CAJ23 Annual Conference Speakers’ List
Listed below are the speakers for the 2023 Annual Conference, held in Vancouver, BC from April 14-16. Speakers are listed alphabetically and include photo and bio.
Dr. Al-Rawi is the Associate Professor of News, Social Media, and Public Communication at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. He is also the founder of the Disinformation Project. His research interests are related to news, global communication, and social media with emphasis on Canada and the Middle East.
Ainslie Cruickshank is a Vancouver-based journalist covering biodiversity issues for The Narwhal. She has previously written for The Walrus, The Toronto Star, and StarMetro Vancouver among other publications.
Alec Regino is an NCM/CAJ Collective member based in Vancouver, BC. He was a Reporting Fellow for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. With bylines in The Washington Post, The Diplomat, and East Asia Forum, Regino’s work includes primary themes of immigration, Southeast Asia politics, and drug policy.
Allan Thompson is the head of Carleton University’s journalism program, a position he took up in 2020. Allan joined the journalism faculty at the School of Journalism and Communication in 2003 after 17 years as a reporter with the Toronto Star. A major focus at Carleton has been implementing the journalism program’s equity, diversity and inclusion action plan.
Amber Bracken photographs primarily across Alberta and western North America and specializes in stories exploring intersections of race, environment, culture and colonization. She has won many awards, including the World Press, the Charles Bury President’s Award, and a Pen Canada/Ken Filkow prize. Find her work in National Geographic, Maclean’s, and The New York Times, among others.
André Picard is the health columnist at The Globe and Mail, where he has been a staff writer since 1987. He is also the author of six books.
Andrea Houston is the managing editor of Ricochet Media, a digital non-profit publication in Canada. She is also an instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism, where she developed and continues to teach Canada’s first-ever Queer Media journalism course.
Angel Kibble is a Canadian Army Veteran, advocate, speaker and author. She lives with permanent debilitating physical and psychological injuries from her military service including MST (military sexual trauma), PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). Drawing from her life’s journey, intuition and empathy, Angel empowers and inspires others living with chronic pain and psychological injuries to live an aligned, balanced and purpose driven life with self acceptance and grace. Though not as she envisioned, her journey through life is one of hope, inspiration and true resilience.
Angel Moore is a video journalist for APTN National News, covering the Atlantic region. Based in Kjipuktuk, also known as Halifax, Angel reports on the Mi’kmaw treaty fishery, the Wolastoqey Aboriginal title claim, the inquiry into Innu children in care, and more. Angel’s community is the Peguis First Nation.
Angela Sterritt is an award-winning investigative journalist from the Gitanmaax community of the Gitxsan Nation on her dad’s side and from Bell Island Newfoundland on her maternal side. She is host of the CBC podcast “Land Back,” about land theft and reclamation. Her book Unbroken will be published in May.
Anita Li is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Green Line, a hyperlocal Toronto-based news outlet. She is also a journalism instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University, the City University of New York and Centennial College. Anita co-founded Canadian Journalists of Colour in 2018, and is also a member of the board of directors for the Online News Association and LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers. To keep up with Anita, subscribe to The Other Wave, her journalism innovation newsletter about challenging the status quo in Canadian media.
Annick R. Forest has worked at CBC/Radio-Canada for over 30 years, beginning as a television and radio reporter and, in time, moving to digital news first as a reporter and then as an editor covering B.-C., Alberta and the northern territories. Annick has worked in Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver. She has been active in the Canadian Media Guild, a local of CWA Canada, since 2005, sitting on the CBC branch as a director and on various National Committees and serving as president of the Vancouver Local for almost a decade. She began her three-year mandate as president of the CMG on January 1, 2023.
Ashley Wadhwani-Smith is the head of editorial for Black Press Media’s Western Canadian operation. Ashley began her journalism career in community news, reporting in her hometown beginning in 2015. She wrote as a provincial reporter on the national news team, based out of British Columbia, from 2016 to 2020, when she covered health and social policies.
Bailey Martens is a Vancouver-based journalist focusing on housing, disability and other equity issues in under-represented communities. As a disabled journalist, she is determined to tell stories that matter to her community. Bailey is best known for her features writing, data journalism, and evocative personal essays. She has previously worked at The Toronto Star, CBC News British Columbia, the National Post and HuffPost Canada.
