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We are pleased to present the journalists selected for the 2025 cohort of the Propublica Investigative Editor Training Program.
The program was established in 2023 to expand the rank of editors with research experience in newsrooms across the country and will help to better reflect the entire country. Nine journalists from across the country will join four Propublica staff for this year’s program.
The program is funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports journalism, film and arts organizations dedicated to strengthening social justice and democracy.
Participants will take a five-day intensive editorial boot camp in New York with courses and panel discussions led by senior editors at Propublica. After the boot camp, participants will meet almost every two months to continue the development seminar and be assigned the Propublica Senior Editor as a mentor for work and career advice.
“By providing journalists across the country with investigative editing tools, we aim to ensure that more newsrooms of accountability are increased across the country,” said Ginger Thompson, Managing Editor at Propublica. “This is an effort we have long considered to be one of our top priorities.”
Introducing the 2025 cohort of the Propublica Investigative Editor Training Program:
Alejandra Cancino is a senior reporter at Industice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit newsroom that investigates the Cook County Courthouse System. Her award-winning research focuses on the intersection of government and business, combining data with personal stories to expose systemic obstacles. More recently, she co-authored a five-part narrative series that revealed how the judicial system prefers landowners’ property rights over tenant rights. The project was recognized by the Investigative Reporter and Editor’s Award. In 2022, Cancino spent a year editing and training emerging journalists at City Bureau, a nonprofit organization focusing on marginalized communities in Chicago. Previously, he was a business reporter for the Chicago Tribune, covering manufacturing, economic development and workers. She is the 2025 winner of Chicago’s Stade Terquel Award, which honors the work of journalists. Cancino serves on the Board of Investigative Reporters and Editors and is a former president and board member of the Chicago Headline Club of the Association of Professional Journalists.
Daarel Burnette II is a senior editor at Chronicle of Higher Education. Before joining Chronicle in 2022, he served as assistant managing editor and reporter for Education Week and Director of Chalkbeat Tennessee, a Memphis-based news organization. He has worked as an education reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Minnesota Star Tribune, and the Louisville Courier Journal. He also worked as a general assignment reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Print Journalism from Hampton University and a Master’s degree in Politics and Journalism from Columbia University.
Daphne Chen is the research editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a former research data reporter for the news organization. In 2022, Chen was part of the reporting team who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Public Services on the project, which revealed how an electric fire could disproportionately put poor black renters at risk. Previously, she was a data reporter for USA Today, but state officials revealed that she repeatedly sent children to live with foster parents accused of abuse. She also spent a year as a reporting fellow in Cambodia.
Nic Garcia is a regional editor at the Texas Tribune and lives statewide, leading a team of reporters who tell the Texas policy and politics story from the ground up. In 2022, his team created a series on Texas’ broken water infrastructure, particularly in rural communities, driving statewide investment in water. Garcia joined the Tribune a year later as a political editor for the Des Moines register in Iowa. He is also a senior writer for Dallas Morning News, who was named Journalist of the Year and won the second-place Headliner Award for his Covid-19 coverage. Garcia, a native of Colorado, covered the Denver Post’s Colorado Legislature. An analysis of his lobbying records prompted changes to the state’s lobbying laws.
Nicole Lewis is the engagement editor for the Marshall Project and leads the organization’s strategic efforts to deepen reporting that reaches communities most affected by the criminal law system. She previously served as a senior editor at Slate, where she led a team of writers covering a series of legal issues in the Supreme Court of the Jurisdiction section of the publication. In 2020, she was the chief reporter of the first kind of political investigation into prison. This received an honorable mention of the Philip Meyer Award, an investigator and editor, for the pioneering use of the project’s social science research methods. Before the Marshall Project, Nicole reported on the Washington Post’s American Desk and Fact Checker. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Andrea Lopez-Villafaña is the managing editor of Voice at San Diego. She is also co-host of the VOSD Podcast, San Diego’s most popular local public relations podcast, and writes her weekly newsletter, Cop of Chisme. She previously worked as a reporter for the San Diego Union Tribune.
Jennifer Palmer is an investigative reporter for the Oklahoma Watch. She has more than 20 years of news reporting experience and her work has been recognized with awards for public service reports and investigative reports. She began her career covering police and courtrooms in the shoddy weekly Rio Grande San in northern New Mexico. Prior to joining Oklahoma Watch, he previously worked as a reporter for the Omaha World Herald and Oklahoman. She is a native of Norman, Oklahoma and is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma.
