Introducing SJN’s 2024 Climate Solutions Cohort
These 20 journalists will spend the year focused on in-depth climate solutions reporting
SJN’s Climate Team is thrilled to announce the 2024 Climate Solutions Cohort, a diverse and talented group of 20 U.S.-based journalists who are bringing climate solutions journalism into the mainstream of environmental reporting with a focus on equitable coverage of frontline communities. From now through November, they’ll convene virtually to discuss how to help position climate solutions journalism as a beacon of hope, and inspire action and collaboration toward a sustainable and resilient future. Through the practice of rigorous, community-informed climate solutions journalism, the group will collectively wrestle with core questions such as: How do you build trust with communities that are not yours? How do you tell their stories without being extractive or exploitative? How do you honor the lived experience of communities by centering their definitions of real solutions?
In their reporting, they’ll cover topics that range from the energy transition to climate gentrification, industrial agriculture and the intersection of faith and climate action. By focusing on community solutions, their reporting will highlight adaptation, mitigation and resilience efforts by and for those most affected by the climate crisis. They’ll also receive solutions and climate-specific training and resources, as well as share their insights and lessons with the rest of our network along the way, adding to SJN’s growing list of climate resources and expertise in the field.
Meet the 2024 Climate Solutions Cohort Fellows:
Bennet Goldstein (He/Him) reports on water and agriculture as Wisconsin Watch’s Report for America representative on the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk — a collaborative reporting network across the Basin. Before this, Goldstein was on the breaking news team at the Omaha World-Herald in Nebraska. He has spent most of his career at daily papers in Iowa, including the Dubuque Telegraph Herald. Goldstein’s work has garnered awards, including the Associated Press Media Editors award for an explanatory feature about a police shooting in rural Wisconsin, and an Iowa Newspaper Association award for a series that detailed the impacts of the loss of social safety net programs on Dubuque’s Marshallese community. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Carlos Muñoz, (He/Him) a passionate documentary photographer born in Caracas, Venezuela, delves into the diverse stories of migrant communities in South Florida. With a background in mechanical engineering and communications, Carlos discovered his calling in photography while advocating for social causes in Venezuela. After moving to Miami in 2015, he embarked on a journey to amplify marginalized voices through visual storytelling, aiming to weave a visual tapestry that transcends geographical and cultural boundaries. His fellowship with the HistoryMiami Museum in 2023 further fueled his dedication to capturing stories that need to be heard and understanding the power of visual narratives. Committed to solutions journalism, he aims to inspire positive change through his lens.
Clavel Rangel Jimenez (She/Her) is a Venezuelan journalist based in Miami and co-founder of the Network of Journalists in the Venezuelan Amazon. With a background in investigative journalism, she worked as a senior editor at El Tiempo Latino in Washington, D.C., and as the editor-in-chief of the award-winning newsletter Soy Arepita. Passionate about human rights, environmental issues, labor and immigration, she was a Resilience Fellow in 2020 and is currently an IRE’s 2024 Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellow. In 2023, she joined the Oxford Climate Journalism Network. She was formed as a journalist for almost 10 years in Guayana City, in the Venezuelan Amazon, in the oldest newspaper of the region: Correo del Caroní.
Dalya Massachi (She/Her) is the executive producer/editor of the “Everyday Climate Champions” podcast. For 30 years, Dalya has worked as a writer, editor, journalist, trainer/coach and fundraiser — addressing a vast array of social justice and environmental issues. She is also an experienced community organizer. She holds an M.A. in communication and international development. Dalya’s experiences coalesced after she saw and experienced disastrous climate change effects firsthand, as well as a renewed racial reckoning in the U.S. She leverages her professional background to focus on accelerating the just transition to a climate-safe world that works for everyone. She trained in 2021 as a Climate Reality Leader with the Climate Reality Project.
Diego Mendoza-Moyers (He/Him) is a reporter covering energy and the environment for El Paso Matters, a nonprofit news website launched in 2019. An El Paso native, Diego previously covered business for the San Antonio Express-News and Albany Times Union, and before that reported for the metro newspapers in Las Vegas and Phoenix. He graduated from Arizona State University with a B.A. in journalism. And, as a fan of niche hoops, Diego is a season-ticket holder for the UTEP Miners men’s basketball team.
