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David Bornstein (he/him) is SJN's Co-Founder & CEO: He is responsible for SJN’s strategy, culture and sustainability. He has been a journalist focusing primarily on social innovation for three decades. From 2010 to 2021, he co-authored the “Fixes” column in The New York Times, which examined efforts to respond to major social problems. He is the author of "The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank," "Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know," and "How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas," which has been published in 25 languages.
Tina Rosenberg (she/her) is SJN's Co-Founder: She forges partnerships with people who want to spread solutions journalism to their own networks or create new SoJo products and projects. She is also a public voice of SJN. Before SJN, she co-wrote the "Fixes" column in The New York Times with David Bornstein. She has also been an editorial and Sunday magazine writer at The Times. Before that, she wrote magazine articles and books. She has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
Courtney E. Martin (she/her) is SJN's co-founder: She is an author and entrepreneur and her latest book is Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from my Daughter’s School. Courtney consults with a wide range of institutions, including TED, The Obama Foundation, The Aspen Institute, and IDEO. She is also the co-founder of FRESH Speakers Bureau. Courtney has authored/edited six books, including Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists, and Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women. Courtney has a popular Substack newsletter, called Examined Family, and speaks widely at conferences and colleges. She is the recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics, a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre, and an honorary Ph.d. from Art Center of Design. She lives with her family in a co-housing community called Temescal Commons in Oakland, and is currently the storyteller-in-residence at The Holding Co, a lab for redesigning care for the 21stcentury. Read more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.
Allen Arthur (he/him) is SJN's Online Engagement Manager: He runs SJN's social media platforms, oversees newsletters and generally seeks to inform and connect the network wherever possible. He has a master's degree in Engagement Journalism from the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. He's also a freelance journalist working with currently and formerly incarcerated people. His work (including solutions journalism!) has appeared in The Marshall Project, USA Today, YES! Magazine, Documented and elsewhere.
Saira Bajwa (she/her) is SJN's Product Associate: She's a core member of the Products team, oversees the development and curation of products, tests select products that are in development, and tracks their impact. She has a master's degree in Media Studies and Media Management from The New School. She has a background in marketing and communications with a number of nonprofits.
Eva Blanc (she/her) is SJN’s People & Culture Manager: She implements and monitors People & Culture goals, objectives and systems. Thinking in terms of systems and user journeys, she considers how experience, data and people flow through SJN's employee life cycle. Eva holds a bachelor's degree in Global Studies from LIU Global, an international undergraduate experience that fostered a passion to combat social injustice and strengthen our society's capacity for progressive change.
Delaney Butler (she/her) is SJN's Collaboratives Manager: She catalyzes, coaches and oversees news collaborative projects. Delaney joined SJN in 2018 as the Operations Associate for the Newsroom Practice Change team, before becoming the Project Coordinator for the Local Media Project. Before SJN, she worked at Prudential Financial's Office of Corporate Social Responsibility, where she held coordination and support roles in the Spirit of Community Awards program and the Prudential Foundation. She has a bachelor's degree in English from New York University.
Melissa Cassutt (she/her) is SJN's Rural Media Manager: She works with rural-serving news outlets across the country, and builds new relationships. She joined SJN in 2021 after working as a journalist and editor at publications across the Mountain West, most recently in Jackson, Wyoming, where she is based. She was named the 2016 Wyoming Press Association’s Young Journalist of the Year and received the Wyoming Woman of Influence Award in Media and Communications in 2019.
Sara Catania (she/her) is SJN’s Chief Program & Operating Officer: She oversees SJN's operations and journalism-anchored initiatives to achieve our mission to transform journalism so that all people have access to news that helps them envision and build a more equitable and sustainable world. She serves on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists in Los Angeles and the program committee for the JSK Journalism Fellowships at Stanford. Her experience includes years as a reporter, editor and newsroom leader at numerous outlets including NBC, Reuters, Mother Jones, the LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times.
Catherine Cheney (she/her) is SJN's Relationships Manager: She is building a network of champions who consider solutions journalism key for their own missions and who actively spread the idea in their own networks. Cat, who earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale, is also a senior reporter for Devex, where she focuses on the role of technology and innovation in making progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Jefferson (he/him) is SJN's Controller: He comes to SJN from the Bowery Residents’ Committee, a large non-profit in the Human Services sector where he was responsible for General Ledger Maintenance in relation to Government grants. He graduated from CUNY Queens College with a Bachelor’s in Accounting. Hobbies include watching a good baseball game, or catching a good movie at the cinema.
Michael Davis (he/him) is SJN’s Training & Curriculum Manager: He oversees our ongoing work with journalism schools and student media. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he later was an adjunct professor at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, where he earned a master's degree. During the 1986-87 academic year, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. He wrote the New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller "Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street" and was co-executive producer of the Emmy-winning documentary adapted from it.
Angela K. Evans (she/her) is SJN's Climate Network Manager. She nurtures our growing community of climate solutions journalists as we work toward transforming climate crisis coverage from unsolvable and apocalyptic to actionable and engaging by catalyzing individuals and communities to take action on climate solutions. She’s also a journalist exploring the intersection of systems, people and culture through the art of long-form storytelling. Her recent work focuses on housing solutions, producing two seasons of the "Unhoused" podcast with Boulder Weekly and KGNU.
Nina Fasciaux (she/her) is SJN's Director of Partnerships & Fellowships: She leads a team focused on empowering key institutions and individuals to be solutions journalism champions and ambassadors in their own right. She previously worked as an editor and journalist in Russia, and now lives in France. She is the author of the book "Nomade des mers, les escales de l'innovation," a world tour of low-tech solutions to basic needs.
Alex Frost (she/her) is SJN's Local Media Project (LMP) Operations Associate: She supports the LMP team's effort to convene 15 collaboratives focused on solutions journalism by managing communication, contracts and data collection. She has a bachelor's degree in education and a master's in Family and Human Development from Arizona State University. When not at SJN, she teaches children's theater and storytelling.
Liza Gross (she/her) is SJN's Senior Advisor, Collaboratives: She launched and supports the Local Media Project, an innovative initiative leveraging collaboration and solutions journalism. A graduate of Ohio State University, she was managing editor of The Miami Herald and publisher of Exito!, a publication of the Chicago Tribune. She held leadership positions at nonprofits working on behalf of Hispanic and women journalists. She serves on the Advisory Council of Report for America and the board of Resolve Philly. Her reporting and essays have appeared in the U.S. and abroad.
Sarah Gustavus Lim (she/her) is SJN's Director of Cohorts & Strategic Programming: She works with the programming and development teams to support programs across our growing network. Before joining SJN, she worked in public media and led several collaborative reporting projects with national and local partners. Sarah also founded the New Mexico Local News Fund with the goal of bringing together journalists, philanthropic leaders and community members to improve access to news and information for all New Mexicans.
Keith Hammonds (he/him) is SJN's Conservative & Faith-Based Media Manager: He works to engage conservative and faith-based journalists and news organizations. As former president of SJN, he helped build the organization and steward its strategy. He wrote his first newspaper story in seventh grade, and has been executive editor at Fast Company magazine; a bureau chief and editor for BusinessWeek; and a writer for The New York Times in London and Johannesburg. He also owns and publishes The Boulder Monitor, a weekly paper in western Montana.
Ashley Hopkinson (she/her) is SJN's Journalists of Color Fellowship Manager: She guides BIPOC journalists through a curriculum of leadership, community engagement and social issues coverage. Ashley graduated from UC Berkeley with a master's degree in journalism and has worked in U.S. newsrooms for more than 15 years, leading coverage on health, immigration, education, criminal justice and the arts.
Julia Hotz (she/her) is SJN’s Fellowships Manager: She created and leads SJN’s LEDE Fellowship and Complicating the Narratives (CTN) Fellowship, and supports both colleagues and partners to create solutions journalism fellowship programs. She’s currently reporting "The Social Prescription" (Simon and Schuster, 2024), and has written solutions journalism about mental health issues for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Wired magazine, Scientific American, Bloomberg, Time magazine, and more.
Francine Huff (she/her) is SJN's Director of Training & Curriculum: She leads on developing training and resources for our network and works with partners to learn about best practices and co-create materials. She was the Knight Chair for Student Achievement at Florida A&M University and a bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern and a master's degree in communications from Rutgers.
Ja'Nel Johnson-Phillips (she/her) is SJN’s Training & Curriculum Manager: She works with BIPOC journalists and newsrooms to expand the understanding and practice of solutions journalism. Ja’Nel is an accomplished journalist who has created a wide range of stories for radio, television and digital platforms. She has long had a passion for reporting on the Black experience and elevating the voices of underrepresented communities. Ja’Nel is a graduate of Claflin University and Northwestern University. She joined SJN in 2021.
Maurisse Johnson is SJN’s Chief Financial Officer: He leads SJN’s finance, accounting and audit groups. Before joining SJN, he worked for Credit Suisse, Ogilvy & Mather, Burson Marsteller, Parsons Brickerhoff, J. Crew and NYCHA. He is an Air Force Veteran and is an avid Photographer.
Caroline Karobia (she/her) is SJN’s Africa Initiative Manager: She collaborates with partners, trainers, and journalists in Africa. She led BBC Swahili and Somali services. She was also the Launch Editor for the first LIVE TV debates program in Kenya and served as the Assistant Editor for BBC Africa TV programs. She is experienced in covering the East and Horn of Africa region and takes pride in advocating for editorial policies that prioritize the protection of children's rights and ensure impartiality.
Kyuwon Lee (he/him) is SJN’s Training & Curriculum Manager: He leads the organization’s Train-the-Trainers program and stewards the communities of solutions journalism trainers worldwide. He is a journalist from Seoul whose coverage includes issues of two Koreas, East Asia and transnational flows in between. His past projects ranged from anthropological study on Mexico's K-pop audience to documenting formerly incarcerated North Korean defectors. He is a former Air Force sergeant and a graduate of Yonsei University and was a Fulbright scholar at NYU.
Amy Maestas (she/her) is SJN's Director of Collaboratives: She leads the Local Media Project, a multiyear initiative with support from the Knight Foundation and the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, which convened 15 news collaboratives to report on a pressing issue in a community with a solutions journalism perspective in order to change the prevailing negative narratives and to stimulate audience engagement. Amy graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in journalism and is a Knight-Wallace Fellow Class of 2017.
Karen Magnuson (she/her) is SJN's Project Director for solutions journalism collaboratives in New York and Michigan: She provides coaching and other forms of support to the New York & Michigan Solutions Journalism Collaborative and the Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative. She's a veteran newspaper editor and advocate for diversity and inclusion in the news industry. She has a master's degree in innovation management from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Kristen Merritt (she/her) is SJN's Salesforce Database Associate: Tasked with managing the data and hygiene of the organization's Customer Relationship Management (CRM), she has never met a spreadsheet she didn’t like. She has a strong penchant for data governance, recognizing the necessity of reliable, integrity-focused, relevant data, and takes great care in this work. Outside of SJN, she is a neo-soul singer and guitarist.
Katherine Noble (she/her) is SJN’s Climate Manager: She co-leads the Climate Beacon Newsroom Initiative and is responsible for communications, impact and partnerships. Her work ensures that news consumers have increasing access to climate solutions journalism, and that all journalists can learn from the trainings and resources created by SJN’s climate initiatives. She has a graduate degree in history from Duke University, a graduate degree in business from University of Redlands, and one in progress in environmental law from Lewis & Clark Law School.
Jaisal Noor (he/him) is SJN's Democracy Cohort Manager: He leads the Advancing Democracy Fellowship, helping newsrooms reinvent the way they cover politics, including deepening their election coverage beyond the horse race. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park. Over the past decade, Jaisal has reported for Democracy Now!, The Atlantic, Bolts Magazine, The Real News Network and Baltimore Beat.
Sonja Petrovic (they/she) is SJN's Development Operations Manager: They support SJN’s development function by designing and co-creating systems for tracking information related to grants, working across the organization to support individuals and teams leading grant-funded projects, and ensuring that proposals, reports and other communications related to fundraising are completed and shared in a timely and efficient way. They hold a master's degree in English from Brooklyn College.
Alice Quinn (she/her) is SJN's Director of People & Culture: She leads the HR work, employee engagement and culture, and organizational compliance for SJN. She graduated from UMass Amherst and has a professional background in film, working on documentaries such as "Gasland" and "Gasland 2," as well as other films, shorts and shows.
