Past Recipients of the Ira A. Lipman Fellowship and Grants

Fellow Kovie Biakolo is a journalist and writer specializing in culture and identity. She is currently director of arts and culture reporting, Tow Professor and distinguished lecturer at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Her work, which has been featured in The Atlantic, the BBC, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Essence Magazine and elsewhere, includes critical analyses of race, nationality, and pop culture, among other subjects. For her Lipman reporting project, she wrote about the plight of Black migrants at the U.S. southern border.

Houston journalist Brittney Martin produced "Sugar Land," an eight-part investigative podcast series for The Texas Newsroom — a collaboration between NPR and public radio stations across the state — which laid bare the racist roots of Texas' criminal justice system. The series reveals the trials and circumstances of 95 Black and Brown convict laborers who died in Sugar Land, Texas, under the state's convict lease system and whose bodies were unearthed more than 100 years later.

"Sugar Land" prompted the Texas Historical Commission to review the permit issued to the group in charge of genetic research on the project. The state archeologist is now considering limiting or dissolving that group’s involvement. As a result of this investigation, the state plans to hold future projects to higher standards when it comes to gaining informed consent from descendant communities.

Seyma Bayram is a Kurdish-American documentarian and journalist who has covered a range of social justice issues in Ohio, from violence against LGBTQ+ communities and gun legislation to ongoing civil rights protests and the 2020 general election. Previously, Bayram covered criminal justice and local government for the Jackson Free Press in Jackson, Mississippi. Her reporting on Mississippi’s sentencing laws and efforts to prevent the state from demolishing a Jackson landmark earned Bayram two first-place awards from The Associated Press and a Green Eyeshade Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. She has also been a Spencer Fellow and a Report for America Fellow. Her Lipman reporting project focused on how the failed Akron Innerbelt drove decades of racial inequity and dismantled Black-owned businesses.

Watch 2021 Lipman Fellows Kovie Biakolo and Brittney Martin and 2021 Lipman grantee Seyma Bayram discuss their work.

Brandi Kellam is an Emmy-winning journalist who reports for ProPublica and the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism. As a journalist for CBS News, she covered the 2020 U.S. Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump and spent five weeks on the ground in Minneapolis following protests over George Floyd’s murder by police. Brandi’s reporting has also focused on criminal justice reform, including criminal record expungement for individuals with non-violent drug offenses and marijuana decriminalization. Her Lipman reporting project focused on how public policy and urbanization disproportionately impacts Black residents in Newport News, VA. 

Additional related reporting:

• Erasing the “Black Spot”: How a Virginia College Expanded by Uprooting a Black Neighborhood
• Why the Destruction of a Black Neighborhood Matters to Me — and Should Matter to Everyone
• This Thriving Black Community Was Destroyed To Create An All-White College. It's Not The Only One | Essence
• Why The Destruction Of A Black Neighborhood Matters To Me— And Should Matter To Everyone | Essence
• How a Virginia College Destroyed a Black Neighborhood

Chris Gelardi is a narrative, investigative, and opinion journalist based in New York City. He reports on violence in the United States — including policing, immigration enforcement, and military intervention — and the resistance to it. Recently, his work has focused on U.S. colonialism in the Caribbean and Pacific. His stories have appeared in several publications, most frequently The Nation, The Intercept and The Appeal. Gelardi wrote from Guam on why the U.S. territory was not used to relocate Afghan refugees and the indigenous resistance to a U.S. military buildup in Guam.

Madalyn Mendoza has been a reporter at Axios and My San Antonio who focuses on issues of social justice. Her Lipman reporting project covered how redlining prevents Latinos from achieving wealth and progress in San Antonio.

Watch 2021 Lipman grantees Brandi Kellam, Chris Gelaradi and Madalyn Mendoza discuss their work.

Ann Marie Cunningham is a veteran journalist/producer for newspapers, magazines, books, broadcasting and the Web. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Technology Review, The Nation and The New Republic. She most recently worked with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting on local state and regional stories. She was an investigator for President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, the only presidential commission with a task force of journalists. Her Lipman reporting project covered violence against women in Mississippi.

