Executive Director
Morgan Malone,
Executive Director
Morgan is City Bureau’s Executive Director. With a strong background in administrative operations, city government, inclusive placemaking, and economic development, Morgan brings experience in community-driven partnerships, complex systems change, organizing and advocacy, and social impact program design to City Bureau.
Chicago Programs
Marilyn Carteno,
Events and Outreach CoOrdinator
Marilyn is City Bureau’s Events and Outreach Coordinator. She is an educator and theater artist who is committed to creating spaces where folks feel heard and welcomed. In this role, she will plan and facilitate City Bureau’s public events as well as develop relationships with civic and community organizations in Chicago’s BIPOC neighborhoods.
ARIel cheung, editorial director
Ariel is City Bureau's Editorial Director. She is based in Chicago and previously worked at the Chicago Tribune, Modern Luxury and DNAinfo. Her passion for proactive community-focused journalism brought her to City Bureau, where she oversees Chicago coverage produced by the fellowship program, local Documenters and the Newswire newsletter.
Natalie Christian-Frazier,
DOCUMENTERS COMMUNITY MANAger
Natalie is City Bureau’s Documenters Community Manager from the West Side of Chicago. She utilizes her eclectic background in filmmaking, food service and journalism to cultivate a rich and vibrant Chicago Documenters community.
Sarah Conway,
Senior Reporter & Special projects manager
Sarah is City Bureau’s Senior Reporter & Special Projects Manager. She won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting. Sarah writes investigative stories rooted in records and data and connects people with resources to improve their lives.
India Daniels,
Civic Reporter
India is City Bureau’s Civic Reporter. She has a background in curriculum design, copy editing and nonprofit coordination. She writes about civic power via the Newswire, a twice-weekly email newsletter based on Chicago Documenters’ questions and insights from local government meetings.
Grace Del Vecchio, Editorial Program Coordinator, Chicago Documenters
Grace is a City Bureau’s Editorial Program Coordinator for Chicago Documenters. She is a proud Philadelphian with a background in organizing, reporting and producing. Grace is passionate about developing newsroom practices that prioritize opportunities for Chicagoans to grow as storytellers and stakeholders while developing their own relationships with civic engagement and participation.
Dawn Rhodes,
Civic Editor
Dawn is City Bureau's Civic Editor, leading our civic journalism programs. She has spent 15 years in local journalism, previously with the Chicago Tribune and Block Club Chicago. Dawn comes to City Bureau with a fierce passion for mentoring new generations of journalists and a commitment to reimagining how we practice journalism.
Jerrel floyd,
engagement reporter
Jerrel is City Bureau’s Engagement Reporter. Previously, he was a ProPublica Illinois fellow and a local government reporter with the Post and Courier in Charleston, SC. He has covered a wide range of topics from growth and development to education and health. In this role, he will develop a beat centered on public and affordable housing and food accessibility as well as mentor early-career reporters in our Civic Reporting Fellowship program.
W.D floyd,
director of community engagement
W.D Floyd is City Bureau’s Community Engagement Director. He is a multidisciplinary practitioner whose work is grounded in the desire to illuminate the dignity of those who have traditionally been framed through a lens of degradation.
Documenters Network and National Impact
Christian Aldana, DOCUMENTERS NETWORK Learning Manager
Christian is the Documenters Network Learning Manager. They are an educator, community organizer and multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago. She develops learning workshops, materials, and communities that support the success of the Documenters Network. They are committed to creating liberatory, equitable, and accessible learning environments. Their work is informed by their experiences managing dynamic programs across generations, and their experiences in training and leadership development.
JODY CHONG, DOCUMENTERS NETWORK DIRECTOR
Jody is the Documenters Network Director. Based in Atlanta, she leads the strategy to grow and support Documenters programs across the country. Her work is grounded in justice and liberation for all people. Jody has a background in nonprofit operations, strategy, and economic justice programs and policy.