Ben Nelms is an award-winning photojournalist based in Vancouver, B.C.
Bob McDonald is an author and science journalist. He is the national science commentator for CBC Television and CBC News Network, and since 1992 has hosted a weekly radio science show, Quirks & Quarks, which draws approximately 800,000 listeners weekly.
Brett Forester is a reporter with CBC Indigenous covering politics and national affairs in Ottawa. Before joining the public broadcaster, he hosted APTN’s weekly political talk show, Nation to Nation. He is a proud member of the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation in southern Ontario.
Brishti Basu is the Deputy Editor at New Canadian Media and a freelance journalist based in Victoria BC. Prior to these roles, she was a staff reporter at Capital Daily for two years where she focused on in-depth coverage of healthcare, housing, policing, race, sexual violence and stories at the intersections between them.
Brittany is a member of Northlands Dënesųłiné First Nation. She was selected as the third recipient of the CAJ/APTN Indigenous Investigative Fellowship and is now an Investigative Reporter with APTN Investigates. She has reported on various issues facing Indigenous people and has earned several national awards for her work.
Carol Linnitt is the executive editor and co-founder of The Narwhal. Carol has reported on the environment for more than a decade and has a PhD in English, with a specialization in our obsession with the end of the world. In her free time, you can usually find Carol in some ocean, somewhere, free-diving or surfing.
Cecil Rosner has more than 40 years experience in print and broadcast journalism, with most of his career devoted to producing and supervising enterprise and investigative journalism. He has assigned and overseen everything from quick turnaround enterprise scoops to Fifth Estate documentaries. He also wrote Behind the Headlines: A History of Investigative Journalism in Canada, and co-wrote When Justice Fails: the David Milgaard Story. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Winnipeg.
Chad Skelton is an instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C. Chad worked as a data journalist at The Vancouver Sun until 2015 and received the Jack Webster Award, B.C.’s top journalism prize, six times. In 2014, he won an international Data Journalism Award for his portfolio of work.
Chris Lee serves as the Director of Programming at Inspirit Foundation — a national philanthropic organization committed to advancing pluralism in Canada — where he leads Inspirit’s grantmaking programs, evaluation and learning strategies, and social impact initiatives. Leveraging an array of financial tools, he works in partnership with communities and organizations to support justice, inclusion, and equity across multiple sectors, including arts, media, and screen-based industries, post-secondary education, finance, and government.
Dr. Chris Tenove, a researcher at UBC and former journalist, studies political disinformation campaigns, online harassment of politicians and public officials, and social media regulation. He is currently leading a project with the Global Reporting Centre that is investigating efforts to discredit and harass journalists around the world.
Christina Frangou is a freelance journalist in Calgary who specializes in writing about health and social issues. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Maclean’s, Chatelaine and more. She has been recognized with a National Newspaper Award and two National Magazine Awards for feature writing, and she is the 2022 recipient of the Landsberg Award. She teaches writing and journalism through the University of Toronto and the University of Calgary.
Christopher Cheung is a staff reporter at The Tyee. He is interested in the power and politics behind urban change, and how Vancouver’s many diasporas strive to make a home in a city with colonial legacies.
Dave Seglins is a CBC investigative journalist and “Well-being Champion” in his own newsroom and within the industry. With more than two decades of reporting and hosting in radio, television and digital reporting, Seglins is now focused on research, advocacy, training and building better supports to enhance mental health and well-being within newsrooms and across the news business. He is an educator, co-lead of a national study of more than 1,200 journalists in Canada (Taking Care), and holds certificates in Global Mental Health and Trauma (Harvard Medical School) and Mental Health First Aid (Mental Health Commission of Canada).
David Beers is the founding editor of The Tyee and current editor-in-chief. He started the publication in 2003 as an experiment in new ways of doing online journalism in the public interest, including solutions reporting, crowd-funded support and a humane work culture. He loves what The Tyee has become thanks to amazing colleagues and readers.
David McKie is an award-winning journalist and author who spent 26 years at CBC as an investigative producer and reporter before moving to the National Observer as deputy managing editor. David teaches at the journalism schools at Carleton, King’s College, and TMU and has co-authored textbooks and user guides on freedom-of-information laws and privacy.
David Pugliese has been writing about Canadian military affairs since 1982. He has won three National Newspaper Awards for his reporting and three awards from the Canadian Association of Journalists. In 2020, he won the Spencer Moore Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom.
