Led by journalist Gustavo Faleiros, a pioneer of rainforest accountability reporting and founder of the data journalism outlet InfoAmazonia, the RIN team has extensive experience in environmental communications, data journalism, and more.

GUSTAVO FALEIROS

Director of Environmental Investigations

Gustavo Faleiros is the Director of Environmental Investigations for the Pulitzer Center, where he coordinates the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN). Based in São Paulo, Brazil, he is an environmental journalist and media trainer specializing in data-driven journalism. In 2012, he launched InfoAmazonia, a digital platform that uses satellite imagery and other publicly available data to report on the nine Amazon rainforest countries.

Before that, he was the editor of the Brazilian environmental news site O Eco. Faleiros began his career as a reporter for Valor Econômico, Brazil's leading financial newspaper, covering infrastructure and sanitation. He was also twice selected as a Knight International Journalism Fellow at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) due to his work to promote data literacy and geojournalism. Between 2014 and 2017, he worked with the Earth Journalism Network (EJN), where he led the Council of the Partners, the climate mentorship program, and activities in Africa and Latin America.

Faleiros earned a master's degree in Environment, Politics and Globalization from King's College London and a bachelor's degree in journalism from the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). He has also contributed to several publications such as Nature, Scientific American, The Guardian-UK, Revista Piauí and Folha de São Paulo.

KUEK SER KUANG KENG

Data Editor, Environmental Investigations

Kuek Ser Kuang Keng is a digital journalist, data journalism trainer, and media consultant based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is the founder of Data-N, a training program that helps newsrooms integrate data journalism into daily reporting.

Partnering with regional journalism organizations including Google News Initiatives, WAN-IFRA and Internews, he has been conducting regular digital journalism workshops since 2018, reaching over 1,000 journalists in Asia. He also provides consulting and mentoring to media organizations in data, visual and interactive journalism.

He has more than 15 years of experience in digital journalism. He started as a reporter at Malaysiakini, the leading independent online media in Malaysia, and worked on high-profile corruption cases and electoral frauds during the eight-year stint. He has also worked in several U.S. newsrooms, including NBC, Foreign Policy, and PRI.org, mostly on data-driven reporting. He holds a master's in journalism from New York University. He is a Fulbright scholarship recipient, a Google Journalism Fellow, and a Tow-Knight Fellow.

MADELEINE NGUENGA

Africa Editor and 2021-22 Rainforest Investigations Network Fellow

Madeleine Ngeunga is an investigative journalist from Cameroon. Her work focuses on forest management and policy, agribusiness and land grabbing, Indigenous rights, land-use conflict, climate change, and environmental justice issues in the Congo Basin region.

She works as an editor with InfoCongo and was a Global Forest Watch fellow in 2019, using data-driven stories to highlight the political, social, and environmental factors causing forest loss across Cameroon.

Ngeunga twice won awards for in-depth investigative reporting on forest governance and mining governance.

Her reports have appeared in such outlets as Thomson Reuters, Mongabay, Forest News-CIFOR, and Landscape News.

JELTER MEERS

Research Editor, Environmental Investigations

Jelter Meers is the Research Editor of the Pulitzer Center's Environment Investigations Unit, which includes the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN) and Oceans initiative. He started as an investigative reporter at the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting in Illinois, where he wrote accountability stories on housing, migrant labor, and big agriculture.

After a year of reporting on human trafficking and the migrant crisis in Europe, he began to specialize in organized crime and money laundering. He joined the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in 2018 as a daily news reporter and then as a researcher. In 2020, he became the global network’s coordinating editor.

As a reporter, researcher and editor, he worked on projects such as Dubai’s Golden Sands, the Troika Laundromat, the FinCEN Files, and Blowing Unsmoke, using his expertise to uncover hidden assets, international money trails, offshore company ownership, and transnational organized crime groups.

Before becoming a research editor, he was the editorial coordinator of the Rainforest Investigations Network and helped RIN Fellows deepen their investigations by tracking supply chains and finding the ultimate beneficial owners of companies linked to deforestation.

FERNANDA BUFFA

Program Coordinator, Environmental Investigations

Fernanda Buffa (Fernanda Seavon) is a Brazilian journalist based in Prague, Czech Republic. She has a Master's degree in Journalism, Media, and Globalization and has collaborated with Al Jazeera, WIRED, The Intercept Brasil, Coda Story, and VICE. Before joining the Pulitzer Center as an Assistant at the Rainforest Journalism Fund, Fernanda also worked in communication at a UN Counter-Terrorism unit. Fernanda has a passion for journalism, poetry, photography, improv, and all things related to communication.

DOMÉNICA MONTAÑO

Program Coordinator, Environmental Investigations

Doménica is a journalist based in Quito, Ecuador. She has experience covering stories about human rights, environmental issues, Indigenous peoples, and gender. Doménica holds a Bachelor of Arts from Bennington College and was a member of the second cohort of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network in 2022. Doménica is passionate about nature and human rights.

FEDERICO ACOSTA RAINIS

Data Specialist, Environmental Investigations

Federico Acosta Rainis is a Data Specialist at the Pulitzer Center's Environment Investigations Unit. After a decade as an IT consultant, he started working as a journalist in several independent media in Argentina.

In 2017 he joined La Nación, Argentina's leading newspaper, where he reported on education, health, human rights, inequality, and poverty and did extensive on-the-ground coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Buenos Aires. He participated in investigations that won national and international awards for digital innovation and investigative journalism from ADEPA/Google and Grupo de Diarios América (GDA).

He holds a master's degree in data journalism from Birmingham City University. In 2021 he was awarded the Chevening Scholarship and in 2022 he joined The Guardian's Visuals Team as a Google News Initiative Fellow.