Jenn Rosen (she/her) is SJN's Product Knowledge & Systems Associate: She ensures that the Solutions Story Tracker is staffed effectively to highlight high quality and equitable content. She develops training materials, manages the quality assurance of our database systems, and helps assess impact and metrics. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern and has been teaching and researching at the intersection of democracy, gender, sexuality, and the power of social movements to bring about social change.
Alec Saelens (he/him) is SJN’s Impact Manager: He connects the dots across the organization and within our network to ensure we track our activities’ outcomes as well as the impact of solutions journalism on society and the industry. In his former role, he researched the connection between solutions journalism and revenue. He is co-founder of The Bristol Cable, the UK’s pioneering local media cooperative. Before SJN, he was a researcher and coach for the Membership Puzzle Project and an analyst for NewsGuard.
Ambika Samarthya-Howard (she/her) is SJN’s Chief Innovation Officer: She leads on innovation and technology, leverages communication platforms for the network strategy and creates cool content. She has an MFA from Columbia’s Film School and has been creating, teaching and writing at the intersection of storytelling and social good for two decades. She has produced content for Current TV, UNICEF, Havas, Praekelt.org, UNICEF, UNFPA, Save the Children, FCDO, Global Integrity and Prism.
Elizabeth Share (she/her) is SJN’s Chief of Strategic Relations: She helps shape SJN’s strategic priorities and leads the work to secure the philanthropic revenue that enables us to meet our aims. She’s the founder of the consulting practice Wise Giving and previously was Chief Development Officer for The Center for Investigative Reporting. Elizabeth is a graduate of UC Berkeley, holds a certificate in nonprofit administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and is a master coach for the Course in Exponential Fundraising.
Linda Shaw (she/her) is SJN's Director of Advanced Practice & Beacons: She leads efforts to embed solutions journalism into newsrooms’ coverage in ways that drive impact, equity and revenue. She previously led SJN initiatives tied to democracy and equity, including a fellowship that's helping newsrooms reinvent the way they cover politics. Before SJN, she worked at The Seattle Times, where she led Education Lab, an award-winning solutions-focused effort that since has been replicated by four other news organizations.
Kiley Sims (she/her) is SJN’s Systems Manager. She supports the internal systems, manages the contract process, assists the finance team and is the board liaison at SJN. She is also the executive assistant to David Bornstein. She works closely with many individuals across the organization to support the team with administrative tasks and projects. She received her Bachelor's Degree from The Ohio State University.
Jenn Thompson (she/her) is SJN's People & Culture Associate: She leads and supports the employee life cycle (hiring, onboarding, offboarding, etc.) and creates efficient and equitable internal processes and systems for current staff. She has a BA in communications from Portland State University and has shifted her focus from event planning/marketing to having a more involved role in company culture and supporting staff. She utilizes her experience organizing social justice events to prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in all that she does.
Lita Tirak (she/her) is SJN's Product Manager: She is responsible for the strategic development of the Solutions Story Tracker and a source for external-facing products that are foundational to the organization's aim. Lita was one of the first curators to build the database’s story selection in its initial launch, and since then she has cultivated cohorts of Story Fellows and Solutions Specialists who have curated the Story Tracker to reach over 10,000 stories. Lita received her Ph.D. in American Studies from William & Mary.
Marie von Hafften (she/her) is SJN's Technical Lead: She manages SJN's website, provides technical support for products and builds data collection systems and dashboards to track SJN's work and the spread of solutions journalism. She holds a Master of International Affairs with a specialization in technology, media and communications from Columbia.
Fara Warner (she/her) is SJN's Director of Climate: She leads our work in transforming climate journalism from unsolvable and apocalyptic to rigorous evidence-based reporting that catalyzes communities to action to help mitigate, adapt and be resilient in the face of the global climate crisis. She holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company and other national and international publications.
Holly Wise (she/her) is SJN’s Program Operations Manager: She’s helping equip our team of almost 50 people with the knowledge, resources and connections needed to become a field catalyst that will transform journalism. Holly is a former journalist in Texas and New Mexico and later taught journalism at Texas State University. As a 2018-2019 Fulbright teaching scholar, she spent a year teaching solutions journalism in Bangalore, India.
