Our Team

Executive Director | Associate Professor, Missouri School of Journalism | Columbia, Mo.

Sara Shipley Hiles is an award-winning journalist and journalism educator with almost 30 years’ experience in the field. She specializes in environmental and investigative reporting and is a recognized journalism teacher and editor with a dozen years of teaching experience. She has won awards and recognition for teaching, feature writing, digital journalism and investigative reporting. Hiles also directs the Smith/Patterson Science Journalism Fellowship and Lecture Series and serves on the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research, Missouri School of Journalism | Columbia, Mo.

Dr. Perry serves as a project advisor. He served as coordinator of the School’s doctoral teaching program for six years and as chair of journalism studies from 2005-2011 and again during the 2013-14 academic year. He worked for nearly 10 years as a journalist for newspapers in Illinois, Connecticut and Texas. He currently serves as chair of the Publications Committee for the Association on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Editorial Director | Nashville, Tenn.

Chas Sisk is a journalist based in Nashville, Tennessee, with more than a decade’s experience in both print and radio. He’s covered everything from Wall Street mergers to New England town halls, and his passion is local journalism. He was part of the Pulitzer-finalist team that covered the 2010 Nashville flood, has edited several national award winners and led two multimedia collaboratives prior to joining the Ag & Water Desk. He has also completed more than two dozen marathons.

Assistant Editorial Director | Chicago

Lina Tran is a journalist based in Chicago. Previously, she was an editor with the U.N. Environment Programme and a reporter at Milwaukee’s NPR, where she covered everything from air quality to cicadas and apple pie baked in a paper bag. She was also a news and politics fellow at Grist and earlier wrote about the sun for NASA. Her work has appeared in outlets such as NPR, Short Wave, Science Friday and Undark, and she has been recognized by the Public Media Journalists Association and Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association, among others. She is from the Gulf Coast of Alabama and is a graduate of Tulane University.

Research Faculty, Missouri School of Journalism | Columbia, Mo.

Dr. Rose works on the research side of the Ag & Water desk's grant. She is an assistant professor of strategic communication and science communication in the Missouri School of Journalism. Rose’s research focuses on science and risk communication, addressing the intersection between science, media, and the public. Her work investigates both scientists’ public engagement efforts and public attitudes and understanding of science with respect to controversial scientific and environmental issues. Learn more about our research.

Data Journalist | New York

Annika McGinnis is a data and investigative journalist based in New York. She co-founded InfoNile, a Uganda-based geojournalism platform and journalists’ network reporting on water and environment across 10 Nile Basin countries. At InfoNile, she spent eight years leading cross-border investigations and spearheading science journalism platforms. Most recently, she was a Columbia Journalism Investigations fellow reporting on climate and public health. She has also reported for Reuters, USA TODAY and McClatchy Newspapers, and her work has been recognized by Covering Climate Now, the Fetisov Journalism Awards and the Uganda National Journalism Awards, among others. She has a master’s in data journalism from Columbia University.

Reporter | Columbia, Mo.

Héctor Alejandro Arzate is a multimedia journalist who covers agricultural and environmental issues with a focus on food and labor. He is currently working on a master’s degree in data and investigative journalism at the University of Missouri. He previously worked for KCUR in Kansas City, WAMU in Washington, D.C., and KQED in San Francisco. His reporting has been featured on radio programs like the BBC Newshour, PRX's The World, NPR's Here & Now, All Things Considered and Morning Edition. When he’s not writing or reporting, he enjoys cooking, fly-fishing and napping with his daughter. He is from northern California.

Social Media Producer | Columbia, Mo.

Dominique Hodge is a digital, multimedia journalist, with several years experience working on collaborative, digital, social, audio and various other reporting projects. She stepped into this role after receiving her bachelor’s and master’s from the Missouri School of Journalism. Her work has appeared in Columbia Missourian, KBIA 91.3 FM, Vox Magazine and Missouri Business Alert. She strives for innovating the Desk’s digital strategy and communication techniques to create effective outreach and foster greater community connections. She is from West Texas.

Senior Advisor, Independent | New Orleans

Mark Schleifstein is a freelance environment reporter based in the New Orleans area. Previously he was an environmental reporter at The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate. Schleifstein contributed to the award-winning “Polluter’s Paradise” series on the state’s petrochemical industry, published in the paper and online on NOLA.com and ProPublica. His stories on Hurricane Katrina were among the Times-Picayune's stories honored with 2006 Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service and Breaking News Reporting. He's the co-author of the 2006 book Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms," about Katrina.

