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.

POY83 JUDGES AND MENTORS

JUDGING PANELS

News Division: News Panel #1
Feb. 9–10

Categories: General News, Daily Life (singles), Daily Life Picture Story, Community Awareness Award

Hannah Yoon

Hannah Yoon is a freelance photographer and photo editor based in Philadelphia, PA who works for national and international media publications.

She has also worked as a contract photo editor for publications like the Marshall Project, The New York Times and Maclean’s Magazine.

Hannah is a proud member of Women Photograph, Diversify Photo and a founding board member of the Authority Collective. Hannah also serves as a jury member for the Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award and the CJF-Edward Burtynsky Award for Climate Photojournalism.

Most recently, Hannah was part of the Washington Post’s 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist team on their coverage of Hurricane Helene.

Andrew Stanfill

Andrew Stanfill is a photo editor and organizational leader with fifteen years of experience editing for The New York Times News Service for world events from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Olympic Games. He is a past NPPA president, who guided the organization through the strenuous first year of the pandemic. He resides in Bellingham, Wash., with his partner, dogs and sense of adventure.

Jason Armond

Jason Armond is a staff photojournalist at the Los Angeles Times and an adjunct professor at Loyola Marymount University and Los Angeles City College. He is a regular guest lecturer at USC and at his alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill. He also serves as Vice Chair and Scholarship Chair of the NABJ Visual Task Force, where he champions diversity and mentorship in visual journalism.

At the Los Angeles Times, Armond covers a diverse array of assignments, ranging from breaking news and in-depth enterprise stories to high-profile entertainment portraiture.

Armond is passionate about documenting the triumphs and challenges of marginalized communities. His work frequently explores mental health in Black communities and showcases the vibrancy and joy of Black culture across Los Angeles. Through his lens, he challenges prevailing narratives and amplifies voices often overlooked. His dedication to visual storytelling is rooted in a deep belief in the power of visual journalism to inform, enlighten, and inspire.

Armond’s work has earned numerous accolades, including the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award, NABJ Salute to Excellence Award, Associated Press Sports Editors Video Award, White House News Photographers Association Award, Hearst Journalism Award, LA Press Club Award, and a Society for News Design Award.

Jessica Phelps

Jessica Phelps is an independent photojournalist who focuses on long-form stories. She aims to go beyond the surface to showcase intimate and important moments of the lives reflected in her lens.

Her career began at her hometown paper, the Newark Advocate in Newark, Ohio, where she worked for 8 years before accepting a job at the San Antonio Express-News. She recently made the move back to Columbus, Ohio, to work as an independent photographer and to pursue issue-based stories. Jessica prides herself on building personal relationships with people to gain access into their lives and share their stories.

Jessica has been named the 76th Photographer of the Year by POYi and twice named Photographer of the Year by NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism contest. Jessica has also been recognized for her work with the Cliff Edom New America Award. Her work has appeared in local and national publications, including the Associated Press and The New York Times.

News Division: News Panel #2
Feb. 12–13

Categories: Spot News, Local News (picture story), Portrait (singles), Local Photographer of the Year

Bethany Mollenkof

Bethany Mollenkof's work explores motherhood, gender, identity, and representation through intimate, human-centered stories. Raised off the grid in Kenya as the middle of five kids, she learned to see the world with curiosity, empathy, and imagination. This perspective has shaped her work to be both measured and intuitive, thoughtful and real. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Vice, National Geographic, and Wired, with highly regarded advertising clients.

Marvin Joseph

Marvin Joseph, is an independent professional photographer and CEO of Kingmarvino Photography LLC, a native of the District of Columbia, He worked as a staff photographer for The Washington Post for over 27 years. He started snapping photographs at age 14 and began his career at The Post as a news aide at 19. Joseph interned for the Walt Disney World Company in Orlando, Florida, where he documented tourist visits and various events at the theme parks. He landed his first job as a staff photojournalist at the Press Journal in Vero Beach, FL, before working for the Palm Beach Post. In July 2000, he returned to the D.C. area to work in the Howard County bureau for The Washington Post. He covers general assignments for the news organization. Joseph is especially passionate about celebrity portraiture and fashion photography.

Honors and Awards: Pictures of the Year International; National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism; Northern Short Course; The Annual Associated Press Sports Editors Contest; White House News Photographers Association; Photographs included in the 2025 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in National Reporting; Photographs included in the 2011 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Explanatory Reporting (documenting Specialist Robert Warren, a soldier who returned from Afghanistan with a traumatic brain injury.)

Kendrick Brinson

Kendrick Brinson’s portraiture and documentary photography explores the fabric of community through the connections, landscape and personality that makes these places unique. She has covered diverse subjects, including up-and-coming rappers in Atlanta, a cheerleading team of women 55 to 90 years old in an age-restricted community in Arizona, and celebrities including Julia Roberts and Bill Gates. Her various clients range from The New York Times to National Geographic to Rolling Stone.

Brinson's book Sun City: Life After Life, a book filled with images that she took while documenting the world's first retirement city for more than a decade, will be published by Artisan in fall of 2026. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband David Walter Banks.

Ariel Zambelich

Ariel Zambelich is a freelance photojournalist and the Visuals Director at The Baltimore Banner, where she leads a team to collaborate on telling stories through photojournalism, video, illustration and design. She previously worked at The Wall Street Journal, The Intercept, NPR Visuals, and WIRED. She spent 6 years on the board of the Authority Collective, an organization that amplifies the voices of female-identifying and nonbinary lens-based creators of color through community action. She was also an organizer with the Freelance Solidarity Project, a union for freelance media workers.

Sports Division
Feb. 15–16

Categories: Sports Action, Sports Life and Recreational Sports, Sports Picture Story and Sports Photographer of the Year

Monica Herndon

Monica Herndon is an Emmy award winning photojournalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer. She works in a hybrid role, contributing to both still and video coverage on stories across the newsroom. Her main areas of focus are food and sports. Monica is also an FAA certified commercial drone pilot.

Before moving to the cheesesteak capital of the world, she spent five years at the Tampa Bay Times, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Monica is a past Chair of the National Association of Black Journalists Visual Task Force and a member of NPPA and Diversify Photo.

Jerry Holt

Jerry Holt has been a staff photographer at the Minnesota Star Tribune since 1990. As a general assignment photographer, he's covered local, national, and international stories over the span of his career as well as many sporting events for the paper. He grew up in the small town of Cleveland located in the Mississippi Delta and was introduced to photography at a young age. He graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. He has volunteered at different high schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul, teaching and coaching young photographers. He has also worked with students at the University of Minnesota this year. Holt and his wife Shirley have two adult daughters, and one handsome grandson.

Dennis Manuel Rivera Pichardo

Dennis Manuel Rivera Pichardo has a background in Anthropology, having earned his bachelor's at The University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. After more than 15 years of photographing for major newspapers and photo agencies around the Caribbean, he moved to the Dominican Republic and worked as Chief Photo Editor and Digital Innovation Consultant for Diario Libre, the largest Media Organization of the Dominican Republic.

Currently he serves as Head of Audiovisual and Director of Photography for GFRMedia the largest media company in his hometown Puerto Rico. He is responsible for all visual aspects of the two mayor newspapers on the Island El Nuevo Dia and Primera Hora.

Kevin Martin

Kevin Martin is the Deputy Director of Photography at The Boston Globe. He previously served as a photo editor at the Star Tribune, San Antonio Express-News, The Associated Press, Knoxville News Sentinel, The Advocate in Baton Rouge, and The State in Columbia, South Carolina.

In 2022, Martin was named Visual Editor of the Year by Pictures of the Year International. He is a former director of the Kalish Visual Editing Workshop and has twice served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize photography categories. In 2021, he was part of the Star Tribune newsroom staff awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

Martin holds a master’s degree in photography from the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Eastern Kentucky University.

Reportage Division, Panel #1
Feb. 18–19

Categories: Science & Natural History (singles), Science & Natural History Picture Story, Issue Reporting Picture Story and Environmental Vision Award

Camille Seaman

Camille Seaman was born in 1969. She graduated in 1992 from the State University of New York at Purchase, where she studied photography with Jan Groover and John Cohen. Her photographs have been published in National Geographic Magazine, Italian Geo, German GEO, TIME, The New York Times Sunday magazine, Newsweek, Outside, Zeit Wissen, Men's Journal, Seed, Camera Arts, Issues, PDN, and American Photo among many others. She frequently leads photographic workshops. Her photographs have received many awards including: a National Geographic Award, 2006; and the Critical Mass Top Monograph Award, 2007. She is a TED Senior Fellow, Stanford Knight Fellow as well as a Cinereach Filmmaker in Residence Fellow.

Camille Seaman strongly believes in capturing photographs that articulate that humans are not separate from nature.

Jason Gulley

Jason Gulley is a Professor of Geology at the University of South Florida, photojournalist and writer. His work has been published by a range of international publications including: National Geographic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, GEO, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost and others.

Jason’s research and photography career have taken him on expeditions to all seven continents, from underwater caves in Florida, the Caribbean and Africa as well as to glaciers in Alaska, the Arctic and the Mt Everest region of Nepal.

He has a PhD in geology from the University of Florida (2010) and is a technical diving and rebreather instructor and teaches courses in scientific diving at USF. Jason’s research emphasizes the human impacts on the environment, cave systems, the aquifer, and especially Florida's springs.

Starting in 2020, Jason had an epiphany of sorts: scientists have never been more certain about how humans are impacting the planet, but the policy changes needed to protect the environment were not being implemented. Because more science seemed unlikely to change perceptions of the public and policy makers, Jason decided to combine his photojournalism background and scientific expertise to tell compelling, science-based stories about our planet.

Gail Fletcher

Gail Fletcher is a Photo Editor at The Guardian, where she develops and produces visual stories. She is also on faculty at the International Center of Photography and was previously an Associate Photo Editor at National Geographic. Several of the projects she produced alongside editors and photographers received recognition from organizations including Pictures of the Year, ASME, and World Press Photo. She has served as a juror for the Alexia Grant, Review Santa Fe, American Photography, and others, and she regularly reviews portfolios to help photographers and artists refine their best work. Originally from South Florida, she is now based in Brooklyn, New York.

Alex Snyder

Alex Snyder is an award‑winning photo editor and photojournalist. As Senior Photo Editor for The Nature Conservancy, he has produced more than 30 feature stories for their flagship publication, Nature Conservancy Magazine. In this role, he has also produced award‑winning short documentary films.

Alex also serves as Communications Director for The Photo Society, where he manages the group’s online community of more than 5 million people and hosts “The Photo Society Presents” — a free, monthly virtual talk series featuring the work of TPS members.

Prior to his current roles, Alex was a photographer for the Peace Corps, traveling to 15 countries to document the volunteer experience.

Reportage Division, Panel #2
Feb. 21–22

Categories: Impact 2025 Picture Story: The Political Divide, World Understanding Award, National/International News Picture Story and International Photographer of the Year

Malin Fezehai

Malin Fezehai is an Eritrean/Swedish Kenya-based photographer, filmmaker, and visual reporter. She has worked in over 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and America. Malin is a National Geographic Explorer, and in 2023, she became a Climate Pledge grantee and is working on a project about adaptation to living on water.

Her career started in her native Sweden, where she studied photography before moving to New York to attend the International Center of Photography. Her work focuses on communities of displacement and dislocation around the world. In 2018, she worked at The New York Times as a visual reporter for the Surfacing column. She focused on innovative visual storytelling across desks and disciplines during this one-year residency.

Malin was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme to photograph survivors of violent extremism across Sub-Saharan Africa and published a book titled “SURVIVORS” to remind audiences about the growth of violent extremism and its devastating impact on the civilian population.

Malin has received a 2015 World Press Photo Award, the Wallis Annenberg Prize, and was named one of the 30 Emerging Photographers to watch in 2015 by Photo District News. Her image depicting a Wedding of Eritrean Refugees in Israel was the first iPhone image ever to receive a World Press Photo Award. In 2017, World Press Photo invited her to serve as one of the Masters to teach at a workshop for West African photographers in Accra, Ghana.

Some of her clients include The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Apple, Nike, The Malala Foundation, United Nations, and WaterAid.

Kasia Strek

Kasia Strek is a Polish–French documentary photographer and researcher who combines visual and written storytelling to expose human rights violations and the lasting consequences of major global events. Her work focuses on gender-based violence, women’s reproductive health, civilians in conflict, and environmental challenges. Trained in trauma-informed reporting, she works independently or with multidisciplinary, multicultural teams, centring her practice on long-term documentary projects. For the past five years, she has regularly worked in Eastern Europe, focusing on the ongoing full-scale war in Ukraine

She is a Pulitzer Center grantee, and her work has received international recognition through awards including the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, the Sony World Photography Award, the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation Award and the Spotlight Award at Festival della Fotografia Etica. As part of a multidisciplinary team reporting in Ukraine, her work has also earned the NPPA Best of Photojournalism Award and was named a Webby Awards Laureate in the Politics & News category.