Diana Swain is the Managing Editor – Investigative for CBC News, responsible for management oversight of investigations and programs including The Fifth Estate, Marketplace and the network Investigative Unit. Diana has been a journalist in Canada for more than 35 years, and has won multiple awards for her work in investigative journalism.
Douglas Quan has been the city editor of the Vancouver Sun and Province since August 2021. Before that, he was a staff reporter for the Toronto Star, National Post, Postmedia News/Canwest News Service and the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif. He got his start in journalism at the Ubyssey student newspaper.
Award-winning journalist Duncan McCue has been with CBC News for over two decades. He is host of “Helluva Story” and of “Kuper Island,” an eight-part podcast on residential schools. He teaches journalism at Carleton University and is the author of “Decolonizing Journalism: A Guide to Reporting in Indigenous Communities.”
Dylan Robertson is the international-affairs reporter for The Canadian Press in Ottawa. He was previously the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent on Parliament Hill. Between the two, he was freelancer from late 2015 to early 2017, during which he carved out beats on regional issues and social-policy investigations, in addition to corporate copy-writing.
Eden Fineday is a nehiyaw iskwew (Cree woman) from the Sweetgrass First Nation in Treaty 6 territory and the publisher at IndigiNews. She writes the weekly newsletter for subscribers, and a bi-weekly column on the site. Eden endeavours to be a good relation as an uninvited guest on the territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqeum), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Peoples. She lives in New Westminster, BC with her two children, husband and two dogs.
Emma McIntosh is a reporter with The Narwhal’s Ontario bureau. She won a 2021 CAJ online media award. Investigations she’s worked on have received a CAJ/JHR human rights reporting award, an honourable mention from the Canadian Hillman Prize and a citation of merit from the National Newspaper Awards.
Erica Johnson is a senior investigative reporter for CBC News. She has earned numerous awards for her work, including winning the CAJ’s Scoop Award two years in a row for investigations into Canada’s banking and telecom industries. A former host of CBC’s investigative consumer program Marketplace, Erica currently hosts Go Public, exposing corporate and government wrongdoing.
Frances Bula has been a reporter in B.C. for 40 years, mainly covering Vancouver city politics, housing, and urban issues. She is currently a regular freelancer with the Globe and Mail and a columnist with BCBusiness. She has won national and provincial awards for column-writing, breaking news, and business writing.
Francesca Fionda is a reporter with The Narwhal, a regular contributor at The Tyee and an adjunct journalism professor at the University of British Columbia. Her past stories have uncovered unsafe lead in water at daycares, exposed government failures in protecting sensitive health information and revealed new data on Canada’s mobile workforce.
Francine Compton is the associate director of the Native American Journalists Association. She previously served as president of the board. She spent 21 years working as a reporter, director, video journalist, host, and executive producer for APTN News and the last two years as assignment producer for the CBC’s Indigenous Unit.
Garth Mullins is an old school dope fiend, drug user activist and award-winning radio documentarian. He is host and executive producer of the Crackdown Podcast where drug users cover the drug war as war correspondents. He is also an organizer with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, trade union activist and musician in local band Low Dead Space.
Glenda Luymes is a reporter at the Vancouver Sun and Province. She’s reported on several climate-related disasters, including the wildfires and floods in B.C. in 2021. She also contributed to an investigative series examining B.C.’s preparedness for increasingly frequent and severe wildfires and floods.
Harold Munro is editor-in-chief of The Vancouver Sun and The Province, home to a talented team of journalists producing B.C.’s two largest daily newspapers and robust websites at vancouversun.com and theprovince.com. Munro began his career in Terrace, B.C., before joining The Sun in the late 1980’s as a reporter covering civic affairs. He was the assignment editor, city editor and held other senior newsroom positions before being appointed editor-in-chief in 2012.
Harvey Cashore is a producer with CBC’s The Fifth Estate and one of Canada’s most experienced investigative journalists. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the top investigative journalism award from the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Justicia award for best legal reporting, and a Gemini award for best direction. He is a frequent lecturer on investigative methods and storytelling.
Ian Young is the British Columbia and Yukon Bureau Chief for The Canadian Press. Before joining CP in 2022, his 30-year journalism career included stints on Australian provincial newspapers, London’s Fleet St., and at Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, where he was International Editor, before moving to Canada as the newspaper’s Vancouver Correspondent.
