Statement of Judging Ethics

Pictures of the Year International selects judges who maintain the highest journalistic and ethical standards. We have confidence that these same values will apply as jurors for POYi. We recognize that our profession is a close network and that the judges are also working journalists. So, we carefully research and consider any potential conflicts and then counsel all the members about their obligations to be fair and impartial. Any judge with entries in a category are asked to recuse themselves. The entire three weeks of judging is an open forum for anyone to quietly observe the process. POYi conducts the annual competition with complete transparency and integrity.

POY 2021 JUDGES AND MODERATORS

JUDGING TEAMS

NEWS TEAM 1
February 16–17

Session includes (3) General News, (4) Impact 2020: Election Season (single images), (7) Impact 2000: Protests and Movements (picture story), (11) Daily Life Picture Story and (18) Local Team Picture Story of the Year

Cheriss May

Cheriss May is a lauded portrait and editorial photographer based in Washington, D.C. She is the former president of Women Photojournalists of Washington (WPOW), Board of Director — Focus on the Story, co-chair of photography at The National Press Club, an Adobe Education Leader, and an adjunct professor at Howard University, her alma mater. She is often commissioned to speak about inclusive storytelling, and trains and speaks to organizations, and educators around the world, including Spotify, Adobe, Leica Camera, The Merck Group, and the Center for Creative Photography.

Cheriss has been published by O Magazine, The White House Historical Association, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Time, ABC News, The Today Show, MSNBC, and other international publications. She has a sole exhibition at Black Rock Center for the Arts in Maryland, of photographs exploring the intersection of race, politics, and protest, in the wake of the national reckoning on racial injustice.

Her work is featured in a permanent exhibit: MFON's “In Conversation: Visual Meditations on Black Masculinity”, at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, displayed in an exhibit: "Come Together, Right Now: The Art of Gathering" at the Chrysler Museum of Art, in Norfolk, Va., and she has images highlighted in a BET social justice campaign: ‘Content for Change’.

Originally from Kansas City, Mo., Cheriss's passion radiates through her aptitude to connect to the soul of those she photographs.

J.B. Forbes

J.B. Forbes has been a working photojournalist for nearly 50 years. He majored in photojournalism at the University of Kansas and worked in Topeka and Parsons, Kansas, as well as Miami, Florida, before moving to St. Louis in 1975.

During his career, he was been a staff photographer, photo editor, assignment editor and, finally, Chief Photographer. In 1980, Forbes started covering international stories for the Post-Dispatch. He's travelled to more than 30 countries covering wars, natural disasters and political strife. Some of his most rewarding work occurred in Haiti where Forbes has made seven trips covering revolution, embargo, medical missions, and the massive 2010 earthquake.

Forbes has received dozens of awards throughout his career, starting in 1972, when he was recognized as a runner-up to College Photographer of the Year. He has been named the National Press Photographer's Regional Photographer of the Year four times and runner-up five times. He was in the first class to win first place awards in both the Pro Football and Pro Baseball Hall of Fame Photo Contests. In 2014, Forbes and the rest of the Post-Dispatch photo staff won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the event in Ferguson after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown.

In 2018, Forbes received the first-ever Distinguished Alumni Award by KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism. Recently retired, Forbes wrapped up his career by covering the St. Louis Blues Stanley Cup run, covering 23 straight playoff hockey games, including the final championship game in Boston in 2019. Forbes and his wife live in Cedar Hill, Missouri. They have four children and twelve grandchildren.

Shoun Hill

Shoun Hill is a photo editor on the Associated Press national photo desk in New York City. He edits national and international news images. He also photographs and edits pictures for the travel, fashion and food sections of the AP Lifestyles department.

A photographer for more than 15 years, Shoun has worked at newspapers in Louisville, Minneapolis, Orlando, Memphis and Jackson, Tenn., before coming to The Associated Press.

Before starting a career as a newspaper photojournalist, Shoun served in the U.S. Army. While he intended to gain experience as general assignment reporter, being a journalist in the Army required that he write the stories and photograph them as well. “As much as I liked writing, I realized I enjoyed the freedom and creativity of photography even more,” says Shoun.

