thurman will return to Vienna for her Pulitzer Center project. There, she will cover how Black queer people navigate a shifting political landscape. Thurman is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and facilitator dedicated to expanding her practice in visual and critical studies while advocating for social justice.

Swarthmore College's Ryunah Kang will cover women labor orangizers at a time of growing antifeminsm in South Korea. Kang has experience writing for The Phoenix, an independent newspaper of Swarthmore College.

Naomi Campbell will report on South African spaza shops as this year's Syracuse University Fellow. A recent crackdown on spaza shops, which originated in apartheid-era South Africa, has threatened the safety and security of many who rely on the nontraditional income. Campbell will be interning for iKapa Impact in South Africa this summer.

With only 22 native speakers, the Paakantyi aboriginal community in Australia is finding ways to preserve its language before it goes extinct. Analyse Jester, the University of Oklahoma Fellow, will use her project to explore innovations to revive endangered languages. Jester was one of three students chosen to spend their semester in Washington, D.C., covering political news for Oklahoma last year.

Selma Farsakh Ulm is a Reporting Fellow for the University of Pennsylvania's South Asia Center, who will be sub-matriculating into the school's master’s in nonprofit leadership program this fall. Through her Pulitzer Center reporting on women and labor in Bangladesh, Ulm aims to uncover the hidden costs of global production systems. This goes hand-in-hand with her academic research on international and domestic regulations, implications, and industrial changes.

University of Richmond's Grace Randolph will travel to Perugia, Italy, where the world converges on a single street. Corso Garibaldi is an urban gateway connecting voyagers with a mix of colorful, flourishing diaspora communities in the heart of Perugia’s historic city center. With Pulitzer Center support, Randolph will tell the story of this street—and the migrants who created it—at a time when anti-migrant rhetoric has risen around the world. Randolph is a features writer for The Collegian student newspaper.

The seven Mental Well-Being Reporting Fellows also join this cohort. Asia Alexander, Nicole J. Caruth, Celeste Hamilton Dennis, Matthew Hofmann, Florence Middleton, Khaleel Rahman, and Jennifer Wybieracki were selected earlier this year to report on issues related to mental health in the U.S.

Congratulations to all of the 2025 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellows!