Journalism Fellows:
Jason DeRose
Bio: Jason DeRose is the Western Bureau Chief and a senior editor at NPR News. He edits reporters in states along the West Coast as well as religion coverage, Native American coverage, and LGBTQ coverage across the country. Prior to his current position, he was an economics editor (during the Great Recession) and a program editor at NPR. Earlier, he worked as an editor, reporter, and producer at public radio stations in Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Tampa. He has taught journalism at DePaul University and Northwestern University and has won national awards from the Religion News Association and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from St. Olaf College in Minnesota and holds a master of divinity from the University of Chicago. He also studied religion reporting at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Elvia Díaz
Bio: Elvia Díaz is a columnist and editorial board member at the Arizona Republic. She has more than 20 years of print, radio and online journalism experience in English and Spanish. After earning a master's degree in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley, the Mexican native worked for the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon, and the Albuquerque Journal in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1999, she joined The Republic where she has held several reporting and editing positions. Elvia is also an adjunct professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
Sarah Posner
Bio: Sarah Posner is a reporting fellow at Type Investigations and author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump and God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters. Her investigative reporting and analysis on have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Mother Jones, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The American Prospect, HuffPost, Talking Points Memo, VICE, and numerous other publications.
Stephanie Sy
Bio: Stephanie Sy is a PBS NewsHour correspondent and serves as anchor of PBS NewsHour West. Throughout her career, she served in anchor and correspondent capacities for ABC News, Al Jazeera America, CBSN, CNN International, and PBS NewsHour Weekend. Prior to joining NewsHour, she was with Yahoo News where she anchored coverage of the 2018 Midterm Elections and reported from Donald Trump’s victory party on Election Day 2016.
Sarah Ventre
Bio: Sarah Ventre is an award-winning audio journalist and producer, currently working on a long-form documentary podcast that explores issues of religion, politics and culture. Previously she was executive producer of the podcast series, The Double Shift, a senior producer at Phoenix's NPR station KJZZ, a producer and editor at NPR headquarters in Washington, and taught podcasting at ASU’s Cronkite School. She won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for her reporting on the community on the Utah-Arizona border known for being home to the FLDS church, and is one of the founders of Girls Rock! Phoenix, a nonprofit organization that works to empower girls, trans, and gender nonconforming kids through music.