Kasia regularly collaborates with major international outlets and organisations including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, National Geographic, The Guardian, Die Zeit, and Le Monde, as well as Doctors Without Borders, WHO, and UNICEF. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Visa pour l’Image, Festival La Gacilly, Photoville, and the Zoom Festival. In addition to her photographic practice, she leads workshops and lectures on ethical visual storytelling and long-term documentation.

Jon Shapley

Jon Shapley is a Houston-based photojournalist, videographer and video editor. He recently left the Houston Chronicle, where he spent four years as the staff videographer and six years as a staff photographer. His goal is to tell stories that help people better understand each other. He has covered everything from hurricanes, mass shootings and sports championships to school board meetings and Easter egg hunts.

Jade-Snow Joachim

Jade-Snow Joachim is an award-winning photo editor who, most recently, was the director of photography at POLITICO where she managed the photo report for the newsroom and magazine. She has been on staff at The New York Times, Washington Post and Bloomberg News.

In her career, Jade-Snow has worked across coverage areas, overseeing the photo report for sports, business, arts, politics, international and national news. She has managed live coverage, editing and coordinating photographer teams for presidential nominating conventions and inaugurations, State of the Union addresses, campaign and election nights, Olympics, World Series and the Tony Awards.

She recently moved from New York to State College, PA with her husband, David, a journalism professor at Penn State, their two middle school aged children, and Sasha, their pandemic rescue pup.

Print Editing
Feb. 24–25

Categories: Newspaper Editing, Magazine Editing, Visual Editor of the Year, Angus McDougall Excellence in Editing Award and Portrait Series

Tom Burton

Tom Burton is an associate professor of practice at Texas A&M University, where he teaches a variety of journalism courses, including his specialization in visual journalism. Burton is an editor emeritus of the National Press Photographers Association, where he published News Photographer magazine.

Burton’s journalism career was with the Orlando Sentinel as a photojournalist, photo editor and as director of photography and video. Burton’s assignments included national political campaigns, sports championships, natural disasters in the U.S. and abroad, and crisis stories in South America and the Caribbean. Burton was also an innovator in transformative technology, introducing video to print newsrooms, managing the transition to digital photography, and early social media publishing. Burton’s work has been published by the Associated Press, The New York Times, Time, Vanity Fair and the Los Angeles Times.

His professional awards include competitions sponsored by the Pictures of the Year, the Atlanta Seminar for Photojournalism, the Society of News Design, the National Press Photographers Association and the Florida Press Club. Burton was also the 2018-19 Knight Fellow at Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in Visual Communication Management in 2021.

Celina Fang

Celina was previously a photo editor for The New York Times National, Metro, Science and Arts and Leisure sections. She was on the Marshall Project team that won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for ““Mauled: When Police Dogs are Weapons,” and her work as a visuals editor has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, NPPA's Best of Photojournalism, the Society for News Design, the Society of Publication Designers, the Communication Arts Awards, American Photography, American Illustration and the World Illustration Awards.

Donny Bajohr

Donny is a photo editor at Smithsonian magazine, where he commissions photographers in various genres, including fine art, documentary, and reportage. His collaborations have received recognition from American Photography, NPPA Best of Photojournalism, Communication Arts, The Society of Publication Designers, and the American Society of Magazine Editors. Donny is also a visual artist and photographer, holding a BFA in photojournalism from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Florence Nash

Florence Nash was born and raised in France and she always wanted to be a journalist. In Paris she started her career as a freelance writer. After immigrating to New York, she channelled her passion for storytelling into photojournalism, taking jobs with French photo news agencies Syma and Gamma. Here she participated in the production of news coverage, from supporting photographers in the field to editing coverage for the American and International markets. During this time, she covered many major historical and cultural events as they happened including the Tiananmen Square massacre, the OJ Simpson murder trial, September 11 World Trade Center Center attack, and countless natural disasters. After leaving Gamma, Florence began working as a freelance photo editor. She contributed to a number of publications including Newsweek, ESPN, Business Week and the photography book "A Day In The Life of the U.S. Armed Forces". Later she joined People Magazine where she has now been covering human interest, news and crime stories for over 20 years.

