SC News Leaders

Raney Aronson-Rath is the editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’ flagship investigative journalism series, and a leading voice on the future of journalism. Aronson-Rath oversees FRONTLINE’s acclaimed reporting on air and online and directs the series’ editorial vision, executive producing over 20 documentaries each year on critical issues facing the country and world. Under her leadership, FRONTLINE has earned two Oscar nominations, and has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including Peabody Awards, Emmy Awards, an Institutional Peabody Award, and the first Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton awarded in a decade.

Bob Cusack serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Hill newspaper/TheHill.com. Bob has been reporting on policy and politics in the nation's capital since 1995. He joined The Hill as Business and Lobbying Editor in 2003, became the newspaper's Managing Editor a year later and was tapped as Editor-in-Chief in 2014. He regularly appears on news networks as a non-partisan political analyst and has won six awards from the National Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists. Bob is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and has appeared in commercials, feature films and television shows, including HBO's "Veep" and "Wonder Woman 1984."

Rebecca Landsberry-Baker is a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Ford Foundation JustFilms grantee and a 2022 NBC Original Voices Fellow. She is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and executive director of the Native American Journalists Association, a nonprofit organization advocating for accurate coverage and representation of Indigenous people in media. She serves as president of the Mvskoke Media Editorial Board and is a 2018 recipient of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development’s “Native American 40 Under 40” award. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of Oklahoma, with a degree in public relations and a minor in Native American studies. She is currently directing her first documentary feature film, which follows the story of free press within the Muscogee Nation.

Jonathan V. Lastis editor of The Bulwark, where he oversees the website, podcast, and newsletter products in addition to hosting a (couple of) show(s) and writing a daily newsletter, which is slowly killing him from the inside. Prior to launching The Bulwark, he spent 20 years at The Weekly Standard, where he performed a number of duties, from reporter, to features writer, to head of digital operations. He is the author of four books, including What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, and currently resides in New Jersey with his wife and four children.

Michael McCarter is the Managing Editor of Standards, Ethics, and Inclusion at USA TODAY and for the USA TODAY network. In his role, McCarter works closely with USA TODAY Network journalists across the country focusing on five building blocks that include ethics, standards, mentoring, employee learning & development and inclusion. McCarter previously served as executive editor of Evansville Courier & Press. Prior to his time in Evansville, McCarter worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Shreveport Times and the Pensacola News Journal.

Nneka Nwosu is an Assistant News Director at ABC7, Chicago's number one news station. In her role, Nneka oversees the station's Investigative team, Special Projects, Race & Culture team, and streaming newscasts. Prior to Chicago, Nneka worked at WCVB-TV as the Executive Producer of, "Chronicle," the longest running, nightly local news magazine show in the country. Prior to that role, she was a producer and started her journalism career as a reporter. Nneka is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She also completed a year-long fellowship at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism in 2018. An Emmy award winning journalist, Nneka was named one of Boston Business Journal's 40 under 40 business leaders in 2019 and one of Boston's Most Influential Black Women in 2021.

Cheryl Phillips is the founder and director of Stanford University’s Big Local News, a data-sharing platform and computational collaborative in support of local journalism. She also is co-founder of the Stanford Open Policing Project, a cross-departmental effort to collect police interaction data and evaluate racial disparities. She is now part of the Community Law Enforcement Accountability Network, a national effort to collect, process and analyze police use of force and misconduct records. She teaches data and investigative journalism and has worked in numerous newsrooms, including The Seattle Times, USA TODAY, The Detroit News and newsrooms in Texas and Montana. During her time in Seattle, she twice covered breaking news that that received a Pulitzer Prize and twice worked on investigations that were Pulitzer finalists. Cheryl served on the board of directors for Investigative Reporters and Editors for a decade and is a former board president. In the early 1990s, she was a founding member of the Texas chapter of the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists. She is a graduate of the Texas Christian University journalism program. She lives in Palo Alto with her wife, Catherine Phillips, and is the mother of 17-year-old twin sons.

David Rohde is the executive editor for news of NewYorker.com. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, he covered the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bosnia and is a former reporter for Reuters, the New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. His most recent book, “In Deep,” investigated and refuted Donald Trump's claims that he was the victim of a "Deep State” plot. Rohde lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.

