People

Maya Sugarman

The Washington Post

Maya is a video editor at The Washington Post for The Lily, a publication that elevates stories critical to the lives of women. Previously, she worked at NPR affiliate KPCC in Los Angeles. Maya went to UCLA and was a Voices student in Detroit in 2011.

Jessie Tseng

Flatiron Health

Jessie is a lead product designer at Flatiron Health, working on improving cancer treatments by accelerating oncology research. Previously, she’s worked at The Washington Post. She is a proud Cal alumna and was a Voices student in Detroit in 2011.

AMBER LY

San Francisco State University

ANNIE MA

Dartmouth College

CASSANDRA HSIAO

Yale University

CECILIA LEI

University of California, Berkeley

CLAIRE TRAN

Boston University

DAVE SEBASTIAN

Boston University

ELAINE CHEN

University of Chicago

EMMA STIEFEL

Minerva Schools at KGI

GWENDOLYN WU

University of California, Santa Barbara

IRENA FISCHER-HWANG

Stanford University

JONATHAN NG

Suffolk University

LINA TAKAHASHI

University of Colorado Boulder

MICHELLE HANKS

Western Kentucky University

SALGU WISSMATH

Ohio University

SUHAUNA HUSSAIN

University of California, Berkeley

TSERING BISTA

New York University

VIOLET WANG

University of Wisconsin

Alyssa Jeong Perry

KPCC

Alyssa Jeong Perry is an audio reporter and producer. Currently, she is a reporter at KPCC on the health team. Previously she was a reporter and producer at KQED. She’s won two AAJA awards in 2016 and 2017 on US immigration. Alyssa is also a graduate of UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Rong-Gong Lin II

Los Angeles Times

Rong-Gong Lin II is a metro reporter for the Los Angeles Times and has written about municipal corruption, earthquake safety, public health, transportation and local government. He was a member of the reporting team covering the San Bernardino shootings that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news. A San Francisco area native, he graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004 and joined the paper as a member of the Minority Editorial Training Program.

Brian Nguyen

The Tylt

Brian Nguyen is the Manager of Media Production and Emerging Platforms at The Tylt, an early stage media venture from Advance Digital. Previously, he was a photo editing/visuals resident at The Chicago Tribune, and a forever intern at The Sacramento Bee.

Frank Shyong

The Tylt

Frank Shyong is a reporter at the Los Angeles Times who writes about Asian neighborhoods, Chinese immigration and other topics. He was raised in Tennessee and studied economics at UCLA. His work has appeared in the Orange County Register, the Taipei Times and Entertainment Weekly.

Kris Vera-Phillips

KPBS San Diego

Kris Vera-Phillips is an Emmy Award-winning journalist at KPBS San Diego where she manages Evening Edition and Roundtable on San Diego’s PBS station. Beyond the newsroom, Kris serves as a board member for the San Diego chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association and she helped raise awareness about public media and the need for diversity in newsrooms as a Next Generation Leadership fellow. Before public media, Kris produced news shows for CBS and NBC in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been recognized by the Associated Press Television-Radio Association.

Hannah Bae

EatDrinkDraw.com

Hannah Bae is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist, illustrator and digital media strategist who runs a food illustration site called EatDrinkDraw.com with her husband, Adam Oelsner. She is the president of AAJA’s New York chapter, a co-lead of AAJA’s national mentoring program, and a graduate of AAJA’s Executive Leadership Program.

Jill Cowan

Dallas Morning News

Jill Cowan covers the economy and demographics for the Dallas Morning News. Before that, she wrote about issues ranging from historical preservation to environmental law in a fast-growing Nashville suburb for TheTennessean. She’s also covered courts for the Los Angeles Times, written about Orange County for the Times and its community newspapers, and reported on all manner of Central Valley weirdness for The Bakersfield Californian.

Phil Marcelo

Associated Press

Phil Marcelo is an enterprise reporter for the Associated Press based in Boston. He tends to write about casino gambling, law enforcement, counterterrorism, immigration, race and anything weird and interesting in Massachusetts. He previously worked at the Providence Journal in Rhode Island as a political reporter. He was a first-time VOICES mentor last year.

Scott Pham

BuzzFeed News

Scott Pham is a data reporter for the BuzzFeed News investigations team. Previously he was a news applications developer for the Center for Investigation Reporting. He got his start in public radio before becoming interested in investigative news. His work centers on using documents, data visualization and code to find trends and stories on everything from diversity, to public health, infrastructure to national security.

Samira Sadeque

Freelance Reporter

Samira Sadeque is a New York-based Bangladeshi journalist and poet. She recently graduated from Columbia Journalism School, and covers immigration, mental health, and gender rights. In Bangladesh, she covered the 2013 factory collapse that killed more than 1,100 workers, the country’s LGBT community, as well as the country’s ethnic minorities. Her work has appeared in NBC, Quartz, The Washington Post’s The Lily magazine, and Al Jazeera among other publications. She is a 2016 ICFJ Fellow and 2016 Panos South Asia migrant labor reporting fellow.

Millie Tran

The New York Times

Millie Tran is Global Growth Editor at The New York Times. Most recently, she was Director of Global Adaptation at BuzzFeed, leading a team to share the best of BuzzFeed across languages, platforms, and formats. She was also a founding member of the team that launched the award-winning BuzzFeed News app, as well as the creator of the BuzzFeed News newsletter. Millie’s experience spans editorial, product, and strategy at a variety of organizations such as the American Press Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, and National Journal — but always rooted in journalism with an obsession on connecting audiences with great editorial content and products.