Jackie Dives is a photojournalist based in Vancouver, B.C. She has been working within the topic of the overdose crisis in her community since 2016. She is trained as an addictions counsellor and volunteers as a bereavement photographer, wherein she is invited into hospitals to make the first and last family portraits in the event of the loss of a baby during childbirth. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Time Magazine
Jacqui Banaszynski is a journalist, writing coach and editor for the Nieman Storyboard. Emerita professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and faculty fellow at the Poynter Institute, she has received many awards, including a Pulitzer prize and the Association of Sunday and Features Editors Features Hall of Fame.
Janice Tibbetts teaches journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa, where she chairs the program’s internship committee. She also is a member of the J-Schools Canada Internships Working Group. Before Janice took up teaching ten years ago, she spent more than two decades in the daily news business, covering politics, legal affairs and social issues for newspapers and news agencies in Eastern, Western and Central Canada.
Jeanette Ageson is publisher of The Tyee, an award-winning non-profit news organization based in Vancouver, B.C. She leads all of the organization’s operations and revenue-generating activity, including growing its base of paying members, called Tyee Builders. She holds a degree in Communications from Simon Fraser University and is an alumni of the Online News Association Women’s Leadership Accelerator.
Jen St. Denis is a reporter with The Tyee who covers housing and civic issues, with a particular focus on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.
Jesse Winter is an award-winning photographer and writer currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Yukon News and other publications. His recent work focuses primarily on social justice, the environment and climate change.
An attorney and racial-justice advocate, Jessica advances Free Press’ mission of building media and technology that serve truth and justice. A former Lifeline recipient, Jessica has helped fend off grave Trump-administration cuts to the program, which subsidizes phone-and-internet access for low-income people. She was part of the legal team that overturned a Trump-FCC decision blessing runaway media consolidation. Jessica is a leader in the fight to push tech companies to crack down on hate and disinformation. She co-founded Change the Terms, a coalition of more than 60 civil- and digital-rights groups that works to disrupt online hate, helped lead the Stop Hate for Profit campaign’s Facebook advertising boycott and sits on the Real Facebook Oversight Board. Previously, Jessica was the executive vice president and general counsel at the National Hispanic Media Coalition, where she led the policy shop and coordinated campaigns against racist and xenophobic media programming. Prior to that she was a staff attorney and teaching fellow at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation. Jessica has testified before Congress on multiple occasions on issues including Net Neutrality, media-ownership diversity and affordable internet access.
Jessica is a Co-Director of the Student Press Freedom Act Campaign, currently studying political science and business at the University of Western Ontario. She is a staff reporter for the Western Gazette and served as a co-chair of Student Press Law Center’s 2023 Student Press Freedom Day.
Jim Bronskill is a reporter in the Ottawa bureau of The Canadian Press news agency, specializing in security and intelligence, policing and justice-related issues. Jim has considerable experience using information laws to uncover stories, including coverage of the long-hidden RCMP security dossier on politician Tommy Douglas.
Jimmy Thomson is a CAJ, Webster, and National Magazine Award-winning freelance journalist with a focus on how communities interact with the environments around them. His work has taken him to every Arctic country and several more, and he now resides in Victoria.
Jimmy Jeong is a Korean-Canadian photojournalist based in Vancouver, B.C. His clients include Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The United Nations and Bloomberg. Jimmy is a founding member of Rogue Collective and a member of DiversifyPhoto. He is also a founding mentor with Room Up Front, a mentorship for aspiring BIPOC photojournalists in Canada.
Jody Vance built her broadcast career in radio/TV here in her hometown over the last three decades and is one of BC’s most trusted voice of reason. Almost a decade in radio eventually saw Vance become a TV mainstay. Currently a very successful self employed freelance journalist, who leans into News, Current Affairs and opinion, Vance is Canadian Correspondent for Al Jazeera English, author of the weekly column called “The Middle” and co-host of “Unspun Podcast” and lead fill-in host on CKNW.
Johanna Wagstaffe is the on-air meteorologist, seismologist and scientist for CBC Vancouver News and CBC News Network, and award-winning CBC Vancouver podcasts: Fault Lines, 2050: Degrees of Change. She has a seismology and earth science background and has covered major events, including the Copenhagen and Paris Climate Change conference.
