"Ladder of Success: Covering Early Childhood Learning"

Fellow Biographies

Rachel Abbey, reporter, Catalyst Ohio
Catalyst Ohio is a nonprofit magazine that reports and analyzes education reform efforts in Ohio’s eight urban districts. Abbey earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and sociology at Kent State University in 2008. The majority of her work at Catalyst has focused on Ohio’s plans for education reform, teacher quality and early education, particularly the barriers mothers in poverty face to finding and keeping it.

Ericka Boston, founder editor-in-chief, Black Moms’ Daily
Black Moms' Daily is a new brand that will deliver quality parenting information and other news of interest to Black moms. She is also senior editor of Sister 2 Sister, a national entertainment and lifestyle magazine and Web site for Black women. She began her career interning for award-winning Web sites like washingtonpost.com and firehouse.com. Boston graduated from the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and is a 2009 Knight Digital Media Center News Entrepreneurship Boot Camp Fellow.

Mary K. Bowannie, lecturer, Native American Studies
She lectures in the areas of journalism and politics, and incorporates her experiences into the classroom where she has students look critically at the media’s impact on Native America. She has covered stories on Native America for various public radio outlets, tribal newspapers and magazine since 1994. She has collaborated with NPR’s Next Generation Radio, the Radio and Television News Directors Association, The Navajo Times and numerous other organizations on media projects and panels. In 2006, she was one of the recipients of the competitive RTNDF Educator in the Newsroom Fellowship. Bowannie earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Sharon Broussard, editorial writer, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio
Her primary beat is K-12 and higher education with a sprinkling of writing about social services and suburban politics. In the 1980s, she worked for the New York Daily News, covering murder and mayhem. She graduated from the University of San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in English. Broussard attended graduate school in journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and she’s a proud graduate of The Robert C. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education in Oakland, Calif. She is a former Californian with deep roots in Ohio.

Lawayne Childrey, reporter, Mississippi Public Broadcasting (Jackson)
Since 2006, he has reported and produced a variety of news stories ranging from politics to health care to education. He has also hosted local segments of NPR’s All Things Considered, worked as a professional voice over artist and served as college forensic speech coach. In his current role as reporter/producer, Childrey has received several outstanding honors including a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award and several Mississippi Associated Press Awards.

Claire Cummings, education reporter, Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot
Claire joined the Citizen Patriot as an education reporter in March 2008. Her coverage area includes roughly 20 schools and colleges with a focus on Jackson Public Schools, Jackson Community College and the Jackson County Intermediate School District. She previously interned at The Monroe (Mich.) Evening News, The Oakland Press, The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, The Dallas Morning News and The Boston Globe. Cummings graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a specialization in Spanish.

Katie Davis is a veteran reporter and producer for public radio. Over the years, she has worked for NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition as a producer, reporter and host. She also contributes to PRI's "This American Life" and has worked on a series of radio features for NPR called "Neighborhood Stories." Currently, she is editing a series on immigration for NPR's Latino USA. She is also a founder/director of a 15-year-old youth group in Washington D.C. that gives children the tools they need to get an education.

Rupa Dev, reporter and communications associate, New America Media
Rupa works for New America Media in San Francisco. Prior to joining NAM, Rupa was the assistant editor for Nirvana Woman magazine, a national print magazine geared to South Asian women. She also served as an associate editor for The CulturalConnect, an online media company that published weekly e-magazines for young professionals and nonprofit organizations. Her stories have been picked up by media outlets such as OneWorld, AlterNet, India Currents and the San Francisco Chronicle. Dev is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and resides in San Francisco.

Gigi Douban, freelance reporter and public radio producer
As a former reporter at The Birmingham (Ala.) News, she covered education for the state’s largest daily newspaper. Since getting her start in public radio three years ago, Douban has won a number of awards including two Green Eyeshade awards, an Alabama Associated Press award and a top honor from Public Radio News Directors Incorporated. Her work has appeared in publications including Teacher Magazine and The Christian Science Monitor, and can be heard on The World, Marketplace, NPR, The Environment Report and Birmingham’s WBHM public radio.

Andrea Eger, education reporter, Tulsa World
Andrea has covered Tulsa Public Schools, Oklahoma’s largest school district, for almost ten years at the Tulsa World newspaper. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with minors in Spanish and political science from The University of Oklahoma and has attended several professional development seminars hosted by the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University, including coverage of pre-K issues, charter schools and school boards.