Florence's work has been recognized by American Photography (AP 35, 38, 40). In 2018 she received the photography award from the Society of Publication Designers (SPD). In addition, she has served on the jury panel of American Photography and participates in several portfolio reviews every year. She also helps curate the members list of photographers for Diversify.

Online Editing Division
Feb. 27–28

Categories: Online Storytelling: Daily Life, Online Storytelling: News and Online Storytelling Project of the Year

Leah Latella

Leah Latella is a visual storytelling editor, producer, and educator. She currently works in communications at the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, where she creates and promotes content related to climate change, nuclear policy, and mass violence prevention. Before joining the Stanley Center, Leah worked for 18 years as a photo editor and visuals producer at The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Time, and Newsweek. She teaches multimedia storytelling as an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa's School of Journalism and Mass Communication and as Visuals Coach to the student staff at The Daily Iowan.

Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

Miguel Gutierrez Jr. is a visuals editor and photojournalist. Holding a double M.A. in Journalism and Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in Latino Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Miguel has developed a diverse multimedia skill set in photography, video production and illustration. Before joining CalMatters, Miguel was photo editor at the Texas Tribune in Austin, Texas. Originally from Chicago, Miguel is currently located in the snowless city of Sacramento. The proud son of Mexican immigrant parents, he’s a first-generation college graduate.

Forrest Milburn

Forrest Milburn is the director of audience at the Fort Worth Report, where he leads strategy around distribution, audience growth and reader engagement. Forrest has previously worked in audience journalism roles at the Houston Landing, the Miami Herald and the Texas Tribune. He is a lifelong Texan, having grown up in the North Dallas suburbs, and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. When he's not working, Forrest loves tending to his indoor plant collection and playing with his two cats, Artemis and Apollo.

Dr. Jennifer Midberry

Dr. Jennifer Midberry is an associate professor in the Journalism Department of Temple University's Klein College of Media and Communication. Her research program explores how to improve journalism to create more ethical reporting on marginalized groups and to more effectively evoke audience empathy and engagement with important social issues. Under that overarching theme, her research branches in two directions: visual communication in news and reporting on gun violence. Previous to her career in academia, she worked as a visual journalist for organizations such as The Philadelphia Daily News, the Associated Press, AOL News, and ABC News.

Documentary Division
March 1–2

Categories: Documentary News Reporting (video), Documentary Daily Life and Documentary of the Year

Maisie Crow

Maisie Crow is an award winning documentary filmmaker and photojournalist based in Texas.

In 2024, she co-directed Zurawaski v Texas alongside Abbie Perrault with executive producers Jennifer Lawrence, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and received the American Bar Association Silver Gavel award for Best Documentary along with more than a dozen festival awards. Her 2021 documentary, At the Ready premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on MAX. In 2017, her documentary, Jackson, premiered on Showtime and went on to win the 2018 News and Documentary Emmy award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary.

From 2019 to 2024, she was the editor-in-chief of The Big Bend Sentinel and Presidio International newspapers in Far West Texas. Maisie has taught photojournalism and video storytelling as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Teresa de Miguel

Teresa de Miguel is a Spanish visual journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Mexico City. She is the Associated Press Climate & Environment video producer, covering spot news and in-depth features. Her work has been recognized by the Online Journalism Awards, the Inter American Press Association Awards, the Gabo Awards, and the WAN-IFRA Americas Awards, among others.

Previously, she worked for El País in Mexico City and was a New York correspondent for EFE. Her debut short documentary, Kemonito: The Final Fall (2022), is streaming on Netflix and has screened at more than a dozen festivals worldwide, including DOC NYC and Doc Edge.

Josh Davis

Josh Davis is a journalist, filmmaker and associate professor of journalism at San Francisco State University. His documentary projects include Charlottesville: Race and Terror for VICE News and Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt for NPR — two widely recognized projects that helped shape national conversations around race, the economy, and innovation in digital storytelling. He holds an M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and recently served two terms on the Board of Directors for the National Press Photographers Association, the leading voice for visual journalists.