Terence Samuel is Vice President & Executive Editor at NPR. In this role, he is responsible for leading all of NPR's newsgathering teams. A graduate of the City College of New York, Samuel is the author of the 2010 book The Upper House: A Journey Behind the Closed Doors of the United States Senate. His work as a political columnist was anthologized in Best American Political Writing of 2009. Samuel joined NPR as a deputy managing editor in 2017. He was promoted in 2019 to the Managing Editor for News. In that role, he has been involved in every aspect of the daily work across all newsroom teams and has had a hand in guiding the coverage of the biggest stories of the last few years. He also spent time as the interim Executive Producer of Morning Edition during 2021. From 2011 to 2017, he was a politics editor at The Washington Post, overseeing White House and congressional coverage, and before that he was the congressional Managing Editor at National Journal. Samuel began his career as a writing fellow at The Village Voice in New York and later was a reporter at The Roanoke Times & World News, a national correspondent at both The Philadelphia Inquirer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and chief congressional correspondent at US News & World Report. In the Fall of 2021, he was a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He lives in Washington, DC.

Lauren Williams is cofounder and CEO of Capital B, a nonprofit local-national news organization serving Black audiences that launched in January 2022. Before starting Capital B, Lauren was senior vice president and editor in chief of Vox, where she managed editorial and business operations for the explanatory news network. In addition to Vox.com, Lauren oversaw one of YouTube’s largest news channels and more than a dozen podcasts, including the daily news show Today, Explained, and a TV operation anchored by the Netflix franchise Explained. Lauren previously served as executive editor and managing editor at Vox and has also been an editor at Mother Jones and deputy editor at The Root. Lauren serves on the board of directors for the International Women’s Media Foundation. She lives outside of Washington, DC, with her husband and two young children.

Sisi Wei is editor-in-chief at The Markup. Previously, she was co-executive director of OpenNews, where she founded the DEI Coalition, which is dedicated to sharing knowledge and taking concrete action in service of a more anti-racist, equitable, and just journalism industry. She was previously assistant managing editor at ProPublica, where she oversaw three editorial teams focused on news apps, interactive storytelling, and visual investigations. She also managed large, interdisciplinary investigations, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. In 2021, Sisi won the Gwen Ifill Award for her work supporting and elevating women of color in news media.

Kimi Yoshino is the Editor-in-Chief of The Baltimore Banner, a non-profit news startup that aims to deliver trustworthy and impactful local journalism that helps strengthen the city and state. Yoshino is a former managing editor at the Los Angeles Times, where she worked for 21 years as a reporter, editor and strategic leader. In 2011, she helped guide the paper’s investigation into corruption in the city of Bell, which was awarded the Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service. A California native, Yoshino also previously worked as a reporter at The Fresno Bee and The Stockton Record.

Jose Zamora currently serves as EXILE’s chief communications and impact officer. He is a 2020 JSK Stanford Fellow, who has focused his career on the promotion of collaboration networks, innovation, and freedom of the press. He previously worked as senior vice president of Univision News (2012-2022). Prior to joining Univision, Jose managed Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge, an initiative to spur media innovation across the world. Zamora also helped manage Knight Foundation’s journalism program, where he helped develop over 100 grants to advance media innovation and freedom of the press. He has a law degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquín, a specialization in media law from Oxford’s Media Law Advocates Programme, and a master’s in public affairs from the University of Texas at Austin. Jose served on the board of directors of the Online News Association for over six years, and currently serves on the board of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Foundation, Ripple Effect Images, FIU’s Kopenhaver Center and on the advisory board of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and is Editor at Large at Grist. He previously served as Editor in Chief at the Texas Observer and Indigenous Affairs editor at High Country News. He has reported for Al Jazeera America, PBS NewsHour, National Native News, NPR, and National Geographic. Ahtone’s stories have won multiple honors, including investigative awards from the Gannett Foundation and Public Radio News Directors Incorporated. He additionally led the High Country News team that received a George Polk Award, an IRE Award, a Sigma Award, a Society of News Design Award and a National Magazine Award nomination. A past president of the Native American Journalists Association, Ahtone is a 2017 Nieman Fellow and a director of the Muckrock Foundation.

