Meet the 2021 Social Journalism Class at the Newmark J-School at CUNY
Even a pandemic can’t stop us. Doing journalism with, not for, communities.
Maxwell Adler
Pronouns: He/him
Bio: Max was most recently a production assistant at Cheddar. Prior to that, he was an editorial intern at AC360 and at Sports Illustrated. He is a 2019 graduate of University of Texas at Austin.
Community focus: Teenagers and their families impacted by addiction.
Fun fact: He once appeared on an episode of “Dinner Impossible” on the Food Network featuring Guy Fieri.
Email: max.adler065@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Instagram
Carla Canning
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: Carla previously worked at the Center for Anti-Violence Education as an intern and at a private investigative company as an analyst. She is a 2017 graduate of Hunter College (CUNY) with a degree in sociology.
Community focus: She would like to focus on prison reform and is looking forward to gathering information and being able to turn it into a cohesive story.
Fun fact: She was a four-year college swimmer at Hunter and still holds a school record there.
Email: carla.canning85@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Neimra Coulibaly
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: Neimra is a multimedia journalist who has been independently creating video and multimedia projects. She is a 2019 graduate of Brooklyn College (CUNY) with a degree in journalism and media studies.
Community focus: Black women in Schenectady, New York. She wants to build upon her journalism skills and learn how to build meaningful bonds with community members so they can trust her as their source of information. She also wants to cover news around social issues, racism and public policy.
Fun fact: She comes from an African immigrant household and has traveled to Africa three times.
Email: neimra.coulibaly68@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Instagram
Natalia Gutiérrez
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: Natalia is a digital media editor in Mexico City. She works at the intersection of journalism, technology and community building. She is currently launching a newsletter about mental health, journalism and feminism in Spanish called “Colectiva.” She was a founding member of the news site mexico.com, and prior to that she worked at The New York Times en Español as a growth audience editor, where she managed social channels and explored the best practices to grow, develop and retain loyal audiences in Latin America. She is a graduate of Universidad del Valle de Mexico with a degree in communications.
Community focus: She is currently working with women’s rights activists in Mexico. She hopes to help underserved communities, find new ways to measure impact/engagement and to explore new ways of doing journalism.
Fun fact: She is kind of obsessed with Keanu Reeves (still in the cute way) and has watched “The Matrix” more than 50 times. The quarantine made her addicted to “The Office.”
Email: natalia.gutierrez062@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Abē R. Levine
Pronouns: He/him
Bio: Abē established his roots in Minneapolis as an educator, a chef of sorts, and a gardener-organizer with a strong desire to write. Over the past couple years, he has written articles about the twin cities food scene and started a podcast–Super Delicious — celebrating eating and cooking with fellow food writer, Mecca Bos. Food and soil will always be part of his constitution, and so too, words.
Community focus: He is interested in covering/partnering with youth of color in their pathways to shape our collective future. Specifically, he’s looking to talk with both activists and high school students that are in alternative education programs about their experiences in and out of school.
Fun fact: He used to collect snails and other bugs as pets and if he could cut out the science part, he’d be an entomologist. In first grade, he got to take home a hissing cockroach.
Email: abe.levine29@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Emily Lowinger
Pronouns: She/they
Bio: Emily has worked as a professional comedian and emcee. When she was 24, she did three national tours in 35 states of of an original queer show she co-wrote (pre-marriage equality days) called Slam Up. She’s worked as a linguist at a translation company, in events, and as a creative strategist and copy writer. She’s also performed in Explanation of Benefits, a healthcare musical that dives into the history of healthcare in the U.S. and answers the question: how the f*ck did we get here? She is a 2012 graduate of Rutgers University, with a degree in French literature and a minor in women’s & gender studies.
Community focus: Healthcare change-makers, aka those who are working either from within or outside of the system in order to improve healthcare for everyday Americans.
Fun fact: She can honestly say that she has been a gym teacher at one (brief) point in her life.
Email: emily.lowinger69@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Instagram
Mariel Lozada
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: Mariel has worked for five years covering stories about human rights, migration and gender, always focusing on health and food issues. She has worked as a reporter and engagement journalist at many Latin American outlets, including La Tercera, Salud con Lupa, Distintas Latitudes, Efecto Cocuyo and Caracas Chronicles. She currently works part-time as an assistant editor for the Global Investigative Journalism Network. She also writes a biweekly newsletter in Spanish about digital journalism. Mariel is a 2016 graduate of Universidad Bicentenaria de Aragua with a degree in media communications.
Community focus: Latin American migrant women, likely focusing on the Venezuelan diaspora.
Fun fact: She collects tote bags from museums she has visited across the world.
Email: mariel.lozada77@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Catherine Montesi
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: Coming to journalism from a teaching artist and performance background, Catherine has performed sketch comedy and stand up all over, and made theater for young audiences with the Story Pirates and Bluelaces Theater Company. She worked at a Shakespeare theater company in Memphis, TN, before moving to Brooklyn. Until the pandemic, she was a museum educator at the New York Historical Society. She takes a lot of photos and loves marshaling with Dyke March. Catherine is a 2012 graduate of Christian Brothers University with a degree in English.
Community focus: The people who deliver our food, lesbians of color in NYC, and the community of bicycle activists who are seeking better transportation planning.
Fun fact: She grew up calling it Spaghetti Gravy.