Expert Journalist, Verite News | New Orleans

Halle Parker reports on public health for Verite News. Before coming to Verite, she covered Louisiana's environment for WWNO, the Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate and down the bayou for the Houma Courier. She also worked for the National Audubon Society. Some of her past reporting has centered on environmental justice issues and the state's coastal land loss crisis. She also co-hosted, reported and helped produce the narrative environmental podcast, Sea Change. Her work has been featured on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Up First and by the Associated Press. Halle's been recognized locally, regionally, nationally and internationally for her reporting across print and audio as well as her photography.

Expert Journalist, Independent| Boston

Julia Sklar is an editor and award-winning science journalist based in Boston. She has been the story editor at Sierra Magazine, multimedia editor at MIT Technology Review, and an independent reporter for The Boston Globe, National Geographic, Undark and others. She is also the author of two themed print issues of National Geographic, one on emerging neuroscience and the other on the science of stress. Julia has been an expert journalist with the Ag & Water Desk since 2023.

Expert Journalist, Science Friday | New York

Kathleen Davis is an audio producer at Science Friday, a public radio show and podcast from WNYC Studios. She leads Science Friday's "The State of Science" vertical, working with local journalists across the country to elevate their science and environmental reporting to a national audience. Her reporting work has been featured on NPR, Marketplace, and WHYY’s The Pulse. In 2024, she was recognized by the nonprofit news organization Current as a Rising Star of Public Media. She's based in New York City.

Expert Journalist, Minnesota Star Tribune | Minneapolis

Kristoffer Tigue is the climate and weather reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune. Tigue previously covered climate change, clean energy and environmental justice for Inside Climate News and holds a master's degree in journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism. 

Expert Journalist, Chicago Tribune | Chicago

Michael Hawthorne is a Pulitzer-finalist investigative reporter who focuses on the environment and public health for the Chicago Tribune. He has written extensively about the Great Lakes and Chicago River, the dangers of toxic chemicals in household products and the lingering hazards of brain-damaging lead in homes and drinking water. Hawthorne grew up on a central Illinois farm and raised hogs to help pay for college. He covered state government and the environment for newspapers in Florida, Illinois and Ohio before joining the Tribune in 2004.

MinnPost | Minneapolis

Claire Carlson joined the Desk in 2026 as a Report for America corps member. She covers drinking water in Minnesota. Before joining MinnPost, she spent four years at the Daily Yonder reporting on the nexus of climate change, food systems, and rural communities. She also worked as a freelance journalist for Civil Eats, Offrange, FoodPrint, Minnesota Reformer, Sierra Nevada Ally, and other regional and national publications. She holds a master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana and a bachelor’s degree in international affairs from the University of Nevada-Reno.

Arkansas Times | Little Rock, Ark.

Elizabeth L. Cline joined the Desk in 2026 as a Report for America corps member. She covered sustainability, labor and global supply chains as an independent journalist for publications including The Atlantic, Vogue Business, Slate, and Forbes. Cline is best known for her 2012 book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, an early investigation into the environmental and labor impacts of the global apparel industry that helped spark broader public conversations around fast fashion and ethical consumption. She holds a master’s degree in Global Studies and International Relations from Northeastern University.

Investigate Midwest | Des Moines, Iowa

Mónica Cordero Sancho joined the Desk in 2022 as a Report for America corps member. Cordero’s work has been published by Univision, Bloomberg Businessweek, La Noticia, Radio Ambulante, NPR, openDemocracy and The New York Times. Born in Costa Rica, she is a graduate of the University of Costa Rica and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Cordero was part of a team that won the 2020 Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award, the most prestigious journalism prize in the Spanish-speaking world, for best investigative reporting.

Verite | New Orleans

Cheree Franco joined the Desk in 2026 as a Report for America corps member. She is an award-winning print and photojournalist. She has profiled both a U.S. senator and the founder of OkCupid, covered South by Southwest and Sundance festivals, reported for three months from the Dakota Access Pipeline protest camps, followed the grassroots caretakers at New Orleans’ Lincoln Beach, and investigated a 20-year-old murder conviction in Arkansas, highlighting procedural errors and details that juries never heard. Her coverage ultimately helped the Innocence Project secure a woman’s release from a life sentence without parole. She has reported from New York, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Pakistan. Most recently, she taught journalism at Tulane University.

Wisconsin Watch | Madison, Wis.