Paul Cheung leads The Center for Public Integrity as CEO to counter the corrosive effects of inequality by using investigative reporting to hold powerful interests accountable and equipping the public with knowledge to drive change. Previously, Cheung worked at the Knight Foundation. He has 20 years of experience in leading digital transformation — pioneering artificial intelligence, VR/AR and digital training initiatives — at such media outlets as NBC News Digital, the Associated Press, Miami Herald, and Wall Street Journal. Cheung serves on the boards of First Draft News, a nonprofit protecting communities from misinformation, and the nonprofit News Leaders Association. Cheung co-leads the Asian American Journalists Association’s executive leadership program in the U.S. and Asia. He is a graduate of the 2016 Punch Sulzberger Executive Leadership program at Columbia University and is an alumnus of New York University.

Gina Chua is Executive Editor at Reuters, where she oversees newsroom operations, including budgets, safety, security, and logistics. She was previously Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, and spent 16 years as a foreign correspondent and editor at The Wall Street Journal in Manila, Hanoi, Hong Kong and New York, including eight years running the paper's Asia edition. She is a native of Singapore, where she started her career in radio and television. Gina has a bachelor of arts in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a masters of science in journalism from Columbia University. Gina transitioned in late 2020, making her one of the most senior openly transgender journalists in the industry.

Christine Glancey is an editor at The Wall Street Journal on the team responsible for guiding and upholding the newsroom's standards and ethics across platforms and around the globe. Her wide-ranging experience at the Journal spans digital operations and strategy, news and investigative coverage, creating strong editorial teams and managing change with an emphasis on building reader trust. Previous roles include deputy managing editor for news operations and talent, managing editor of the Asian edition and senior news editor at wsj.com. Christine has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from St. John’s University and a master’s in comparative literature from Columbia University.

Tracy Grant is an Associate Editor at The Washington Post. From 2018 to 2022, she served as The Post’s managing editor for staff development and standards. At the time of her promotion, she was the first woman in the history of The Post to achieve the rank of managing editor. Previously, she served as the newsroom’s first Web editor in 1999, as a features editor and as a parenting columnist before becoming a senior Post editor in 2013. Grant is a regular speaker at journalism conferences on issues including the importance of diversity, leadership training and newsroom ethics. Her television appearances have included NBC and PBS. Her move to Associate Editor marks her return to writing. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the mother of grown twin sons.

Kathleen Kingsbury leads the Opinion report for the New York Times, overseeing the editorial board, guest essays, Opinion columnists, letters to the editor, as well as newsletters, audio, video, graphics, design and digital. For the Times, Kingsbury oversaw the paper’s Pulitzer-winning editorials on race and culture in 2019. Before joining the Times in 2017, Kingsbury worked for the Boston Globe, where she edited the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary on race and education and won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished editorial writing for a series on low wages and the mistreatment of restaurant workers. Kingsbury previously worked for Time Magazine. After growing up in Portland, Ore., she studied as an undergraduate at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. She has a graduate degree from the Columbia Journalism School.

Peter Lattman is the managing director of media at Emerson Collective. He oversees Emerson’s investments and grants in media and journalism, which include The Atlantic, where he serves as vice chairman and a member of its board of directors. He also serves on the boards of the Committee to Protect Journalists and Anonymous Content. Prior to joining Emerson, Peter worked as a journalist at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Born in New York City, he grew up in Roslyn, on Long Island. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his wife, Isabel Gillies, and their three children.

Judd Legum is the founder and author of Popular Information, an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism. Popular Information won the 2020 Online Journalism Award for Excellence in Newsletters and its reporting was credited by Bloomberg for bringing a "political reckoning" to corporate America. Previously, Legum founded and served as editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress, a progressive media outlet. In 2008, Legum was the research director for Hillary Clinton's first presidential campaign. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Pomona College.

Mirta Ojito is a Senior Director in the NBC News Standards team and works at Telemundo Network in Miami. She is the recipient of an Emmy for the documentary Harvest of Misery/Cosecha de Miseria, and of a shared Pulitzer for national reporting in 2001 for a series of articles about race in America in The New York Times. She began her career in 1987 and has worked at The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, and The New York Times. Ojito, a former assistant professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, is the author of two works of non-fiction, Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus, and Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town. Her work has been included in multiple anthologies, including Written into History: Pulitzer Prize Reporting of the Twentieth Century, by Anthony Lewis.