In addition to working at the Associated Press, Shoun works as an adjunct professor at UConn.

Marie D. De Jesús

Marie D. De Jesús is a staff photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle, producing still and moving images in the nation’s fourth-largest city.

She has concentrated on developing relationships with the city’s diverse immigrant and marginalized communities. Those connections have helped power some of the Chronicle’s strongest projects, including “Denied,” a 6-month investigation that uncovered the systematic denial of special education services to children in Texas.

Another series, “Out of Time,” chronicles the saga of Juan Rodríguez, a Salvadoran immigrant who is fighting to stay in the United States with his American family. De Jesús followed the story to El Salvador as an Adelante fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation.

De Jesús was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2017 and won the Scripps Howard Foundation’s Public Service Award that year.

She is a native of Puerto Rico, and she developed her interest in multimedia journalism from her father, who, until recently, worked as a television camera director for nearly 30 years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in photography from the University of Central Florida in 2008. De Jesús previously worked for the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., and the Victoria Advocate in Texas.

NEWS TEAM 2
February 19–20

Session includes (5) Spot News, (6) Daily Life, (13) COVID-19 News Picture Story and (28) Photographer of the Year, Local

Alex Wong

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Alex Wong always wondered what the world was like outside the tiny flat he grew up in. A few years after he finished secondary school, he had the opportunity to work as a darkroom assistant for the local newspaper, The Hong Kong Standard. The job opened his eyes to photojournalism. Alex worked as a photographer for a number of publications, including the Hong Kong Daily News, United Daily News and Next Magazine before moving to New York City to pursue his BA in photography at SUNY Empire State College.

After graduation, Alex moved to Washington, D.C., and worked as a desk editor for Newsmakers. He joined Getty Images as a staff photographer in its Washington, D.C., bureau in 1999 and since then has been covering politics at the White House, the U.S. Congress and across America, especially during campaign season.

Preston Gannaway

Preston Gannaway is a Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary photographer and artist. For 20 years, she has focused on intimate stories about American families and marginalized communities while addressing themes such as gender identity, class and our relationship to the landscape. Gannaway is best known for her long-term projects like Remember Me, which was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.

In 2014 she released her first book, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, about the changing character of a seaside neighborhood in Virginia. She was a Light Work artist in residence in 2018 and a Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana in 2019.

In addition to long-term projects, she does editorial commissions for publications such as The New Yorker, California Sunday Magazine, Mother Jones and ESPN. Her photographs are held in both public and private collections and have been exhibited around the world. She is a regular lecturer and serves on the Board of Directors of Women Photograph. Born and raised in North Carolina, she is based in Sonoma County, California.

Adrees Latif

Adrees Latif is a Pakistani-American photojournalist with a career spanning more than three decades of covering sports, entertainment, civil conflict, natural disasters and communities across the globe.

Adrees started his professional career in 1990 as a high school junior in Texas, freelancing for the weekly newspaper Suburbia Reporter and the Houston Chronicle's 'This Week' section. A graduate of the University of Houston, Adrees joined Reuters at the age of 22 after interning with UPI, the Miami Herald, the Baltimore Sun and working as an intern and staff photographer at the Houston Post. In his 25 years with Reuters, Adrees has been based in Houston, Los Angeles, Bangkok, Islamabad and New York.

Adrees has been recognized multiple times in POY including being named Photographer of the Year in 2011 and winning the Community Awareness Award in 2019.

In 2008, Adrees was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for an image of a street demonstration in Myanmar. In 2019, Adrees was part of a Reuters’ team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for their coverage of Central American migrants and their journey to the southern border of the United States. In addition, won the International Center for Photography's Infinity Award.

Adrees is currently based in his hometown of Houston as Enterprise Editor, Reuters Pictures, from where he focuses on coverage of global stories and editing packages.

Alysia Burton Steele

Alysia Burton Steele is an Associate professor at the School of Journalism and New Media at The University of Mississippi.