Chastity Pratt is the national education editor of the Washington Post. Before joining Post in 2024, she was the Director of Education at the Wall Street Journal and a Fellow of the Neiman Journalism Foundation at Harvard University, covering the Detroit Free Press, Newsday and Oregonian education. For many years she has helped train students and journalists at Harvard University, the Association of Educational Writers, and investigative reporters and editors.
Milton Valencia is the criminal justice editor at the Boston Globe in the Metro and oversees crime, police and public safety coverage. He previously was the associate editor of Globe’s first Money, Power and Inequality team, and has focused on addressing the racial wealth gaps across the region. Milton started out as a reporter for Globe in 2007. In that role, he reported from the Grove City Hall Bureau and led coverage of Boston’s historic 2021 mayoral race. In 2020, he was part of the Globe Police Accountability Team, which exposed corruption and mismanagement at the Boston Police Department. He also spent several years covering the federal justice system, including the death penalty trial of Boston Marathon bomber dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He was part of the staff who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the bombing. Milton began his career with local newspapers in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He holds a degree in philosophy and public policy from the University of Massachusetts in Boston and lives south of Boston with his wife and two children.
Additionally, four Propublica staff will be participating in this year’s cohort. they are:
Peter Dicampo is Propublica’s visual editor and works with local partner newsrooms around the country, primarily through the local reporting network. His visual editing and art instructions were presented by the National Association of Reporters and Photographers, News Design Association, Publishing Designers Association, and the Online Journalism Award. Prior to joining Propublica, he was an international visual editor at NPR. Before turning his attention to editorials, he worked as a freelance photojournalist for over a decade, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. He co-founded a gathering of photographers who use social media to spread Africa’s coverage beyond headlines, everyday projects, a global community of photographers, and a nonprofit for visual literacy. He is a 2019 John S. Night Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and has received grants and awards from the Brown Institute of Innovation, the African Code, Magnum Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Pictures of the Year International and Pulitzer Centre.
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Duaa Eldeib is an investigative reporter for Propublica. She investigated the failures that led to the U.S. death crisis, and how insurance companies can interfere with the fatal consequences of delaying mental health treatment and care during the pandemic. She was a reporter and producer of the documentary “Before a Breath.” Her report sparked legislative hearings, spurring government reforms, leading to the exoneration of a mother who was falsely convicted of murder and the release of a young man who was imprisoned as a juvenile and later sent to adult prison for minor crimes. Before joining Propublica, she worked for the Chicago Tribune, where she and two colleagues were Pulitzer Prize finalists for the investigation report. She was also a two-time finalist in the Pulitzer Awards briefing report. First in 2023, the series was in Stillbirths and as part of the team covering access to mental health care in 2025.
Hannah Fresques is the secondary data editor for Propublica. She compiled a data-driven investigation into the Texas abortion ban, high-profit tribe lending, and the aftermath of the Salmonella outbreak. She joined the organization in 2016, and her work as a reporter and editor has been recognized by the Philip Meyer Journalism Award for investigative reporter and editor, as well as the Online News Association and the Sigma Delta Chief Journalism Award. Before working in journalism, Fresques conducted an assessment of education policies of nonprofit research institutions. She holds a Master’s degree in Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences from Columbia University.
Andrea Wise is Propublica’s Visual Strategy Editor and edits photography, illustrations and other visual journalism. She is also the co-founder of Diversify Photo, a nonprofit organization that amplifies the voice of visual creatives from the underrated groups of Global Visual Media Landscape. She commissioned and led a year-long photo essay that won the 2025 Pulitzer Public Service Award as part of ProPublica’s report on the harmful consequences of the state’s abortion ban, and was also a photograph for this year’s international online storytelling project. The work has also been recognized with the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, the George Polk Award for Medical Reporting, the Bingham Award for Investigative Journalism, and the Taylor Family Award for Journalism Equity. Her photo editing and art direction has also been recognized by this year’s Photographers, the National Press Photographers Association, Society of Publication Designers and Society for News Design. She holds a bachelor’s degree with studio arts honors from Trinity College and a master’s degree in photography in SI Newhouse Public Communications at Syracuse University.