Julian Sher is a veteran TV documentary writer, director, newsroom trainer, and author of seven books. He has been an investigative journalist for Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and CBC’s Fifth Estate; he works with JHR and is a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Free Expression at TMU.
Julie Sobowale is a freelance journalist and lawyer. She attended the Schulich School of Law to become a lawyer and completed her MBA from Dalhousie University. For the past 10 years, she’s written about technology, legal affairs, business, diversity and inclusion. Her writing has appeared in Alberta Views magazine, Progress magazine, the American Bar Association journal, Canadian Lawyer, the Canadian Bar Association National magazine and The Coast.
Justin is the Municipal Affairs Reporter for CBC Vancouver, covering local political stories throughout British Columbia.
Karen Unland is editor-in-chief of Taproot Edmonton, the flagship editorial product of Taproot Publishing, which she co-founded in 2016. She worked in various editorial roles at the Edmonton Journal for 14 years before leaving in 2011 to embark on adventures in entrepreneurship. She has been a member of the CAJ’s ethics advisory committee since 2021.
Karyn, aka Pabàmàdiz, is currently the editor-in-chief of Canada’s National Observer and occasionally a guest panellist on CBC’s Rosie Barton show. Karyn is a citizen of the Pikwàkanagàn First Nation in Ontario and is of Algonquin and Italian descent. She has a good sense of humor and a distinctive laugh.
Kathryn Gretsinger is an associate professor of teaching at the University of British Columbia’s School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. She is a long time public broadcaster at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with a record of creating award-winning work at the local and national level in Canada.
Kayla Isomura is a Vancouver-based photojournalist drawn to the intersections of identity, memory and place. A graduate of Langara and Loyalist Colleges, Kayla has produced stories from B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Washington with personal work exhibiting in Canada and the US. They are currently apprenticing with the Globe and Mail.
Kerry Benjoe is a veteran journalist who worked for the Regina Leader-Post and CBC Saskatchewan, then was named president of Eagle Feather Media and the editor of Eagle Feather News — Saskatchewan’s only provincial Indigenous Newspaper. Kerry is also a survivor of the Canadian Indian Residential System.
Investigative reporter Kim Bolan covers gangs and organized crime for The Vancouver Sun, where she has worked for 38 years. Kim has covered the biggest crimes in BC history from the Air India bombing to serial killer Robert Pickton to the Surrey Six slayings. Among her awards are the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Media Women’s Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award, two National Newspaper Awards, two Canadian Association of Journalism Awards and seven Webster Awards.
Kiran Nazish is a former war correspondent and professor of international journalism. She is the founding director of the Coalition For Women In Journalism. A New York based, global press freedom support and advocacy organization for women and non-binary journalists.
Laura Lynch is an award-winning journalist and the host of CBC What On Earth. After many years reporting from across Canada and around the world, Laura is back where she started in Vancouver using her years of experience to tell Canadians what they need to know about climate change, its challenges and solutions.
Lori Culbert has been a reporter at the Vancouver Sun since 1997. She started covering women going missing from the Downtown Eastside in 2001, and since then has frequently written about homelessness, addictions and drug policies, the overdose crisis, and violence against women.
Maria is a reporter with the Richmond News who focuses on civic issues. Last summer, Maria lost her eldest son, Michael, to the toxic drug crisis. This grief has sharpened her focus to hold government to account for their inability to address issues facing people who have mental health struggles and use of substances to alleviate their pain.
Matthew Pearson is an assistant professor of journalism at Carleton University. His journalism work included stints at CBC Radio, the Ottawa Citizen, the Times-Colonist, and the Interior News in Smithers, B.C. As a Michener-Deacon Fellow for Journalism Education, he developed a new teaching module for journalism schools to help prepare students for reporting on traumatic incidents and the people affected by them. He has presented this innovative work on trauma-informed journalism at conferences, journalism schools and in newsrooms across Canada, and was recognized for these efforts in November 2018 with an award from the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies.
Michelle Cyca is a freelance journalist and editor from Vancouver. Her features, essays and literary criticism can be found in The Globe & Mail, Chatelaine, IndigiNews, Quill & Quire, and The Tyee, among other publications. She is a contributing editor to Maclean’s, a contributing writer to The Walrus, and the editor of Indigenous-led conservation coverage for The Narwhal.
