Eleven journalists from across the country will participate in the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program. The program aims to expand the ranks of editors in newsrooms across the country for accountability and impact.
The program was established in 2023 and has trained more than 31 journalists to date. It begins with an intensive five-day editorial bootcamp in New York, featuring courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica senior editors. After the bootcamp, participants meet virtually throughout the year for continuing development seminars and are assigned mentors from ProPublica senior editors to receive work and career advice.
Graduates continue to work in the field at news organizations such as the Boston Globe, KQED, Texas Tribune, ESPN, and ProPublica. This year, more than 130 journalists applied to participate in the program.
“We’re thrilled that so many people approach us for this training each year,” said editor-in-chief Ginger Thompson. “This is ProPublica’s way of supporting investigative journalism at a time when our mission has never been more vital.”
Introducing the 2026 members of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program.
Aaron Sankin is a data editor at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focused on criminal justice. Previously, he was an investigative reporter for The Markup, where he won the Edward R. Murrow Award for his reporting on predictive policing, the Investigative Reporter and Editor Philip Meyer Journalism Award for his investigation of racial and socioeconomic disparities in Internet service pricing, and the Gerald Loeb Award for his innovative online privacy inspection tools. He also covered online extremism for the Center for Investigative Reporting and helped launch HuffPost’s San Francisco division. He graduated from Rice University and lives in New York.
Debrina Chakraborty is CNN’s senior science editor, overseeing science and space coverage and leading a team of writers and editors who explore exciting discoveries, scientific advances and daring missions. Previously, he served as CNN’s general features editor and off-platform editor. She also managed the editorial teams at Denver7 and HLN Digital and hosted the award-winning podcast “What You Missed in History Class.”
Josh McGhee is MindSite News’ Chicago bureau chief, covering the intersection of criminal justice and mental health, with a focus on public records and data reporting. He previously covered criminal justice, courts, police, race, inequality and politics for Injustice Watch, The Chicago Reporter, DNAinfo Chicago and WVON.
Kynala Phillips is the Neighborhood Dispatch editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This is a new initiative that partners with residents to highlight community voices, concerns and improvements. He previously directed the events program at Kansas City PBS and was a service journalism reporter at the Kansas City Star, covering housing, public services and marijuana legalization. She holds a master’s degree in engaged journalism from the City University of New York and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Karen Chavez is editor-in-chief of USA Today’s Asheville Citizen Times in North Carolina. During her more than 20-year career with the paper, she served as research editor, assistant sports editor, and outdoors and environment editor. Chavez, a New York native, previously worked as a reporter in Montana, Idaho and Arizona. Chavez’s reporting exposed the district attorney’s misconduct and led to his removal from office for intentional misconduct in office (the reporting won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Award). Her reporting also exposed a decades-long pattern of alleged sexual abuse of students by teachers and other students at the Asheville school (which won the North Carolina Press Association Award). At the Citizen-Times, Mr. Chavez led national coverage of Tropical Storm Helen, the deadliest and costliest natural disaster in North Carolina history. The team she led has been recognized for its tenacious reporting, including winning first place in the National Headliner Award for Public Service Journalism.
Kevin Uhrmacher is ProPublica’s deputy editor for news applications, where he leads a team of developers who use code to create reports and build interactive stories and databases. He joined ProPublica in August 2025 after spending 11 years at The Washington Post as a reporter and editor on the graphics team, specializing in politics and public policy. At ProPublica, we led the development of the Rx Inspector database, which shows patients which factories manufactured their prescription generic drugs. He has edited graphics for three Pulitzer Prize-winning projects. Uhlmacher graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Margaret Ho is an associate editor in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where she works with reporters covering the Justice Department, rule of law, and political fact-checking. She began working at the Times as a business desk copy editor in 2010 after working as a grant writer at a charter school in Harlem, New York.
Padma Rama is NPR’s senior political editor, specializing in national politics. She works with NPR’s network of member stations. Previously, he was a Congressional reporter and senior producer at The Associated Press and worked in CNN’s D.C. bureau.
Rosalie Chan is a senior editor who helps drive Business Insider’s editorial strategy for technology coverage. She joins the company as an enterprise technology and cloud reporter, reporting on major industry players including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Broadcom, and VMware. As a reporter, she has published the scoop on these companies and delved into a wide range of topics, including open source licensing wars, the rise and fall of various development startups, coding bootcamps, and sexual harassment in the tech industry. Most recently, he served as editor of the Business Insider team’s study on the environmental and economic impact of data centers, which won a George Polk Award. Chan holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism and Computer Science and a Master of Laws from Northwestern University.
Thy Vo is an investigative editor at InvestigateWest, a nonprofit news editorial company covering the Pacific Northwest. She has worked as a community journalist in the West for nearly a decade, covering government, politics, courts, and immigrant communities for media outlets including The Colorado Sun, Law360, The Mercury News, and Voice of OC. Vo grew up in Anaheim, California and currently lives in Colorado.
Yoohyeon Jeong is a data editor at The Boston Globe, where she leads a team of computational journalists focused on delivering compelling, data-driven journalism. She was part of the Spotlight team that was a 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist for its investigation of Steward Health Care, a troubled Boston-born hospital chain that ultimately collapsed. Previously, he served as deputy data editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he worked on some of the organization’s most ambitious data-driven storytelling projects. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Chung began his journalism career in Arizona, working for two of the state’s largest newspapers in Phoenix and Tucson, reporting on numerous topics including criminal justice and education.