She is also the author of Delta Jewels: In Search of My Grandmother’s Wisdom, a book of formal portraits and collected oral histories from Black church women elders about life during the Jim Crow era, including civil rights activist Mrs. Myrlie Evers. This work has been featured in a Smithsonian museum presentation, as well as in The New York Times, NBC.com, USA Today, Chicago Sun-Times, Southern Living, and Theroot.com, to name a few. In five years, she’s done 87 speaking engagements about her book.

She holds a master’s degree from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication and is currently earning her Ph.D. in History, focusing on the civil rights movement, gender studies, and women’s labor. She’s also currently finishing her second book, while also starting her dissertation about Black women photographers who were largely ignored for their visual contribution in the civil rights movement.

Named the 2016 Mississippi Preserver of the Year Award winner from the Mississippi Humanities Council, Steele also won the 2015 Ofield Dukes Educator of the Year Award. In 2004, she won the Ohio News Photographers Association’s James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award for her picture story “Escaping Death’s Shadow,” where she spent two weeks in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. She was also a participant in Kalish Visual Editing Workshop.

Steele’s worked as a photojournalist at The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, was deputy director of photography at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and in 2006, she was part of the photo team for The Dallas Morning News that won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News for their Hurricane Katrina coverage.

SPORTS TEAM
February 22–23

Session includes (8) Portrait Series, (15) Sports Action, (16) Sports Picture Story, (17) Sports Life & Recreational Sports and (29) Sports Photographer of the Year

Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez

Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez is a freelance photographer in Charlotte, N.C. She has spent the past five years as the team photographer for the Carolina Panthers, where she was the first female team photographer for an organization in the NFL.

She studied Photojournalism in the Photographic Technology Program at Randolph Community College in Asheboro, NC. After interning at several newspapers across North Carolina including The Charlotte Observer, The Durham Herald-Sun, The Fayetteville Observer and The Winston-Salem Journal, she landed a season-long internship as a photographer for the digital media department for the Carolina Panthers during the 2013 season. After her internship, she spent the 2014 season as a contract photographer for the Panthers, which turned into a full-time position as team photographer in 2015.

Deanne Fitzmaurice

As a Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary photographer and filmmaker, this San Francisco-based photographer is most known for her visual storytelling and unique ability to go behind the scenes to discover and convey personal, intimate and emotional stories through images. With a focus on contemporary culture, Fitzmaurice, a Nikon Ambassador, represents a wide variety of publications, including creating content for National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and many other respected outlets.

In addition to her editorial work, she often collaborates with non-profits and foundations and also holds an impressive portfolio of commercial photography with a myriad of major brands and is a highly decorated storyteller. Deanne has won awards from American Photography, Pictures of the Year, Communication Arts, PDN Photo Annual, NPPA Best of Photojournalism, UNICEF and the Casey Medal.

Deanne is a regular lecturer and instructor at respected institutions including Stanford University Continuing Ed where she teaches Visual Storytelling. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Deanne worked as a staff photographer at the San Francisco Chronicle for 18 years and is now represented by National Geographic Image Collection. She and her husband Kurt Rogers are co-founders of Think Tank Photo.

Steph Chambers

Steph Chambers is a staff photographer with Getty Images based in Seattle.

Pittsburgh-raised, she moved back to Pennsylvania after completing her B.S. in journalism from Missouri State University, where she was recruited to compete in Division-I field hockey. Sports culture is her passion and a driving force in her work.

Steph was a member of the Post-Gazette staff that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the Tree of Life synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh. The judges said the staff's work was “immersive, compassionate coverage ... that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into grief.”

In 2020, Steph was named the Pictures of the Year International 77th competition’s Sports Photographer of the Year, Northern Short Course Photographer of the Year, National Press Photographers Association's Best of Photojournalism Sports Photographer of the Year Runner-Up, National Press Photographers Association Mid-Atlantic Region clip contest Photographer of the Year for the past five years, among other accolades.

Steph lives in Seattle with her husband Keven and their Australian cattle dog Hoagie.