Michelle Gamage is a freelance journalist whose reporting focuses on environmentalism, climate change and B.C. policy. In 2022 she won the Digital Publishing Awards’ Emerging Excellence Award and was a finalist for the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Environmental and Climate Change Award for her 2021 wildfire coverage.
Mike De Souza is The Narwhal’s managing editor. He is an award-winning investigative journalist with over two decades’ experience covering environmental issues, the energy industry and politics for outlets including Global News, Reuters, Postmedia, The Montreal Gazette, CJAD, CTV and National Observer.
Moira Wyton is a Vancouver-based digital journalist with CBC News BC. She previously worked for the Edmonton Journal/Sun and for The Tyee, where she covered health for the last three years.
Morgan Bocknek is an investigative reporter for the Star. She has reported extensively on sexual misconduct in the North American dance world through the series Breaking The Silence, produced in partnership with the Associated Press Global Investigations Team. She has been nationally recognized for her reporting on youth mental health.
Morgan is originally from Mississauga, Ontario, and relocated to British Columbia in 2014. She currently resides on the traditional territory of the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc in Kamloops, BC.
Morgan has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours Specialization) from Western University in First Nation Studies. The program focused on the legal, political, and social relationships that formed between First Nations and the Canadian Government which created a passion for the work she undertakes as our Head of Research Operations. Her efforts to support the researchers at HCG are second only to ensuring our Clients can navigate and seek resolution for decades of injustice via the Specific Claims process.
Recognizing the flaws inherent in the Specific Claims process, Morgan actively participates in national efforts to ensure Claims reform through the National Claims Research Directors. Morgan also sits on Library and Archives Canada’s Services Consultation Committee, where she continues to advocate for positive change and increased transparency in First Nations access to information.
Nana aba Duncan is an associate professor and Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion at Carleton University. She is also co-founder of Media Girlfriends, a podcast production company led by journalists of colour.
Nathan Griffiths is a graphic/data journalist at The Vancouver Sun. Previously, he has worked as a graphics editor at the Associated Press, a 360 video producer for The New York Times and a beat reporter for the South China Morning Post.
Pat Perkel was executive director of the National NewsMedia Council, a self-regulatory organization focussed on upholding journalistic standards. Her work involved monitoring Canadian and international media best practices and journalism ethics. Most recently she helped develop guidance and standards for reporting on racism and minority communities, and on police and crime reporting.
Paul Bucci is a seasoned journalist with more than 30 years of experience, writing and editing for large and small news organizations in Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick and British Columbia. He is leading curriculum development for the NCM – Seneca College microcredential in inclusive journalism.
Penny has been part of the CTV News Vancouver team since 2007 and is known for her coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, notably uncovering many examples of government obfuscation. Her reporting on BC’s healthcare system, disaster response including the heat dome, and other issues highlighting government accountability take up most of her time these days.
Rachel Ward is an award-winning investigative journalist with the CBC documentary team at The Fifth Estate. Throughout her career, she has used freedom of information and data to uncover actions those in power would rather keep secret, with a focus on stories involving abuse and trauma. Those investigations have forced changes, from extending healthcare coverage for delayed visa renewals and tightening up municipal spending in rural Nova Scotia to identifying potential miscarriages of justice and reopening a probe into torture on military courses. Rachel is based in Alberta and teaches journalism at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
Randy Kitt is the Director of Media for Unifor. Previously, as a production video editor for Bell Media (CTV, TSN and Discovery Channel) for 20 years, he worked his way up the union ranks to become the president of Local 79M and the first Unifor Media Council Chairperson.
Rehmatullah Sheikh is a producer at Pacific Content, where he helps create award-winning podcasts. As a fellow at the Global Reporting Centre, which is based at UBC’s School of Journalism, he contributed to “The Fish You Don’t Know You Eat,” an investigation into the impacts of fishmeal factories in West Africa, Peru and China.
Rochelle Baker has been Canada’s National Observer’s Island Insider for three years, covering the impacts of climate change and biodiversity collapse where the forest meets the ocean. Her stories focus on how rural and remote coastal communities weather the effects of global warming and the solutions they devise to tackle those challenges.
Rumneek is a journalist, host and speaker. She is currently the B.C. reporter at PressProgress, where she focuses on systemic inequality, workers and communities, as well as racism and far-right extremism. She is a proud Punjabi woman from Surrey BC.