Clair MacDougall is a journalist and writer who reports throughout Africa. Her recent work has focused on Liberia’s post-war reconstruction and imperfect attempts to reconcile with its brutal past and the consequences of U.S. foreign policy in the Sahel, a region gripped by a security and humanitarian crisis that is being fueled by a jihadist insurgency. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Smithsonian, Newsweek, Time, Businessweek, Foreign Policy, Quartz and others. Her Lipman reporting project covered Guantánamo's forgotten ex-detainees.

Adam Serwer is a staff writer for the Ideas section of The Atlantic, where he manages politics writers and critical essays. Previously, he was the national editor at BuzzFeed News, overseeing the national desk, the features-investigative desk staffed by six reporters covering race, criminal justice, drug legalization, sexual assault and immigration. He was national reporter for MSNBC covering politics, legal and race issues. He has also reported for Mother Jones, The Washington Post and served as a writing fellow for The American Prospect. He was the recipient of the 2019 Hillman Prize for Opinion Journalism and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. His Lipman fellowship work focused on the civil rights movement.

Alice Speri covers criminal justice, immigration, and civil rights for The Intercept. Originally from Italy, she has reported from Haiti, Colombia, El Salvador, Palestine, and throughout the United States. Alice first wrote about police violence while a student at the Journalism School (Class of 2010), when she interviewed the parents of Sean Bell, a young man killed by NYPD officers in Jamaica, Queens. While a reporter at VICE News, she covered the police killings of Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the nationwide movement for Black lives that they inspired. Since then, Alice's writing has largely focused on policing, protest and racial justice. Her Lipman reporting project covered police surveillance of victims of white supremacists rather than white supremacists.

Dan Vock was a staff writer for the now defunct Governing magazine, where he focused on transportation and infrastructure. For nearly 20 years, Vock has distinguished himself for in-depth reporting on often-overlooked topics dealing with states and local governments. He led a team of Governing reporters in exploring the ways local governments reinforce racial segregation in housing, in a project called "Segregated in the Heartland." Vock has covered a variety of beats for Stateline (a reporting project of the Pew Research Center and, later, the Pew Center on the States) and worked as a statehouse reporter for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. For his Lipman reporting project, he wrote about realtors and school segregation.

Maura Walz has worked for Southern California Public Radio and at Chalkbeat. Prior to Chalkbeat, she was the southern education desk reporter for Georgia Public Broadcasting. She was a Carnegie-Knight Initiative for the Future of Education Journalism Fellow in 2009.

Monica Rhor is currently the story editor at Chalkbeat. She was an editorial writer and a former member of the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board. She is a former narrative writer covering gender, sexuality, spirituality and race issues for the Houston Chronicle. She also has been a staff writer for USAToday, The Associated Press, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer and Orange County Register. Rhor has covered economic inequality and hurricanes in Houston and the impact of English-only education in Boston; exposed serious flaws in California’s restraining order system; and documented stalled investigations of serial killings in South Florida. Rhor, who was born in Ecuador and raised in New Jersey, has taught high school journalism and English. Her Lipman reporting project covered the criminalization of Black girls. 

Kira Lerner is currently the democracy editor for the Guardian U.S. She was previously a reporter for the Appeal, a news website covering criminal justice based in Washington, D.C. She is a former political writer for ThinkProgress, where she covered elections and politics with a focus on voting rights. Her coverage of voting issues has helped to expose suppressive laws across the country, from Alabama and Georgia to the Native American reservations of South Dakota, Arizona and Nevada. She has covered elections since 2014, reporting from both Washington D.C. and the campaign trail on policy issues, including criminal justice reform, health care and immigration. Previously, she covered legal issues and in 2011, her investigative reporting helped to free a wrongfully-convicted man from an Illinois prison where he was serving a life sentence.

Lerner examined a Jim Crow-era disenfranchisement law in Florida that prevented hundreds of African Americans from participating in the voting process. Her story was published by ThinkProgress.