Jose Carlos Fajardo

Jose Carlos Fajardo is a Pulitzer-winning photojournalist at the East Bay Times, based in Walnut Creek, California.

He began his 25-year career in 1994 as a photo technician before becoming a full-time staff photographer in 1997. Jose, who is known for his striking sports photographs, covers the Golden State Warriors, Oakland A’s, the San Francisco Giants and San Francisco 49ers. Most notably, he has covered four World Series, five NBA Championships and five Super Bowls.

Aside from sports, Jose also documents breaking news stories such as Northern California wildfires, Black Lives Matter protests and COVID-19. His work has received national recognition and many accolades.

In 1999, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter awarded him the Outstanding Young Journalist award for his work in Mexico, El Salvador and California. In 2018, he was part of the East Bay Times team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland.

Jose urges those who want to pursue a career in this field to find a mentor whose work you admire and can learn from their experiences. Finally, he says his main goal is to make a difference because there is a lot of good work to be done to change the world.

When he isn’t working, Fajardo enjoys spending time with his family — and photographing his son , J.J. , and their dog, Lulu.

REPORTAGE TEAM 1
February 25–26

Session includes (1) Science & Natural History, (2) Science & Natural History Picture Story, (14) COVID Personal Experience, (31) Environmental Vision Award and (32) Community Awareness Award

Elizabeth Cheng Krist

A National Geographic photo editor for more than 20 years, Elizabeth Krist is a founding member of the Visual Thinking Collective. She is on the board of Women Photograph and the W. Eugene Smith Fund, helps program National Geographic’s Photography Seminar, and advises the Eddie Adams Workshop. Krist curated A Mother’s Eye for Photoville and CatchLight, and the Women of Vision exhibition and book.

Elizabeth teaches for ICP and La Luz. Honors include awards from Pictures of the Year International, Overseas Press Club, and Communication Arts. She has reviewed portfolios for The New York Times and PhotoPlus, and has judged for the Lit List, The FENCE, the Ian Parry Scholarship, Getty/Instagram, the RFK Journalism Awards as well as POY. Krist recently worked with The 400 Years Project on Native American identity and is currently editing a photo book on China.

Alyssa Schukar

Alyssa Schukar is a Washington, D.C.-based photographer, journalist, and educator. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and Feeding America. While her work is rooted in a love of people, it is propelled by a desire to study and identify the larger forces that affect Americans’ everyday lives.

Alyssa believes photojournalists advance and improve the industry by supporting each other. She is a co-founder of Prism Photo Workshop, which provides support and advocacy for young photographers of diverse backgrounds. She is a returning faculty member of the Missouri Photo Workshop, which connects photographers with industry leaders who guide them through the process of narrative, documentary storytelling.

Katie Orlinsky

Katie Orlinsky’s photography tells stories about the everyday lives of people in extreme situations, capturing the intimate moments of daily life behind larger global issues. She has photographed all over the world documenting everything from conflict and social issues to wildlife and sports.

For the past six years a large portion of her work has focused on climate change, exploring the transforming relationship between people, animals and the land. Katie is a regular contributor to National Geographic and a member of Prime Collective. Her work is also frequently published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and Smithsonian Magazine, among others.

Katie has won numerous awards over the course of her career from institutions such as World Press Photo, The Alexia Foundation, Pictures of the Year International and the Art Director’s Club. She received her BA at Colorado College and a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University. In 2018 she was named the Snedden Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she taught photojournalism as a visiting professor.

Ron Tarver

Ron Tarver received a BA in Journalism and Graphic Arts from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, OK and an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. He serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of Studio Art specializing in photography at Swarthmore College.

Before Swarthmore, Tarver was a photojournalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 32 years where he shares a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his work on a series documenting school violence in the Philadelphia public school system and has been nominated three previous times. His work has been published in National Geographic, Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Black and White Magazine. He is a co-author of the book We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans, published by Harper Collins in 2004, which was accompanied by a traveling exhibition that debuted at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

In addition to a successful career in photojournalism, Tarver has distinguished himself in the field of fine art photography. A recipient of the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts, he has also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts through BLAC Inc. in Oklahoma City, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and two Independence Foundation Fellowships. He was named one of the Delaware Valley's "50 Rising Stars in the Arts" by Seven Arts Magazine and is an alumnus of the Center for Emerging Visual Artists.

