Fellows & Fellowships

Daelin Brown is an environmental justice fellow at Inside Climate News based in Philadelphia. She recently graduated from Hampton University as a Journalism major with an emphasis in creative writing. In the fall she will be attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology to get her Masters in Science Writing.

Alexis Durham is a recent graduate from Morgan State University with a Bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism. She specializes in video content creating, writing and speaking. Her hobbies include writing music and traveling.

Samantha Hurley is a student at the University of Georgia, studying journalism with a minor in Spanish. Samantha is also obtaining two certificates in New Media and Public Affairs Communications. She is an emerging journalist with previous experience in environmental advocacy. Her work appears across various mediums, as during the Covid-19 lockdowns she collaborated with leaders across the world to find creative ways to spread awareness about environmental concerns. Her passions include the intersection of climate change with the disabled community.

Emma Foehringer Merchant is a journalist who has covered environmental issues ranging from disasters to wonky energy regulations to air pollution. She’s reported on the environment and energy for publications including The Boston Globe Magazine, The New Republic, Vice News, and Grist. Most recently, Emma covered clean energy as a staff writer for Greentech Media and helped alums of that organization form a new publication called Canary Media. She’s attending MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing and holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental analysis from Pomona College, where she lived through a California drought while studying how climate change is impacting the state’s environment and people.

Hannah Loss is a journalist based in New York City and Boston with interests in ecology, infrastructure and agriculture. She is a graduate student at New York University’s Science, Health & Environmental Reporting Program. Previously, she worked in science documentary and radio production and science conference programming. She studied environmental studies and English at Tufts University.

Andrew Onodera is a journalist based in Phoenix where he is a masters student at Arizona State University. He works at KPNX as an assignment editor and is on the leadership team at ASU’s student newspaper, The State Press. Previously, he worked for the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism where he investigated oil and gas industry emissions.

James Pothen is a recent graduate of New York University (M.A.) where he studied multimedia journalism. He comes to Inside Climate News via the Dow Jones News Fund’s summer internship program. Before attending graduate school he worked at The New York Times, where he published his first major article. Pothen is interested in a career in investigative journalism. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Cornell University.

Rachel Rodriguez is a recent graduate from the University of Notre Dame (M. Sc.), where she studied the effects of climate change on boreal forest tree growth. During her time in academia, she wrote for student-run newspapers and developed a website to discuss her research as well as environmental news. Now, as a Mass Media Fellow through the Association for the Advancement of Science, she will be using her expertise in climate change research—and her passion for social justice—to report for ICN.

Grace is a journalist who writes about climate change, science, agriculture and food systems. She’s a graduate student in MIT’s Science Writing Program, and holds bachelor’s degrees in biology and anthropology from Tufts University. She previously worked as a researcher, studying coffee farming in Costa Rica and honey bee survival in southern Wisconsin, where she grew up.

Myriam Vidal Valero is a bilingual journalist from Mexico City. Her work focuses on science, health and the environment, and it has appeared in The New York Times, Science, The Open Notebook, Slate, Medscape, Muy Interesante, Cancer World, ¿Cómo ves?, among others. She is a member of the Mexican Network of Science Journalists where she coordinates the Mentorship Program for Emerging Journalists. In 2019 she received the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. She’s currently based in New York City, where she is working toward an M.A. in Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.