Juan Arredondo

Juan Arredondo is a Colombian-American documentary photographer dedicated to chronicling stories of human rights, immigration, and social conflict across Latin America, the United States, and Ukraine. He was embedded with FARC rebels to document the peace process between the Colombian government and FARC, as well as the demobilization and reintegration of former fighters into Colombian society—a project that won him several awards, including the prestigious World Press Photo Award and Humanitarian Visa d'or Award - International Committee of the Red Cross. His work has also captured significant conflicts and crises, including civil unrest in Venezuela and Colombia and the migration crisis in Central America and the United States, for The New York Times and National Geographic. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and holds a degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He teaches photojournalism and documentary filmmaking at Rutgers University.

MENTORS

Antranik Tavitian

I’m a first generation Syrian-American with Armenian ethnic roots. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Currently, I’m a freelance visual journalist based in Houston, Texas, who covers stories in the Gulf region and beyond.

My work focuses on immigration, environment, politics, and marginalized communities.

My photos have published in the Star Tribune, Detroit Free Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. I’m a member of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association and Diversify Photo.

I graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2025. I speak English, Armenian, and Spanish.

Alie Skowronski

Alie Skowronski, is a staff photographer at the Miami Herald in Miami, FL and a certified scuba diver specializing in underwater and environmental stories. Previously, Skowronski interned at the Columbus Dispatch, the Sacramento Bee, the Ann Arbor News/MLive.com and the ActionQuest Media Team in the British Virgin Islands.

She has dove in the Galápagos, St. Kitts, Nevis, Ohio and the Florida Keys and British Virgin Islands.

Skowronski was honored with a first in the National Hearst Photojournalism Awards in 2021 for a project about organ donation.

Deb Pastner

Deb Pastner worked for 24 years at the Minnesota Star Tribune, the largest media company in the state. During her tenure as Director of Photography and Assistant Managing Editor/Photography, the photo department was recognized by the World Press Awards, Pictures of the Year, the Edward R. Murrow Awards and the Online News Association. For her efforts, she was named one of the best visual editors by both Pictures of the Year and the Best of Photojournalism competitions.

From 2021 to 2022, Pastner was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She is currently studying for her PhD in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

Michael Hamtil

Michael Hamtil is a multimedia editor and visual team leader whose work alongside numerous photographers has shaped his passionate belief in the principles of visual journalism and the myriad ways they can be creatively applied. He currently works as the Multimedia Director at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch/STLToday.com. Prior to that, he worked at The Dallas Morning News editing both short and long-form storytelling; for news, sports and features; in still, video and multimedia formats. He has also worked as a multimedia producer at MSNBC.com and photo editor at Copley Chicago Newspapers/Sun Publications.

Michael earned a journalism degree from the Missouri School of Journalism and has served on judging panels for the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund grant and the Pictures of the Year competition. He lives in St. Louis with his spouse and two kids.

Grace Saez Dixon

Grace Saenz Dixon is an archivist at Pictures of the Year International, where she works closely with University of Missouri students to preserve, organize and steward POY’s extensive visual journalism archive. Her work supports both the historical record of the competition and its ongoing educational mission, ensuring that award-winning photographs and multimedia projects remain accessible for research and teaching.

Previously, Saenz Dixon spent a decade as a staff photojournalist at the El Paso Times, and her work has been published in The Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Houston Post.

Marie D. De Jesús

Marie D. De Jesús is the director of Pictures of the Year International (POY) and co-director of College Photographer of the Year (CPOY), a founding member of the Houston Landing and the organization's first director of photography. She was previously a senior staff photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle. Prior to working for the Chronicle, Marie worked for the Democrat and Chronicle, a daily newspaper located in Rochester, NY, and the Victoria Advocate in TX. In 2022, Marie became the first woman of color to serve as the national president of the National Press Photographers Association.

Along with several Chronicle colleagues, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the team category of Public Service in 2017 and is a winner of the staff award for Public Service Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation in 2017. Her career also includes recognition by The Headliners Foundation’s Showcase Award Storytelling category in 2022 and 2023, the National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism in 2016, the Texas APME in 2016, 2017, 2022 and 2023, and The Charles E. Green Awards in 2016. Marie has participated in various fellowships and workshops, including the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Adelante fellowship (Central America, 2017), The Kalish Workshop (2019), and the Mountain Workshops (Frankfort, KY, 2015.)

Marie lives in Columbia, Missouri with her Miniature Schnauzer named Kodak.