In 2020 his current project, An Overdue Conversation With My Father, was awarded a solo exhibit during the 94th Annual International competition at The Print Center in Philadelphia. Tarver's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over 30 solo and 50 group exhibitions and is included in many private, corporate, and museum collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, Oklahoma Museum of History, Studio Museum in Harlem, and the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. His work is represented by Robin Rice Gallery in New York, Soho-Myriad in Atlanta, Georgia, and Grand Image in Seattle, Washington.

REPORTAGE TEAM 2
February 28–March 1

Session includes (9) International News Picture Story, (10) Issue Reporting Picture Story, (12) Local News Picture Story, (33) World Understanding Award and (27) Photographer of the Year, International

Samantha Appleton

Samantha Appleton is a photographer and 2019 Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Her work combines art and history to interpret the complicated components of global news stories. She has covered many of the most tumultuous, man-made events of the 21st Century.

Sam’s work includes coverage of conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, social issues in Africa, and immigration issues in the US. She was an official White House photographer for the Obama administration 2009-2012.

Appleton co-founded the photo agency Noor Images to promote projects in support of human rights and social justice. She has won numerous awards including Pictures of the Year, World Press Master Class, American Photography and Camera Arts.

Michael Robinson Chavez

Michael is a native Californian and half Peruvian, who fell in love with photography during high school when a friend gave him a camera for a 3-month trip to Peru in 1988. He is a staff photographer at The Washington Post.

In his career, he was worked for The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe and the Associated Press and covered assignments in more than 70 countries including climate change in Siberia, the economic collapse in Venezuela, violence in Mexico, droughts in California, tsunamis in Indonesia and Chile, the Egyptian revolution, life in India and Brazil’s slums, gold mining in Peru, the 2006 Hezbollah/Israeli war and the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Michael teaches and exhibits at workshops and photo festivals throughout the world. In 2019, he was named the Photographer of the Year International and was a finalist in 2010 and 2014.

In 2020, Michael was part of The Washington Post team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism that showed the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn is a documentary photographer. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and has been published in Le Monde, National Geographic, Vogue, NPR, VOX, Vanity Fair, among other publications. Her work was recently nominated for a 2020 News and Documentary Emmy.

Laylah is the co-author of the book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora and is a member of Kamoinge, a pioneering collective of African American photographers founded in 1963. She was included as one of the Royal Photographic Society’s (UK) Hundred Heroines.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at The Museum of the African Diaspora San Francisco, The Taubman Museum of Art (VA), MAK Gallery (Venice + London) and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Arts (NY). Her work has been shown collectively at the MANIFESTA Biennale (Italy); Brighton Photo Biennial (UK); The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago).

Laylah is currently working on a book on contemporary Black photographers.

Carl-Pillipe Juste

Under the threat of persecution, Haitian-born Carl-Philippe Juste and his politically active family were forced to flee their homeland in 1965. Settling in Miami’s Haitian community, Juste flourished academically and attended the University of Miami. He vigorously pursued photojournalism and, since 1991, has worked as a photojournalist for The Miami Herald.

Carl has covered many international and national stories for The Miami Herald, including assignments in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, he has worked on three documentary projects for the Historical Museum of Southern Florida: At the Crossroad: Afro-Cuban Orisha Arts in Miami (2001) and South American Musical Traditions in Miami (2002), Haitian Community Arts: Images by Iris PhotoCollective. All were funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Carl has been a guest lecturer for many national organizations and universities. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. His work has been exhibited in various prestigious institutions and galleries in Cuba, Dominican Republic and the United States. He is one of the founders of Iris Photo Collective in 1998, a collaboration to create a new context in order to explore and document the relationship of people of color to the world. Carl also founded IPC Visual Lab, a new school of thought teaching the art of photojournalism as a visual language.