Email: catherine.montesi91@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Jacqueline Neber
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: For the past year-and-a-half, Jacqueline worked at NYMetro Parents as an assistant editor for seven county-based magazine. Her reporting focused on special education, disability policy, and disability programming. She worked to gain parents’ trust in telling stories of vulnerability. Prior to NYMetroParents, she was the executive assistant to the editor-in-chief of WhoWhatWhy, an independent investigative news organization. Jacqueline is a 2018 graduate of John Hopkins University, The Writing Seminars. During her time there, she held multiple editing positions at News-Letter, the school news organization.
Community focus: She wants to work with the disability community to investigate abuses of power, the intersection of disability and chronic illness, and what happens to both kids and adults with disabilities whose guardians die.
Fun fact: She can recite the stretch call of Secretariat’s 1973 Belmont Stakes Triple Crown win almost word-for-word! She’s been watching the race on YouTube for years and it thrills her the same way every time.
Email: jacqueline.neber15@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Linkedin
Jenny Alejandra Pedraza Buenahora
Pronouns: She/they
Bio: Alejandra currently works as a media and community engagement specialist for a non-profit organization. They did translation work for Democracy Now!, and also worked for the Hunts Point Express and the Mott Haven Herald in the Bronx. They were also a member of the Diversity Initiative Fellowship with the Knight Foundation in 2018. Alejandra is a graduate of Hunter College (CUNY) with a double major in creative writing and media.
Community focus: Much of what Alejandra has written highlighted the migrant experience, as well as the queer experience. The intersection of those two communities is what they hope to focus on while in the Social Journalism program.
Fun fact: Alejandra was born in Colombia, but moved to New York when they were 13 years old. They are a “plant mom” and they enjoy watching their plants grow and talking to them. They signed a contract in the Adrian Piper MoMa exhibit that requires them to always mean what they say.
Email: jenny.pedraza54@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Kynala Phillips
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: Kynala recently completed an internship at The Wall Street Journal Magazine. Before that, she was a production assistant intern at PBS Wisconsin. On UW-Madison’s campus, she was the co-editor of The Black Voice, a student publication for historically silenced voices on campus. Kynala is a 2020 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in journalism.
Community focus: Kynala is hoping to learn more about food justice in communities of color. She wants to learn how to build and grow with communities in need and connect them to change agents working to disrupt oppressive food systems. She is also interested in understanding how the culture of food impacts regional identities, traditions and livelihoods.
Fun fact: She was named after the Lion King.
Email: nala.phillips032@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Robert Pluma
Pronouns: He/him
Bio: Robert is a multidisciplinary artist, documentarian, and creative technologist dedicated to creating intimate, sensitive work to confront inequality and challenge power. This work should have the potential to generate shifts in perspective, examine our empathic abilities and failures, center marginalized people, and corrode barriers resisting our ability to act. He is a Magnum Foundation and Fotodemic Grantee. Projects include Tribeca Film Festival Transmedia award winner Sandy Storyline [as video editor, audio engineer, sound designer, and content contributor] and personal projects focused on colonialism, gender identity, and the effects of the U.S. criminal justice system.
Community focus: Addiction, mass incarceration.
Fun fact: He is a certified Wilderness EMT.
Email: robert.pluma78@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Liz Richards
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: Liz moved to New York to study writing and spent a few years working in admin at a women’s sweater company and later at a now-defunct tech startup. While she was working as an admin, she also worked as a server at Juniors Restaurant (best cheesecake and best people FYI). For the last two years, she did literacy work/classroom pullouts with emergent readers in a tiny school not too far from Kingston as a Peace Corps Education Volunteer. Liz is a 2012 graduate of SUNY Brockport with a degree in English Literature. She is also a 2014 graduate of The New School’s Creative Writing MFA program.
Community focus: Since she has been sheltering in a fairly rural county halfway between Buffalo and Rochester, she has observed a lot of need and a lot of room for more/different coverage. She is particularly interested in adult literacy.
Fun fact: The first job she ever had was in a small town chocolate factory. The shelf life of their chocolate is 6 to 8 months. If you put good chocolate in the fridge it will turn gray, but it’s fine to eat.
Email: elizabeth.richards45@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Linkedin
Kayce Stevens
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: Kayce most recently worked as a social worker at a high school in Austin, Texas where she was able to case manage students and families, and collect and analyze needs data that was then used to implement new resources on campus. She also interned as a storyteller at The Neighborhood Developers, a non-profit organization in Chelsea, Mass. that builds affordable housing, offers economic mobility classes, and enables community members to deepen their understanding of community challenges and strengthen their leadership. At TND, she was able to use her journalism skills as a tool to amplify community members voices so they could rewrite what their community is known for. She is a 2020 graduate of St. Edward’s University with a degree in social work.
Community focus: Kayce hopes to focus on social workers in schools. She is also interested in serving the immigrant and refugee population. She’s looking forward to learning new ways to work with these communities through writing, possibly through a storytelling lens.
Email: kayce.stevens02@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Twitter
Houreidja Tall
Pronouns: She/her
Bio: While studying abroad in Senegal last year, Houreidja created a project that explored how hair salons in Dakar, the capital, serve as feminist spaces. Another project she worked on examined the perception of Black Brazilian women and queer people in Salvador, Bahia. She is a 2020 graduate of Brooklyn College with a degree in Women’s and Gender Studies.
Community focus: She’s hoping to focus on West African women living in New York.
Fun fact: So far, she’s been to every continent except Australia and Antarctica!
Email: houreidja.tall57@journalism.cuny.edu // Social Media: Instagram