Jenel Few, education reporter, Savannah Morning News
Jenel has been the education reporter for Savannah Morning News for 15 years. She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University and recipient of the 2004 Education Writers Association National Award for Education Reporting. In 2008, Few received both the Story of the Year and Best Public Service Story awards from the Georgia Associated Press.

Dan Hardy, reporter, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Dan has been a reporter for The Inquirer, Pennsylvania’s largest newspaper, since the fall of 1977. He began at the paper as a suburban reporter and became a suburban K-12 education reporter in 2002. His reporting responsibilities include writing about state education issues such as the state education budget and the current debate over instituting statewide end-of-course tests that could be used as a high school graduation requirement. He and Inquirer education reporter Martha Woodall won two awards this year for investigative reporting on charter schools in Pennsylvania.

Barbara Leader, K-12 education reporter, The News Star (Monroe, La.)
Barbara's journalistic experience encompasses all areas of the media: radio, television, magazines, Web sites, public relations, newspaper and freelance writing. She left full-time employment to rear her family, but continued writing through weekly freelance columns on families and parenting as well as monthly features on local community heroes.

Now back to work full time, she has worked for three years to keep the community informed about all issues involving families and education. The News-Star received the Louisiana Press Association Freedom of Information Award in 2008 based on requests for documentation filed by Leader in pursuit of information on the local school board. She has received the School Bell Award for Excellence in Education Journalism from the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. She is also the recipient of a Knight Center for Specialized Journalism fellowship for education reporting in 2007.

Ruth Liao, reporter, Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore.
Ruth covers social services, nonprofits and health care. Liao has been a reporter for three years since graduating from The University of Texas at Austin. She was a Pulliam Journalism Fellow for the Arizona Republic. Liao also is a board member of the Asian American Journalists Association Portland chapter.

Julie Mack, reporter, columnist and editor, Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette
Julie has worked for the Kalamazoo Gazette since 1990. She previously worked for The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, Staten Island Advance and Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University, and is co-author of “The Essential Parenting Guide to Navigating Middle School.”

Mary Meehan, reporter, Lexington (Ky.) Herald Leader
Mary, winner of many national, regional and statewide writing awards, has been a reporter for more than 20 years. During the last seven at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald Leader, her emphasis has been on health and family issues impacting the lives of Kentuckians. During that time, she created a special fitness series, called “Get Fit, Ky.” and the series “A New Dawn?” which chronicled the lives of an addicted mother struggling to get clean that was four years in the making. She is also the administrator of a Web site, www.bluegrassmoms.com.

Erika Owens, Web editor, Philadelphia Public School Notebook
The Philadelphia Public School Notebook is an independent, nonprofit education news service. Owens has worked with Web content since graduating from The George Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in political science. During college, she did freelance writing and got involved in education as a tutor in the District of Columbia Public Schools and as an AmeriCorps volunteer.

Ward Schaefer, reporter, Jackson Free Press,
The Jackson Free Press is the only alternative newsweekly in the state of Mississippi. Before joining the Free Press, he spent two years teaching middle school English through the Mississippi Teacher Corps, an alternate-route certification program. Schaefer received a bachelor’s degree in English from Williams College and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from The University of Mississippi.

Jennifer Torres, reporter, The Record (Stockton, Calif.)
Jennifer covers children, families and demographics. Previously, she covered education for the paper. She has written extensively on immigrant farm workers in the state’s Central Valley region. She studied journalism at Northwestern University and the University of Westminster in London.

Lynne Varner, editorial writer and columnist, The Seattle Times
Lynne has written for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Washington Post. Varner was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University during the 2003-04 academic year and graduated from the University of Maryland.

Meghan Williams is a contributing editor for Children’s Voice, a publication of the Child Welfare League of America. She worked for three years at Northern Virginia’s Connection Newspapers, and for the past year and a half has been writing for the bimonthly magazine Children’s Voice, published by the Child Welfare League of America.

Helen Zelon, freelance writer
Helen covers education and urban life for City Limits.org, Insideschools.org and other New York City-based publications. She is a contributing writer at The New School’s Center for New York City Affairs and a co-author of the Center’s debut report, The New Marketplace: How Small-School Reforms and School Choice Have Reshaped New York City’s High Schools. This year, Zelon has been an education-reporting fellow of the Independent Press Association-New York. She has also taught writing at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, and lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.