DOCUMENTARY TEAM
March 3–4

Session includes (19) Documentary Daily Life, (20) Documentary News Reporting, (21) Documentary Journalism and (30) Documentary Storyteller of the Year

Sue Morrow

Editor and Creative Director of News Photographer magazine, National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).

She has worked as a photo editor and manager at some of the best newspapers in the country: San Jose Mercury News, Tampa Bay Times, The Sacramento Bee, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Boston Globe. During her tenure as Assistant Managing Editor for photography at the Times, the photo staff was recognized with numerous awards for photography and editing in Pictures of the Year International, Best of Photojournalism, and Society of News Design, winning Picture Editing Team Portfolio in POYi.

She edited and designed The Bee's 2007 Pulitzer Prize feature photography winning entry “A Mother’s Journey” and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature photography “A Grandfather’s Sorrow and Love.”

She was the visiting professional for E.W. Scripps School of Communications at Ohio University in 2017-18 and has lectured at The Poynter Institute, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar and many NPPA-related seminars and contests. Since 1994, she has been a faculty and board member with The Kalish pictures editing workshop and served as its director 2011-13.

Sue earned an MA from the School of Visual Communication in Athens as the Knight Fellow at Ohio University 2010-11. During that time she produced the short documentary “Born to Die” borntodie.org about horse rescue at Last Chance Corral, which made its debut at the Athens International Film & Video Festival in April 2013 and at Equus Film Festival NYC, Nov. 2014 and 2015. Expansion on the film continues.

In 2019, Sue and her husband, Michael, and two cats relocated to Athens, Ohio to live in the country where she produces the bimonthly magazine News Photographer for the NPPA while also teaching at Ohio University.

Brian Palmer

Brian is a Richmond, VA-based journalist, a visiting assistant professor in the Journalism Department at the University of Richmond, and an adjunct at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

For the past seven years he has lived in Virginia, where his focus has been illuminating what his collaborator (and wife), Erin Hollaway, has called “the afterlife of Jim Crow.” They see this legacy of systemic racism (and privilege) in the continued funding of Confederate monuments and sites across the South, even as the Black Lives Matter movement and others complicate and enrich our collective American narrative; and in the persistent neglect and underfunding of African American sites of memory.

Palmer's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, Smithsonian magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, Richmond Free Press, and on Buzzfeed, PBS Weekend NewsHour, and Reveal radio. With Seth Freed Wessler, he received the Peabody Award, National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award, and Online Journalism Award for “Monumental Lies,” a 2018 Reveal radio story about public funding for Confederate sites.

Before going freelance in 2002, he served in a number of staff positions—Beijing bureau chief for US News & World Report; staff writer at Fortune; and on-air correspondent at CNN. Brian began his career as a fact-checker for the Village Voice.

Shaminder Dulai

Shaminder Dulai is Crosscut’s head of visuals. He is an award-winning photo/video journalist and creative technologist with 20 years of experience producing stories for newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and digital newsrooms across the United States. He is a Poynter Fellow, an International Center for Journalists Fellow, a Hearst Fellow and was a finalist for the Knight-Mozilla Fellowship and Harvard Nieman Fellowship.

Recently, he served as the Managing Editor for NBC Left Field, an internationally focused experimental long-form documentary unit. Prior, he served as the Global Director of Photography and Multimedia for Newsweek magazine, where he founded Newsweek Films and PhotoLab.

He was an instructor in New Media Narratives and facility member with the International Center for Photography. He is co-founder of StatelessVoices and founder of PhotoWalk. His personal projects have been published with Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Newsweek, PBS, CJR, Everyday Projects, MSNBC, NBC, Global Post, The Guardian, and the AP, among others.

Julie Winokur

Julie Winokur is the founding director of Talking Eyes Media. Her work has appeared on PBS, National Geographic, the Documentary Channel, Discovery and Time Magazine online, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, MediaStorm and MSNBC.