Elijah de Castro (He/Him) is a Report for America corps member and reporter at The People-Sentinel, an independent local newspaper in South Carolina, where he covers rural communities. He is also a freelance reporter for The Progressive, where he has covered topics ranging from Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Armenians to the frustrations of rural Black voters during the 2024 Democratic primaries. As an investigative reporter, he broke stories about Ithaca College’s president receiving a $172,796 payment before announcing mass layoffs and how the utility giant Georgia Power is fighting to keep customers on fossil fuels. As a climate reporter, he has covered the crisis’s intersection with housing, agriculture and the upcoming 2024 presidential election. As a member of the Climate Cohort, he wants to tell stories of the climate emergency that elevate communities and lead to emissions reductions. In his free time he goes rock climbing, listens to Dire Straits and watches clouds go by.
Ethan Brown (He/Him) is a 24-year-old award-winning climate journalist, best known as founder and host of “The Sweaty Penguin,” a PBS podcast combating climate anxiety and polarization. In almost four years, “The Sweaty Penguin” has released more than 220 episodes, interviewed world-renowned experts from 18 countries and six continents, earned recognition at the Webby Awards and Signal Awards, won first place in Boston University’s New Venture Competition, and inspired a new geography course at the University of Kansas that replaced its textbook with the podcast. Ethan’s writing has been published in several outlets including Newsweek, The Hill and The Orange County Register, and he has appeared on more than 80 podcasts, radio shows and TV shows. He graduated from Boston University in 2021 with a dual degree in environmental analysis & policy and film & television.
Genevieve Belmaker (She/Her) is an award-winning journalist, editor and author with 20 years of experience covering local, national and international news in New York City and around the U.S.; Central and South America; East and West Africa; and Southeast Asia. She is the author of five books on Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank, and was a senior forests editor at Mongabay environmental news for over five years. She is currently a service editor at McClatchy, where she oversees a team of reporters covering all aspects of local and regional news who reach over 700,000 readers every month.
Grace Hussain (She/Her) writes about the intersections of agricultural policy, justice and climate change for Sentient, a nonprofit news outlet covering food and farming solutions for a changing world. Her reporting has been published in Truthdig and The Good Men Project, and she has been featured on the BBC World Service. She holds an M.S. in animals and public policy from Tufts University. When not writing she can be found hiking or paddling around Florida dodging alligators with her dog, Birdie.
Jennifer Oldham (She/Her) is an award-winning freelance journalist whose enterprise and investigative stories expose threats to the environment as well as the solutions that legislators, companies, conservationists and others are devising to ameliorate them. Oldham specializes in deep dives into urgent issues of our time, including climate change, economic inequality, elections, environmental justice, land use, policy, politics and water. Her pieces have appeared in National Geographic, The Center for Investigative Reporting, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Mother Jones and Politico Magazine, among others. She worked as a national correspondent for Bloomberg News for five and a half years and as a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times for 15 years, covering everything from aviation to business, energy, housing, government and real estate. She won two Pulitzer Prizes as part of a team at the Los Angeles Times and is the recipient of numerous other journalism awards.
Kevin McClendon (He/Him) is an executive leader in the philanthropy and early-stage investment ecosystems. He is driven to create a more equitable world for his son through avid support of participatory solutions and sustainable capitalism. Kevin serves as co-founder & co-CEO of Proximate, forwarding a mission of shifting power to those with lived experience. He is also an investment analyst for Gutter Capital, a New York venture firm. In addition, he leads Metro Cherubs, an angel investing group in Detroit. Before this, he provided strategic services for a variety of venture firms, entrepreneurial support organizations and nonprofits. Kevin began his career in marketing for diverse industries including entertainment, real estate and health care. He was a member of Transforming Power Fund’s 2023 Giving Project cohort. Born in Highland Park, Michigan, Kevin attended Wayne State University.
María Ramos Pacheco (She/Her) is a local government accountability reporter for The Dallas Morning News, focusing on environmental injustice, immigration and initiatives that directly impact the Hispanic community in Dallas. Previously, she was a reporter for Al Día, covering local issues in the Metroplex area in Spanish. Before that, she worked at El Paso Matters covering immigration. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso. She participated in NPR’s NextGen project in 2021 and was part of the ProPublica Emerging Reporters cohort in 2020. María was born and raised in Chihuahua, Mexico, where her love for journalism took root.