Bennet Goldstein joined the Desk in 2022 as a Report for America corps member. Goldstein has worked for the Omaha World Herald in Nebraska and daily papers in Iowa, including the Dubuque Telegraph Herald. Goldstein’s work has garnered awards including the Associated Press Media Editors award and an Iowa Newspaper Association award. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Milwaukee

Madeline Heim joined the Desk in 2022 as a Report for America corps member. She covers public health and environmental issues for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, telling stories about water quality, climate change, the Mississippi River and more. She began her career as a reporter at the Winona Daily News in Minnesota, where a lifelong love for the river was born. She also produced award-winning coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic for the USA TODAY Network in Wisconsin. She holds degrees in journalism and English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mississippi Free Press | Jackson, Miss.

Illan Ireland joined the Desk in 2024 as a Report for America corps member. Before joining the Mississippi Free Press, he completed a fellowship at The Futuro Media Group in New York City, taking on projects related to public health, climate change and housing insecurity. Working with Futuro’s investigative unit, he helped uncover significant disparities in mortgage outcomes between white and Latino homebuyers in New Jersey. Ireland holds a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree from the Columbia Journalism School. He’s a native Spanish speaker and proud Mexican American.

Nine PBS | St. Louis

Rose LaForest joined the Desk in 2026 as a Report for America corps member. She is a multi-media journalist. Prior to Nine PBS, LaForest produced video explainers for WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, as part of an experimental program testing storytelling strategies for video journalists in local newsrooms. There, she covered a range of topics from reproductive freedom to local concerns over data center development. In 2024, she earned her master’s degree in broadcast and video journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where she produced short documentaries on dementia-related wandering, juvenile incarceration, and even traveled to Argentina to cover the shifting cultural attitudes toward women in male-dominated sports.

Six Rivers Media | Kingsport, Tenn.

Jorgelina Manna-Rea joined the Desk in 2026 as a Report for America corps member. She is an environmental reporter for Six Rivers Media in Northeast Tennessee. Before moving to Tennessee, she was a producer at WAMU and NPR’s live talk show 1A. She graduated from the University of South Florida in Tampa. 

KAXE/KBXE | Grand Rapids, Minn.

Stella Mayerhoff, a scientist-turned-journalist, joined the Desk in 2026 as a Report for America corps member. She covers Minnesota’s Mississippi River headwaters region and aims to tell the environmental science stories that impact local communities. She has written for Mongabay, Eos, the San Jose Mercury News, the Monterey Herald, Georgia State University Research Magazine and Stanford University’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. She was a Taylor/Blakeslee Fellow through the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and earned a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also holds a master’s degree in psychology from Georgia State University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and anthropology from the University of Wisconsin.

The Lens | New Orleans

Delaney Nolan joined the Desk in 2026 as a contributing reporter. She is an environmental reporter for The Lens in New Orleans, where she focuses on environmental justice, displacement, and where those issues intersect. Previously, as a freelance journalist, she reported for publications including The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Nation, and Sierra Magazine, where her cover story on LNG terminals on the Gulf Coast won a Covering Climate Now award. She has received support from the International Women's Media Foundation and has reported from conflict zones including Ukraine and Palestine's West Bank. Her background is in fiction writing, and her debut novel is Happy Bad (Astra House, 2025).

WXPR | Rhinelander, Wis.

Maria Peralta-Arellano joined the Desk in 2026 as a contributing reporter and reports for WXPR. Prior to joining WXPR, Peralta-Arellano reported in Milwaukee as the Eric Von Fellow for WUWM, Milwaukee’s NPR. She covered topics that included environment, immigration, the arts and culture, with a focus on amplifying underrepresented voices. Her career is shaped by her experiences working with local and independent news organizations, freelancing for a bilingual newspaper, El Conquistador, covering community needs. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism. She also minored in political science and earned a certificate in Latin American and Caribbean studies.

Louisiana Illuminator | Baton Rouge, La.

Elise Plunk joined the Desk in 2024 as a Report for America corps member. Plunk earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Florida, where she worked as editor-in-chief of Atrium magazine, a narrative nonfiction outlet on campus. She also worked as an environmental communications intern for the Thompson Earth Systems Institute, where she wrote feature stories and produced social media content on environmental topics relevant to Floridians, and as a climate journalist fellow at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.

KBIA | Columbia, Mo.

