Our Staff

Executive Editor

Karen de Sá has been executive editor of The Imprint since 2020. She has worked as an investigative reporter for the majority of her three-decade career in journalism, including 18 years at The San Jose Mercury News and three years at The San Francisco Chronicle. Her stories have revealed inhumane conditions in juvenile halls, group homes and youth prisons and detailed systemic injustice in the dependency courts. Recent projects exposed hundreds of questionable youth arrests in California children’s shelters and the excessive use of psychotropics in the foster care system. A 2006 Knight Fellow at Stanford University and finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, de Sá has won numerous journalism honors over her career, including the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Journalist of the Year and Young Journalist of the Year awards and the NewsGuild’s Heywood Broun Award. Her work has led to nine state laws, overhauled institutions and improved public contracts with the nation’s most vulnerable populations.

Senior Editor

John Kelly is the senior editor of The Imprint and founding editor-in-chief of its predecessor, The Chronicle of Social Change, which he helped launch in 2013. In addition to overseeing national coverage, Kelly manages the opinion pages and produces Youth Services Insider, The Imprint’s subscriber platform providing business coverage and policy analysis for readers involved in child welfare and juvenile justice leadership. Previously, Kelly spent 10 years reporting on both fields for Youth Today.

Associate Editor

Julie Reynolds is an investigative journalist and author of “Blood In The Fields,” a book about youth violence in the Salinas Valley that was a finalist for the 2015 International Latino Book Award. She has worked as a reporter for the Center for Investigative Reporting and for 10 years as a criminal justice writer for The Monterey County Herald. Her work has been broadcast and published by outlets that include PBS, NPR, The Nation, Newsweek and Mother Jones. Reynolds has received numerous journalism honors including a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, and awards from the Society for Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Evident Change and others. Reynolds co-founded the nonprofit news site Voices of Monterey Bay and produces the podcast “Gray Area: a Show About Justice and Redemption.”

New York Reporter

Adilia Watson covers upstate and statewide youth justice and child welfare issues from Buffalo, New York. After graduating from Seattle University, she was awarded an Emma Bowen Foundation Fellowship and worked as a reporter covering rural communities for The Daily Yonder. She is from Stockton, California, and has articles published in Cultura Colectiva and The Yucatan Times. In her free time, she enjoys reading science fiction and rollerskating.

Minnesota Child Welfare Reporter

Farrah Mina is a Minnesota-based reporter covering child welfare. Before joining The Imprint, Farrah worked as a data reporter at the Kansas City Star. She is a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota and an alum of the Emma Bowen Foundation and Dow Jones News Fund program.

California Child Welfare Reporter

Jeremy Loudenback is a Los Angeles-based senior reporter who writes about foster care and youth justice. Loudenback tracks data, follows legislation in the state capital and reports from confidential courtrooms to cover the most vulnerable and resilient children and families. Loudenback previously worked as a reporter at the North County Times and has blogged about politics and governance and worked with homeless youth. Over the last five years, he has chronicled the closure of California’s youth prison system and examined the use big data tools in the child welfare system, among other topics.

New York City Reporter

Madison Hunt is a New York-based reporter covering child welfare. Previously, she reported on social justice issues within minority communities for Capital News Service. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun, among other publications. She holds a master’s degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University in Queens.

National Reporter

Michael Fitzgerald a senior reporter covering state and federal child welfare and youth justice. He was previously an editor for Pacific Standard Magazine, and his writing has appeared in the New Republic, Vice, Outside and other outlets. Fitzgerald is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Indigenous Children and Families Reporter

Nancy Marie Spears is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She covers Indigenous children and families with a focus on the Indian Child Welfare Act and the impact of Indian boarding schools. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism with distinction from the University of Oklahoma and received top honors from the Native American Journalists Association, two first-place awards and one second-place prize for her coverage of environmental, health and elder issues in Native American communities. Nancy is a board member of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance and her stories for The Imprint are co-published with Indigenous news outlets across the country.

National Reporter

Sara Tiano is a Los Angeles-based senior reporter covering issues involving children, youth and families in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, with a focus on L.A. County. Her work has previously appeared in Los Angeles Daily News, WitnessLA, Youth Today, and the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. Tiano graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in print and digital journalism.

Youth Voices Rising Program Manager
 
Raquel Wilson is a former foster youth from Compton, California, who has been an advocate for youth affected by the foster care system, juvenile justice system, homelessness or coined “at-risk.” She has dedicated over 10 years to empowering youth and helping them develop both personally and professionally. She holds a master’s degree in grant writing, management, and evaluations and recently obtained an M.B.A. in nonprofit management from Concordia University of Chicago.