NavJOT HEER, Documenters Network Coordinator
Navi is a Documenters Network Coordinator with City Bureau. She comes from the Central Valley of California with a background in architecture, urban planning, and community organizing. Currently based in Chicago, Navi aims to foster connections between people and ideas, dismantle expertise, and co-create dignified spaces for systems-impacted people to thrive.
Max Resnik,
director of network services, documenters network
Max is City Bureau’s Director of Network Services for the Documenters Network. Based in Brooklyn, NY, Max works with civic and media organizations across the country to equip community members to document and amplify important local information from public meetings.
Kris smith, Network Manager, documenters network
Kris is City Bureau’s Network Manager for the Documenters Network. In this role, they use their background in nonprofit administration, consulting, project management, and trauma-responsive and healing-centered facilitation to support the network to thrive. Based in Philadelphia, Kris grounds their work in co-creating spaces for people and communities to critically think, deeply feel, and self-determine aligned actions.
maja stina sunleaf, documenters network coordinator
Maja is a Documenters Network Coordinator with City Bureau. Her previous experience in academia centers her approach to resource and program creation with stakeholders at the forefront. Based in Chicago, Maja employs her background in anthropology to understand and develop connections and community.
anastazia Vanisko, documenters network coordinator
Anastazia is a Documenters Network Coordinator with City Bureau. Based in Cleveland, OH, she first got involved with her local Documenters program in 2021 as a Documenter herself. She has a background in journalism, as well as facilitating and organizing community gatherings with nonprofits and newsrooms. In her work, Anastazia focuses on eliminating barriers to participation and creating resources to support our growing network.
Sonam vashi, Director of Network success, documenters network
Sonam is City Bureau’s Director of Network Success for the Documenters Network. Based in her hometown of Atlanta, she leads the development of strategies to support a thriving network of community journalists. She has a background in local reporting, archival research, and nonprofit leadership as a cofounder of Canopy Atlanta.
Communications & Development
TYRA BOSNIC, Lead Development Writer
Tyra is City Bureau’s Lead Development Writer. Born and raised in Chicago, Tyra comes to the work with a background in journalism and state government that has centered on tapping into the power of words to redefine narratives and foster collective healing.
Maria Dikcis, Communications Manager
Maria is City Bureau’s Communications Manager, a role supported by the American Council of Learned Societies Leading Edge Fellowship. With a multidisciplinary background in humanities research, editing, digital production, and prison education, Maria is dedicated to crafting narratives that drive social justice initiatives forward and highlight the power of collective action. She holds a PhD in English from Northwestern University and was born and raised in Chicago.
Kristen Fallica, Director of communications
Kristen is City Bureau's Director of Communications. Drawing on her diverse background in digital strategy, education, nonprofit leadership, and public programming, Kristen is energized by developing marketing and communications strategies to help City Bureau expand its reach and impact.
Louise Macaraniag,
DEvelopment coordinator
Louise is City Bureau’s Development Coordinator. She is a writer, organizer, and activist who is committed to creating a more equitable, pro-people media landscape for community members and organizations.
Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel,
digital producer
Yasmin is City Bureau's Digital Producer. With a background in theatre (dramaturgy and criticism), education, and oral history, their multidisciplinary work as a queer, fat, brown, femme amplifies and archives stories that go lost/stolen/forgotten. They have hands on City Bureau's socials, newsletters, and website and enjoy working collaboratively to promote civically-made journalism programs and projects.
Operations
Alaa Almezanin,
Director of operations
Alaa is City Bureau's Director of Operations. She is a driven management consultant based in Chicago, with a dynamic background and a passion for both professional and personal growth. With a foundation in software engineering, she leverages her technical expertise to bring strategic insights and innovative solutions to the forefront of organizational challenges.
Harry Backlund,
co-founder and Operations and Development Lead
Harry is City Bureau’s Operations and Development Lead and the founding publisher of the South Side Weekly, a volunteer-run community newspaper in Chicago.
catherine campos, chief of staff
Catherine is City Bureau’s Chief of Staff. Based in Washington, DC, she previously served as the Senior Program Coordinator for the Aspen Institute Socrates Program and a Program Manager for Impact for City Year Washington, DC. Catherine has a passion for civic engagement and dialogue and community engagement.