Jana Rose Schleis is a contributing reporter at the Desk, a news producer at KBIA and an instructor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Schleis is the reporter and producer behind KBIA’s national award-winning series, The Next Harvest, which explores solutions to agriculture’s environmental and economic challenges through on-the-ground reporting and contextual storytelling. She earned a master’s degree at the Missouri School of Journalism where she studied investigative journalism and government reporting, and her bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, where her very first radio experience came from the community station WWSP 90FM — Your Only Alternative.

Tennessee Lookout | Nashville, Tenn.

Cassandra Stephenson joined the Desk in 2024 as a Report for America corps member. Stephenson previously covered Metro Nashville government at The Tennessean for nearly three years, chronicling the consequences of policy decisions for residents in one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. Her post-collegiate reporting career began in West Tennessee in 2018 when she moved from her hometown in Ventura County, California after graduating from Pepperdine University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. There, she reported on breaking news and justice for a 13-county region. Stephenson joined The Tennessean as a business reporter in 2020.

WWNO | New Orleans

Eva Tesfaye is a contributing reporter for the Desk and covers the environment for WWNO's Coastal Desk. Before joining WWNO, she reported for the Ag & Water Desk at Harvest Public Media, based at KCUR 89.3 in Kansas City, Missouri. She was also a producer for NPR's daily science podcast Short Wave. A graduate of Columbia University, she started her journalism career as an NPR Kroc Fellow. She grew up moving around Africa and has lived in Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, South Africa and Kenya.

Regional Director | The Associated Press

Kia Breaux is an award-winning journalist and media executive with 30 years’ experience in the news industry. As regional director at The Associated Press, Breaux oversees content licensing, business development and strategic partnerships with AP members and subscribers across all formats. A graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, Breaux began her AP career in 1997 as a reporter in the Kansas City, MO, bureau. She also served as AP’s southwest Virginia correspondent and news editor for Nebraska operations before being promoted to bureau chief roles in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. Prior to joining AP, Breaux worked for Knight-Ridder Financial News and Bridge News. She holds a master’s degree in management from Baker University in Baldwin City, KS. She is a member of the Missouri Newspaper Hall of Fame.

Professor Emerita | University of Kansas

Pam Fine is a veteran journalist, educator and consultant. Most recently, she was the Midwest regional manager for Report for America. She is a professor emerita and former Knight Chair in News, Leadership and Community at the University of Kansas. Earlier, she held news management positions at the Indianapolis Star, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Fine is a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, a four-time Pulitzer Prize judge and a former Poynter Institute Ethics Fellow.

Associate Professor of Practice, University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Erin Jordan was previously an Ag & Water Desk Expert Journalist and Senior Advisor. As an award-winning investigative reporter for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, she covered topics that include water quality, agriculture, state government spending and gender equity in sports. She was a 2018-19 O’Brien Fellow In Public Service Journalism at Marquette University with a project focused on water quality in the Mississippi River watershed. Before joining The Gazette, Jordan was the Iowa City Bureau reporter for the Des Moines Register from 2003 to 2009.

Associate Professor | Missouri School of Journalism

Dr. Cristina Mislán teaches courses in cross-cultural journalism, gender and media, qualitative research methods, and critical theory. Her research focuses on areas of media history, critical/cultural studies, and transnational/globalization studies. Mislán has published in several journals and her research has won a number of awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the American Journalism Historians Association. Mislán holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Louisiana State University and received her doctoral degree at Pennsylvania State University.

Executive Director | Investigate Midwest

Erin Orr is a veteran newsroom editor of 30-plus years with deep experience in development and management. She previously was the editor and senior personnel administrator for Lee Enterprises Design Center, managing editor for The Times of Northwest Indiana and The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Illinois, and has held many leadership roles in newsrooms throughout her career. Orr has led and edited a number of award-winning news series including an investigation into the decades-long lead contamination in the soil and water of subsidized housing in East Chicago, Indiana, and the causes behind the Hoosier state’s high infant-mortality rates. She has also specialized in developing and overseeing training programs and processes that benefit reporters, organizations, and production of high-quality, trusted content.

Public Policy Fellow | The Wilson Center & Chair, Future Council | Society of Environmental Journalists

Meaghan Parker was the executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists from 2018-2023. Previously, she was the senior writer/editor and partnerships director for the Environmental Change and Security Program and the Global Sustainability and Resilience Program of the Wilson Center, where she worked for 15 years. She was a founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning New Security Beat, a daily blog covering environment, health and security. She currently serves on the board of The Uproot Project and on the advisory council of Planet Forward, a project of George Washington University.