Sarah Everts joined Carleton University’s journalism faculty in 2019 after reporting on science and technology in Berlin, Germany. She wrote the book, “The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration,” and appeared in Scientific American, New Scientist, Smithsonian, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, and Chemical & Engineering News.
Sean Holman is a documentary filmmaker, award-winning investigative journalist, and the Wayne Crookes Professor of Environmental and Climate Journalism at the University of Victoria. He is also founding director of the Climate Disaster Project, an international teaching newsroom that works with disaster-affected communities to share and investigate their stories.
Shalu Mehta is the editorial lead for The Discourse Cowichan, where she covers and edits stories that centre the community, digging deep into local issues and offering a solutions focus. Shalu previously worked as a breaking news, community news and general assignment reporter at publications in B.C. and Ontario. She has a Master of Journalism degree from Carleton University.
Simran Singh is a Punjabi-Canadian journalist with over six years of experience reporting in Metro Vancouver. She is currently the managing editor of the Burnaby Beacon. Simran graduated with a Master of Journalism degree from the UBC School of Journalism and previously worked as the city editor at Daily Hive Vancouver. She is passionate about local reporting and writing stories that connect readers to their community.
Spencer is a co-director of the Student Press Freedom Act Campaign. He studies political science and information science at the University of British Columbia and is a legal researcher with the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association. He now reports and edits for The Ubyssey.
Stephen Huddart led the McConnell Foundation from 2011 to 2020, a period when it made grants to several independent media startups; sponsored workshops for Canadian newsrooms; convened a journalism funders group; and advocated for policy reform in Ottawa. Today he lives in Victoria where he is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria business school.
Steve Lus spent 15 years at the CBC as a reporter before becoming an assignment producer and has been an executive producer since 2018. Before the CBC, he worked as a producer at the BBC in London and as a reporter on private radio in Vancouver.
Tara Carman is a senior reporter and data journalist for CBC’s national investigative unit. She unearths and reports exclusive, data-driven stories for CBC’s radio, television and online platforms. Before joining CBC, she spent a decade as a reporter, data journalist and editor at The Vancouver Sun.
Terra Tailleur is associate director of the School of Journalism at the University of King’s College. She runs The Signal student newsroom and oversees internships. She’s on the J Schools Canada/ÉcolesJ working group on internships and the CAJ’s ethics advisory committee.
Manitoba-based photojournalist and speaker Tim Smith has spent sixteen years documenting life on the prairies including fourteen years photographing the Hutterites. His work is among the most extensive visual documentations of their culture ever produced and has been published and exhibited worldwide including recently at the Xposure International Photo Festival in the UAE.
Tinnie Chow is the Senior Manager, News & Programs for CBC Vancouver. Tinnie is an innovative leader and journalist, with decades of experience working in the intersection between TV, production & digital content strategy. After starting her career at CBC Vancouver, Tinnie left Canada to work at CNN as a reporter/ producer, South China Morning Post as a columnist, MTV as Director of Programming, launching the first Asian American channels in the U.S., and at Meta (Facebook) where she partnered with broadcasters to produce LIVE social experiences. She is passionate about celebrating diversity in media and telling stories that reflect our communities.
Tom Cardoso is an investigative reporter with The Globe and Mail based in Toronto who has reported extensively on white-collar crime, gun violence, systemic racism in the correctional system and the finances of the Catholic Church. He has specialized in telling complex stories, often collecting and analyzing data obtained through freedom-of-information requests.
Trish Audette-Longo is an assistant professor at Carleton University in Ottawa who teaches digital journalism and reporting. Trish has covered the environment, politics and crime beats for The Edmonton Journal and managed digital engagement for National Observer. In 2022 she launched the project “Navigating Risk in the Journalism Classroom.”
Tyler Olsen is the managing editor of the Fraser Valley Current. He previously was a reporter at community newspapers in Chilliwack and Abbotsford. Tyler and his team won a Jack Webster Award for their coverage of the 2021 Sumas Prairie flood.
Zane Schwartz is the National Chair of the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Chief Executive Officer & Editor-In-Chief of the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF). He founded and leads the CAJ’s annual diversity survey, co-leads its mentorship program, and contributes to fights on press freedom issues like freeing jailed journalists.