Eli Ramirez,
Operations and finance Manager
Eli is City Bureau’s Operations and Finance Manager. Once a music educator and hospitality professional, he deeply values creating long-lasting and meaningful relationships with folks that love Chicago.
Cristina salgado,
Director of people and culture
Cristina is City Bureau’s Director of People and Culture. She values storytelling, community and healing justice. Her life's work has been about co-struggling with young people and building student voice programs and practices. She is bringing her culture building and organizing skills to continue innovating our equitable hiring process, as well as our internal systems and structures.
amira turner,
executive assistant
Amira is City Bureau’s Executive Assistant. She is a Chicago-based professional with expertise in data analytics, nonprofit development, and community engagement. With competencies in performance metrics, program evaluation, and administration, she is bringing a detail-oriented intentionality to her work across City Bureau.
shabaka verna,
operations coordinator
Shabaka is City Bureau’s Operations Coordinator. He pulls from his background in multimedia, special events and information systems to fuel ingenuity and equip people to dream big. In this role, he maintains administrative systems to ensure City Bureau’s space is used to have a positive impact on staff and community.
Board of Directors
Akili Lee is a social entrepreneur who has spent 15 years creating human-centered and technology empowered systems that provide equitable access to opportunity. He is the co-founder of the Digital Youth Network (DYN), an organization that addresses the urgent need to redesign learning by cultivating equity in our systems and agency in the lives of young people. Akili has led the design and development of two ground-breaking technology platforms that power the DYN learning systems. He is the creator of iRemix, one of the earliest youth-focused social learning networks. Akili is the co-founder of Remix Learning, a social enterprise that provides proven learning products to schools, non-profits and city agencies.
Joe Germuska is the Executive Director at Northwestern University Knight Lab, a community of designers, developers, students, and educators working on experiments designed to push journalism into new spaces. He is also the project lead on Census Reporter, a Knight News Challenge project to make U.S. Census data easy for journalists to use. Before joining the Knight Lab, Joe was a founding member of the news application team at the Chicago Tribune and a project board member for the PANDA project, another Knight News Challenge winner.
Sheila Solomon is an award-winning former newspaper reporter and editor and has worked for the Hampton Monitor, Daily Press, Newsday, The Charlotte Observer and Chicago Tribune. She’s chair and a co-founder of Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit helping to secure and manage grants to support local journalism. She’s also Strategic Alliance Manager at Rivet360 (based in Chicago). Among her honors is being inducted into the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications Hall of Fame at Hampton University (Hampton, Va.) receiving the Ida B. Wells Award given by Medill and the National Association of Black Journalists, and the Chicago Headline Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Sheila is a judge for the National Headliner Awards, serves on the board of Growing Community Media, The Obsidian Collection leadership team and The News Literacy Project’s national leadership council.
Tiana Epps-Johnson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Technology and Civic Life. Prior to CTCL, she was the New Organizing Institute's Election Administration Director. She and her team provide resources and training to support local election administrators in modernizing the ways they communicate with voters. They also publish free, open-source civic datasets that have been accessed over 200 million times through some of the most powerful tools that drive civic participation. Tiana earned a MSc in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science from Stanford University. In 2015 Tiana joined the inaugural class of Technology and Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. And in 2018 Tiana was selected to join the inaugural class of Obama Foundation Fellows.
Matt Denn is a managing director at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a global venture philanthropy firm that supports high impact social enterprises. An attorney, Matt previously served as the elected Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, and Insurance Commissioner of Delaware, as well as appointed chief counsel to the Governor. Matt is the co-chair of the Redding Consortium on Educational Equity, a Delaware government body dedicated to improving education for Delaware students, and is the co-founder and vice chair of Action for Delaware’s Children, a children’s advocacy organization in Delaware. Matt also serves on the boards of Cultural Brokers, a California non-profit that works to assist families involved in the child protection system, and First Place for Youth, a non-profit that operates supported housing for young people aging out of foster care.