Matilda Hay (She/Her) is a multimedia journalist and documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on climate, science and social impact. She studied biological natural sciences at Cambridge University and received a master’s degree in science media production at Imperial College London, where her documentary about pigeons, “Carry Me Home,” was nominated for Best Documentary at the Imperial War Museum Film Festival 2015. She then spent six years making documentaries for a range of broadcasters such as the BBC, Channel 4 and Netflix. In 2021 she received a Director’s Fellowship to study documentary photography and visual journalism at the International Center of Photography in New York. Her photojournalism work has since been published in National Geographic and The Washington Post and exhibited at the United Nations in New York.
Rebecca Randall (She/Her) is an independent journalist specializing in the intersection of climate and religion. She is exploring responses to mental health and child welfare, particularly in vulnerable communities. She was a 2022–23 fellow with the Religion and Environment Story Project. For five years, she worked as the science editor at Christianity Today. She is based in the Pacific Northwest, where she spent her early career as a community reporter. Her work has appeared in Sojourners, Grist, High Country News and Atmos.
Sarah Sax (She/Her) is a journalist, producer and writer covering the climate crisis and the way environmental change is reworking the systems we live in. Her work explores issues of justice and accountability, with a focus on Indigenous rights, gender, transnational trade and the criminal legal system. She has been published in outlets such as The Guardian, The Nation, The Washington Post, Wired, Orion Magazine, Audubon and Grist. She was a former climate justice reporting fellow for High Country News and previously worked for “VICE News Tonight” on HBO. Her investigation into the 2021 heat wave in Washington state prisons won a Front Page Award and an American Society of Journalists and Authors award for social change. Her work has also been recognized by the National Association of Science Writers, One World Media, the Deadline Club and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Shi En Kim (She/Her), who goes by Kim, is a freelance science journalist who writes for a broad range of outlets on diverse topics including health, technology and the environment. Recently, Kim has been focusing on how climate stories intersect with other issues. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Science and elsewhere. Before freelancing full time, Kim was a life sciences reporter at Chemical & Engineering News magazine, an early-career fellow at The Open Notebook and earned a PhD in molecular engineering from the University of Chicago in the summer of 2022. Recently, Kim and three journalist friends co-founded a science news website called Sequencer.
Stephanie Garcia (She/Her) is an independent journalist who covers labor, housing, climate justice and education equity. Most recently, she produced audio and video documentaries on eminent domain and Native teacher retention. She is a Report for America alumna and Fulbright Germany scholar. Her work has been published with The Independent, PBS NewsHour, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, AP, USA Today and The Ground Truth Project. For the Climate Solutions Cohort, Stephanie will report on how military violence impacts environmental health disparities in U.S. territories.
Taylor Haelterman (She/Her) spans print, podcasts, photography and radio in her work. She now serves as the editorial assistant at TriplePundit, covering sustainability and social impact through the lens of solutions journalism. She also vets stories for the Solutions Story Tracker as a consultant for the Solutions Journalism Network. Growing up on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula fostered her appreciation for people and the planet, leading her to earn a master’s degree in environment and science journalism at Michigan State University. That’s where she first realized her passion for solutions-focused reporting. Now based in Colorado, Taylor can be found exploring the state’s natural wonders and listening to podcasts in her free time.
Yessenia Funes (She/Her) is an independent journalist who has covered race, climate and the environment for 10 years. She’s currently editor-at-large for Atmos, a magazine working at the intersection of climate and culture. She’s been published in Vogue, The Guardian, Vox, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, Grist and more.
Ysabelle Kempe (She/Her) is the editor at Smart Cities Dive, a digital publication for U.S. city leaders. In addition to editing, leading the production of a daily newsletter and managing a team of freelancers, she writes about climate and resilience issues. Ysabelle has a deep interest in the ways cities are decarbonizing buildings, and she is drawn to stories about creative, community-led efforts to protect people from the inequitable impacts of climate change. Ysabelle previously covered climate and the environment at The Bellingham Herald in Washington state, where she wrote about everything from the shifting local timber industry to debates on how to prevent the next major flood. Her work has also appeared in Grist, Scientific American, The Boston Globe and Wired. Ysabelle has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northeastern University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
For more information about SJN’s climate work including this fellowship and much more, visit our climate page.