Julie co-founded Newest Americans, a digital magazine and storytelling project about immigration and identity. She also produced Bring It to The Table, a documentary film and community engagement project aimed at breaking down hyper-partisanship. Her work has earned two regional Emmy nominations and numerous awards from World Press, Pictures of the Year and Photo District News. She is a National Geographic Explorer and has served on the faculty of Rutgers University-Newark and the International Center of Photography.

VISUAL EDITING TEAM
March 6–7

Session includes (22) Online Storytelling: Daily Life & News Reporting, (23) Online Storytelling Project of the Year, (24) Newspaper Picture Editing, (25) Magazine Picture Editing, (26) Visual Editor of the Year and (34) Angus McDougall Excellence in Editing Award

Jasmine Goldband

Jasmine Goldband joined the Houston Chronicle as the special projects multimedia photo editor in 2017. She is responsible for the visual presentation for the Houston Chronicle’s most ambitious investigative and enterprise photojournalism.

In 2016, she was the founding visual producer for Spirited Media's Pittsburgh newsroom, TheIncline.com, producing video, photography and multimedia storytelling for the mobile-first local news startup site. A native of Pennsylvania, Goldband previously worked as a photojournalist for over 15 years as a staff photographer at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Avi Gupta

Avi Gupta is the director of photography for U.S. News & World Report where he oversees photography production across the website and specialty print issues. He has more than 15 years of experience working with award-winning photographers covering current events around the globe.

As an artist, his photographic works have been exhibited widely and held in the permanent collections of The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s Asia Pacific Center. At George Washington University’s Corcoran College of Art, Avi lectures on creative approaches to photojournalism and fine art photography.

Deb Pang Davis

As The 19th*’s Product Designer, Deb Pang Davis designs reader experiences to help make journalism at The 19th* more actionable and accessible.

In 2020, she completed an MFA in Interactive Media at the University of Miami where she gained a wide range of technology, research, and data skills, as well as a healthy appreciation and interest in the design of AI and other emerging technologies.

Deb has a varied career that includes running a small design studio designing websites with dozens of independent photographers, teaching design at the Newhouse School and working as a designer and art director for newspapers and magazines such as The Globe and Mail, The Chicago Tribune, Copley Sun Publications, and National Geographic Traveler. Deb recently relocated to Texas with her husband, Mike, and their dog Maisie.

Brett Roegiers

Brett Roegiers is a senior photo editor at CNN Digital. He supervises a team of editors who handle politics, business, features and international news. He oversees special projects and commissions original photography for CNN.

Brett helped launch the CNN Photos blog in 2011 and went on to become its lead editor. He was also one of the photo editors behind “Unprecedented: The Election That Changed Everything,” a book that features exclusive work from more than two dozen photographers who chronicled the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

While earning his journalism degree at the University of Florida, Brett cultivated a knack for web development and design with a focus on multimedia storytelling.

His work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, the National Press Photographers Association, American Photography and the Webby Awards, among others.

MODERATORS

Lynden Steele

Director of photojournalism, Reynolds Journalism Institute

As director of photojournalism at RJI, Lynden Steele oversees the Pictures of the Year International competition, coordinates worldwide exhibitions and manages the POYI archive. He also teaches at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Before coming to RJI, Steele worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 2008, most recently as assistant managing editor of photography. The work of his staff has been widely recognized. Notable awards include the 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Domestic Photography, the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography and the POYI Director’s Choice in 2015.

In 2014, his staff, along with the Post-Dispatch’s graphics and metro team, won an EPPY Award from Editor & Publisher for Best Use of Photography on a Website and the Scripps Howard Foundation Award for Breaking News for staff coverage of Ferguson.

Prior to his work in St. Louis, Steele was a picture editor at the White House and edited the photography book “Portraits of a Leader: George W. Bush.”

Steele began his career as a staff photographer at the Monroe (Michigan) Evening News, and also worked as a staff photographer for Copley newspapers.

He received his bachelor’s degree in photojournalism from the Missouri School of Journalism.

Steele and his wife, Jody Mitori, who is also a Missouri School of Journalism graduate, have three children, 9-year-old twins and a 13-year-old son.