2026 Fellows Profiles
 | Teresa Cotsirilos, Berkely, CA Teresa Cotsirilos is a staff writer and producer at FERN, where she covers labor rights and climate equity in both audio and print. Her work has won statewide and national recognition, including a James Beard Award and a National Magazine Award nomination. She was also the host and one of the producers of Buzzkill, a six-part series on the pollinator crisis. Her work has been published by the New York Times, Reveal, NPR, Mother Jones, Snap Judgment, KQED and a range of other outlets. Prior to working at FERN, Teresa was on staff at several NPR member stations, including KALW and KYUK. |
| Sam Delgado, Washington, DC Sam Delgado is a reporter for The 51st, a nonprofit newsroom in Washington, DC. As a local journalist, her work covers a wide range of issues that affect DC communities — from energy bills to invasive vines. Previously, Sam was a fellow on Vox’s Future Perfect desk, where she wrote about climate, public health, and agriculture. Her start in journalism began at More Perfect Union as their production manager, where she collaborated closely with producers to make their documentary-style stories come to life. Her work has also been featured in Civil Eats and WTOP. |
 | Neenma Ebeledike, Sacramento, CA Neenma Ebeledike is a multimedia journalist dedicated to amplifying the voices of marginalized communities. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. Currently a California Local News Fellow, she works as a multimedia journalist at The Sacramento Observer. Neenma focuses on storytelling that highlights social justice issues, environmental challenges, and cultural resilience. Her bylines appear in the Los Angeles Times, The Sacramento Observer, Napa Valley Register, Richmond Confidential, Mission Local, CapRadio, and the East Bay Times, among others. Her work has earned recognition through California Local News Fellowship, the Ida B. Wells Investigative Reporting Fellowship, the Pete Wilson Scholarship, a Pulitzer Center grant, the Marlon Riggs Fellowship, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center for Data Science and Environment fellowship, and the Local Business journalism fellowship, among other accolades. Her thesis film, the Pulitzer Center-supported Allensworth Rising: A Fight for Water, examines environmental injustices in Allensworth, California. |
 | Samuel Gilbert, Albuquerque, NM Samuel Gilbert is a freelance journalist whose work focuses on covering social, environmental, and food justice issues in the American West. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Vice, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book about farming and climate change in the North American Southwest for the University of Chicago Press. |
 | Sarah Kaplan, Washington, DC Sarah Kaplan is a climate reporter at The Washington Post writing about food, water and biodiversity in a warming world. Her job has taken her to a research camp atop the Greenland ice sheet, a shrinking glacier in the Peruvian Andes, Indian Ocean islands threatened by sea level rise, and disaster-struck communities across the United States. She was part of the team of Post journalists recognized as a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for coverage of Hurricane Helene's human and environmental toll. She previously reported on Earth science and the universe at The Post. |
 | Rebeca Pereira, Concord, NH Rebeca Pereira is the news editor and agriculture reporter at the Concord Monitor, a local newspaper in New Hampshire's capital city. She covers four towns north of Concord and primarily writes about rural issues, animal welfare, farming, food insecurity and the food system. She is a graduate of UMass Amherst and received her master's in Media Innovation and Data Communication from Northeastern University. She grew up in Massachusetts and is originally from Brazil. When she isn't baking and binge-watching a mid-2000s drama, she enjoys reading nonfiction, going for walks, lifting, cycling, playing piano and spending time with loved ones. |
 | Carla Ruas, Pittsburgh, PA Carla Ruas is a Brazilian journalist based in the United States who investigates global industries and their environmental and human impacts. Most recently, she has focused on agrochemicals developed by corporations in the Global North and marketed in the Global South, including products banned in their countries of origin due to their toxicity to humans. She has also covered açaí and beef production in the Brazilian Amazon, oil exploration in Peru, lithium extraction in Bolivia, and carbon credits in Colombia, tracing these industries from producing communities to consumer markets. Carla is a regular contributor to Mongabay and the Brazilian publication Repórter Brasil, and has contributed to the podcast Ciência Suja. She was a 2024 International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) grantee. |
 | Ben Seal, Philadelphia, PA Ben Seal is a freelance journalist based in Philadelphia who writes about the food system, the environment, and community resilience. His coverage includes perennial agriculture and tree crop development; the effort to build sustainable, local seafood systems; and industrial exploitation of resources and communities. His writing has appeared in Civil Eats, Offrange, Philadelphia Magazine, Distillations Magazine, Inside Climate News, Nautilus Magazine, and Reasons to Be Cheerful, among other outlets. His work has been supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and he is a 2026 fellow of the Logan Science Journalism Program. When he's not reporting, you can find him climbing, petting cats, and watching plants grow. |
 | Daniel Shailer, Tingwall, Shetland Daniel Shailer is an award-winning freelance reporter specializing in the marine environment. Previously he has worked as a correspondent with the Associated Press' Central and South America bureau in Mexico City, with the Tucson Sentinel in southern Arizona and as a marine reporter with Britain’s most northerly newspaper, the Shetland Times. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Guardian, and Scientific American. He is a regular contributor to the Private Eye. In 2025 he was awarded an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for science reporting from the National Academies and was named reporter of the year in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. He has also won awards from the Overseas Press Club, Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and the English Channel Swimming Association, for a 15-hour crossing in 2020. |
 | Linh Ta, Des Moines, IA Linh Ta is a reporter for Axios Des Moines, where she writes a daily newsletter covering issues Iowans care about, ranging from water quality to the state's data center boom. Her work has been published in USA Today, Midwest Living and Business Insider. In 2022, she was part of the Asian American Journalism Association's Executive Leadership Program, and she won the Young Iowa Journalist Award in 2019. Linh grew up in her parents' Vietnamese restaurant in Des Moines, where she learned the complexities of the state's food systems. |
