News Reporter

News Reporter — The Chicago Chronicle

Chicago, IL | July 2023 – Present

• Investigated municipal property tax assessments over a 9-month period, publishing a 4-part series that prompted a city audit and identified $4.2M in misallocated funds.
• Cultivated a network of 85+ confidential sources across local government and public education, yielding 18 exclusive stories and beating competing outlets by an average of 4 hours.
• Produced 120+ high-priority breaking news reports annually, utilizing mobile journalism tools to broadcast live video updates that boosted digital page views by 35%.
• Analyzed public records databases using SQL and Python to uncover patterns in municipal contracting, resulting in the public release of 500+ pages of previously redacted city emails.

General Assignment Reporter — Illinois Sentinel

Springfield, IL | June 2021 – June 2023

• Covered county commission and school board meetings, producing 150+ news articles per year and achieving a 98% accuracy rating from editorial staff across all published print and digital content.
• Leveraged FOIA and state open records laws to obtain 40+ public agency datasets, uncovering a state-funded infrastructure delay that saved local taxpayers $320,000 in unnecessary allocations.
• Optimized digital headlines and metadata for 300+ articles, growing organic search traffic by 28% and increasing average reader session duration by 45 seconds through interactive media integration.
• Collaborated with multimedia editors to produce 25 news videos and podcast episodes, increasing the outlet's social media subscriber base by 18% and generating 10,000+ incremental views per upload.

Investigative journalism, Public records requests (FOIA), Data journalism, AP Style guide, Editorial writing, Interviewing techniques, Audio & video editing, Adobe Premiere Pro, Audacity, Content Management Systems (WordPress), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social media distribution, SQL, Python for data scraping

City Hall Transparency Initiative

Role: Lead Investigative Reporter

Tools: Python (Scrapy), SQL, WordPress, Google Sheets

Built a public database tracking city official campaign donations, attracting 15,000+ unique visitors within the first week and resulting in 2 city council members revising their disclosures.

COVID-19 Relief Fund Audit

Role: Data Reporter

Tools: Excel, R, Tableau, Adobe Premiere Pro

Analyzed $12M in local small business aid distribution, exposing a 15% disparity in minority-owned business allocations and winning the regional Press Club Award.

• Poynter ACES Certificate in Editing (2022)
• Google News Initiative Data Journalism Certification (2023)

• Languages: English (Native), Spanish (Professional Working Proficiency)
• Affiliations: Member, Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE)
• Availability: 3 weeks notice