Previously, she served as a program manager of the Real to Reel program through Better Youth, Inc., of which she is also a founding member. She also founded her own nonprofit dedicated to inspiring women of color in business and entrepreneurship called the Empower Her Project, Inc.

Raquel plans to use her experiences from being in the system to help connect and build relationships with other systems-experienced youth to encourage storytelling through journalism training, empowerment, and creative expression. Raquel also enjoys writing and performing spoken word, she loves to read, listen to music, and help others grow their network.

Youth Voices Rising Editor

Tracey Onyenacho is the Youth Voices Rising Editor for Fostering Media Connections. She was recently the editorial assistant for Colorlines. She also was the lead politics reporter for Blavity Politics, covering criminalization, racial and social justice, and the 2020 presidential campaign trail. They have also written as an independent journalist for USA Today, The Washington Post’s The Lily, Prism, and more. Tracey received her undergraduate degrees in Literary Journalism, Film and Media Studies, and Psychology and Social Behavior from University of California, Irvine. Tracey resides in Los Angeles.

Graphic Artist

Christine Ongjoco is a Los Angeles-based freelance graphic designer and social media coordinator. She is deeply committed to using art and technology as an avenue for social change. For The Imprint, she creates graphics, illustrations and manages social media accounts for the team. Ongjoco’s work has been featured in other organizations such as VICE, Amazon Watch and Search for Common Ground.

Contributing Photographer

Alejandro Durán is a Brooklyn-based freelance documentary and editorial photographer. In addition to his work at The Imprint News, he is the photo editor at The Riverdale Press and a photo contributor at THE CITY, where his work documenting a high school’s journey to take graduation to its students’ doorsteps received an Editor & Publisher Award for Best Photojournalism. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Marshall Project, The Mail & Guardian (South Africa) and the Pulitzer Center’s “2020: A Year in Photos.” He is an alumnus of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and the Eddie Adams Workshop, where he received the highest honors in 2020, The Nikon Award.

Contributing Photographer

Karlos Rene Ayala is a freelance photographer, videographer, documentarian, artist and writer living in Sacramento, California.

Contributing Reporter

Annie Sciacca is a California-based journalist covering juvenile justice and child welfare systems for The Imprint. Her work has also appeared in Kaiser Health News, Civil Eats and other publications. Prior to freelancing, she worked for the East Bay Times and The  Mercury News covering government, the court and legal systems, the economy and statewide breaking news events. She has covered some of California’s biggest natural disasters in recent years, and her reporting on the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County, California, was part of a package of stories honored as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news.

Contributing Reporter

Nell Bernstein is the author of “Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison” and “All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated,” both published by The New Press. Launched with starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus and appearances on Fresh Air and the Tavis Smiley Show, “Burning Down the House” went on to win the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association and was named one of the Best Big Ideas of 2014 by The Daily Beast, a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, and “What to Read” by Glamour Magazine. “All Alone in the World” was selected as a pick of the week by Newsweek, a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, and a top 10 book of the year by the Online Review of Books.

After launching her career as a counselor in a group home for adjudicated youth, Ms. Bernstein spent nine years as editor in chief of YO! (Youth Outlook), a magazine by and about young people in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has written for multiple national publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Marshall Project, Glamour, Mother Jones, Buzzfeed News and many others; and made numerous radio and television appearances, including Fresh Air, The Tavis Smiley Show, The Diane Rehm Show, and MSNBC. She has been awarded a Soros Justice Journalism Fellowship and a Journalism Fellow in Child and Family Policy at the University of Maryland, and received a White House Champion of Change award for her work on behalf of children of incarcerated parents.

Contributing Reporter

Sylvia A. Harvey, also known as SAH, is an award-winning journalist, speaker, and author of “The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family.” SAH’s work on race, class, policy, and incarceration has appeared in The Nation, Elle, Politico, Vox, The Marshall Project, The Root, and more. NPR, WBAI, Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan, Embodied WUNC, Cheddar News, and others have featured her commentary on the criminal legal system. She has spoken at numerous conferences and universities across the country. SAH’s work is being used in university coursework and has been cited by federal lawmakers calling for criminal justice reform. She is the recipient of a National Headliner Award and a National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Salute to Excellence award. The Oakland native holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Columbia University and a master’s in journalism from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.  SAH lives in New York City. You can connect with her on social media as Ms_SAH.