Julie Pace is senior vice president and executive editor of The Associated Press, where she directs global news operations and news content in all formats from journalists based in 250 locations in 100 countries. Pace joined AP in 2007. She was previously Washington bureau chief, where she led multiformat coverage of U.S. politics and elections, national security, and domestic policy. She pushed for press freedom and access and oversaw efforts to bolster AP’s fact-checking operation. Pace began her reporting career at South Africa’s first independent TV network and as a freelancer in southern Africa before joining The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune as a general assignment reporter in 2005. A native of Buffalo, New York, Pace holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

Kerry Smith is the senior vice president of editorial for ABC News. She is responsible for the editorial standards for ABC News programs, platforms; and ABC News Studios, and serves as the senior advisor to the news division with oversight on all editorial partnerships. Formerly, Smith was senior Washington editor for ABC News and has worked for “World News Tonight,” “Good Morning America,” and “20/20,” among other programs. A former investigative producer, Smith has produced documentaries, news programing and special events broadcasts for ABC News. Her work has been honored with Peabody, DuPont and Emmy® awards for long-form journalism and breaking news coverage. Smith serves on several boards, including at The International Women’s Media Foundation; ProPublica and TheGroundTruth Project, and is a member of the leadership council on The Committee to Protect Journalists. She was a 2015 Sulzberger Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University.

Meredith Artley is a senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of CNN Digital Worldwide, where she oversees the creation, programming, and publishing of content across all CNN Digital properties. She previously led digital editorial efforts, strategies, and teams for the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times.

Sewell Chan is the editor in chief of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site covering politics and policy in the Lone Star State. He was previously a journalist at the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Kahane Cooperman is an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker who was also Co-Executive Producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart until 2015. Her work has been seen on HBO, PBS, Amazon, Comedy Central and A&E as well as in festivals around the world.

Susan Goldberg is Editor-in-Chief of National Geographic and Editorial Director of National Geographic Partners. She is the tenth editor, and first female editor, of the magazine since it was first published in October 1888. She has also served as a top editor for an array of other publications, including The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The San Jose Mercury News, Bloomberg News, and USA Today.

Sara Kehaulani Goo is the Editor-in-Chief of Axios. She has extensive experience as a news leader, having previously served as the managing editor of NPR’s digital content and the senior news director and reporter at The Washington Post.

Mat Honan is the Editor-in-Chief of MIT Technology Review, a former executive editor at Buzzfeed News and a senior writer at WIRED. During his career, he has focused on technology journalism.

Adrienne LaFrance is the executive editor of The Atlantic. She was previously a senior editor and staff writer at The Atlantic, and the editor of TheAtlantic.com. Adrienne's background is in investigative reporting, and she has written about the intersection of politics, media, technology, and information systems for more than 15 years.

Ron Nixon is the global investigations editor at the Associated Press where he oversees the news agency’s investigative unit. He previously reported from the New York Times Washington bureau and recently received the inaugural 2021 News Leader of the Year award from the News Leaders Association.

Siobhan O’Connor is a media executive and journalist with over 20 years of experience as an editor, writer, and leader. She was most recently VP of Editorial at the subscription-based tech-media company Medium, where she served on the executive team and oversaw all content operations, including premium content, partnerships, and independent writer programs.

Noah Oppenheim is the President of NBC News and oversees the network’s programming, editorial units, the division’s expanding digital properties, and its bureaus around the world. Oppenheim was named president in February 2017 after two years as the executive in charge of TODAY, a role he continues to hold. A veteran of the news industry, he is also an accomplished producer, screenwriter and author.

Emily Ramshaw is the co-founder and CEO of The 19th*, the nation’s first independent nonprofit newsroom at the intersection of gender, politics and policy. She was previously the editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune and is the youngest person to be named to the board of the Pulitzer Prize, where she is serving a nine-year term.

Jesse Rodriguez is the Vice President for Editorial & Booking at MSNBC, focusing on the guest appearances on the channel’s weekday morning show, Morning Joe, daytime hours of news coverage, primetime programming, and network specials. He previously served as Director of Booking and in a wide variety of production roles at the channel.

Eric Schurenberg is the CEO of Mansueto Ventures, the owner of Inc. and Fast Company media properties, host of "The Human Factor" on LinkedIn Live and host of the forthcoming misinformation/disinformation podcast, "In Reality". He was previously the President and Editor-in-Chief of Inc., the founding editor of CBS MoneyWatch.com, the Editor-in-Chief of BNET.com, and the managing editor of Money Magazine.

fall 2022 cohort

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fall 2021 cohort