The Chicago Headline Club is thrilled to share the lineup of speakers for FOIA Fest 2025. This is a list of speakers who have shared their biographies ahead of time. Review ahead of the conference to prepare. Find the full program here and get your ticket here.
Adam Rhodes, Training Director, Investigative Reporters & Editors
Adam Rhodes is an award-winning investigative reporter who covers LGBTQ+ issues and the criminal legal system. They are currently a training director at Investigative Reporters & Editors.
Alice Yin, Political Reporter, Chicago Tribune
Alice Yin is a beat reporter covering Chicago City Hall and the mayor’s office. She started her career at the Tribune as an overnight crime reporter in 2019 and has since covered Cook County government, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and George Floyd protests on Chicago and the 2023 mayoral election. Before that she worked for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Michigan statehouse bureau of the Associated Press.
Amy Merrick, Senior Professional Lecturer, DePaul University
Amy Merrick is a senior professional lecturer in the journalism program in DePaul University’s College of Communication. She is faculty adviser to DePaul’s 14 East magazine and its Society of Professional Journalists chapter. She is also a candidate for DePaul’s master’s program in computer science.
Casey Toner, Investigative Reporter, Illinois Answers Project
Casey Toner, a Chicago native, has been an Illinois Answers reporter since 2016, taking the lead on numerous projects about criminal justice and politics. His series on police shootings in suburban Cook County resulted in a state law requiring procedural investigations of all police shootings in Illinois.
Crystal L. Paul, State Investigations Editor, Illinois Answers Project
Crystal L. Paul is the State Investigations Editor at the Illinois Answers Project. Previously, she served as the interim Feature Editor at the Seattle Times, where she co-founded the Communities beat to center issues crucial to under-covered communities and managed several enterprise projects, including the A1 Revisited accountability project. She is a Yale University graduate with a degree in behavioral neuroscience.
Dan Mihalopoulos, Investigative Reporter, WBEZ Government & Politics Team
Dan has been a reporter for WBEZ since 2018. He previously worked at the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago News Cooperative (Chicago section of New York Times), Chicago Tribune and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Elvia Malagón, Social Justice Reporter, Chicago Sun-Times
Elvia Malagón is a Chicago-based bilingual storytelling. She reports on social justice, immigration and income inequality for the Chicago Sun-Times. She previously worked for the Chicago Tribune, The Times of Northwest Indiana and The Ledger in Lakeland, Fla. A native of East Chicago, Indiana, she is a graduate of Indiana University’s journalism school.
Francia Garcia Hernandez, Pilsen, Little Village and Back of the Yards Reporter, Block Club Chicago
Francia covers Pilsen, Little Village and Back of the Yards for Block Club Chicago, where she covers neighborhood and immigration stories. Before joining Block Club, she covered West and Southwest Sides stories.
Her work has been published in the Austin Weekly News, Yes! Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, Streetwise, AustinTalks and more.
She is also the host, writer and co-producer of CAN TV’s show ¡Presente!
Gregory Royal Pratt, Investigative Reporter, Chicago Tribune
Gregory Royal Pratt is an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He previously covered City Hall under Mayors Emanuel, Lightfoot and Johnson.
Hannah Cushman Garland, Partner, DataMade
Hannah is a journalist-turned-software developer who fuses a reporter’s curiosity with a technologist’s expertise. She transforms challenges into practical solutions and turns clients into collaborators who accomplish more together than they could alone.
Igor Studenkov, Reporter, Freelance
Igor Studenkov has been an immigrant since he was 11 and a journalist since he was 21. His work has appeared in print and online publications throughout the Chicago area, including Streetsblog Chicago, Niles & Park Ridge Journal, Evanston RoundTable, Cook County Chronicle, Austin Weekly News, Forest Park Review and many, many others. He won several Illinois Press Association awards, and he’s been on the Chicago Headline Club Board of Directors since May 2024.
Irene Romulo, Development and Community Engagement Director, Cicero Independiente
Irene Romulo is a co-founder of Cicero Independiente. She now leads the team’s development and audience engagement work. She began her journalism career as a reporting fellow at City Bureau in Chicago. She is a past recipient of the Voqal Fellowship for media entrepreneurs and was an Ida B. Wells Fellow with Type Investigations.
Isis Almeida, Chicago Bureau Chief, Bloomberg
Isis Almeida is Bloomberg’s Chicago Bureau Chief, leading a team of editors and reporters covering everything from food and agriculture to politics and finance in the Midwest. She is also Team Leader for Agriculture in the Americas, responsible for coverage from the US to Brazil and Argentina. Isis has held various posts at Bloomberg in London and Chicago more than a decade, including leading Europe’s energy team through Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and covering the agriculture industry as a Senior Reporter during Trump’s trade war with China. Prior to joining Bloomberg, she worked for S&P Global and Dow Jones.
Jason Grotto, Editor, Bloomberg
Jason Grotto is the data investigations editor at Bloomberg. He leads data-driven investigative projects that focus on fraud, waste and bad public policy.
Joe Mathewson, Professor, Northwestern University Medill
Teacher of Media Law & Ethics. Formerly Wall Street Journal reporter in New York, Washington and Chicago; Governor Ogilvie’s press secretary, Cook County commissioner.
Jen Sabella, Co-Founder + Executive Editor, Block Club Chicago
Jen helped launch Block Club Chicago in 2018 following the closure of her previous newsroom, DNAinfo. Jen was Deputy Editor and Director of Social Media at DNAinfo Chicago, a site she helped launch in 2012. Before joining DNA, Jen was HuffPost’s Chicago Editor and a breaking news reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times.
Jennifer Smith Richards, Reporter, ProPublica
Jennifer Smith Richards is a reporter for ProPublica. She began her journalism career writing obituaries in West Virginia, then covering small-town southern Ohio. She wrote about schools and education at newspapers in Huntington, West Virginia; Utica, New York; Savannah, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio. She most recently worked for the Chicago Tribune, where her work exposed student ticketing at school, abusive educators, government misspending, sexual abuse in schools, lapses in police accountability and the mistreatment of students with disabilities. Her stories have prompted new state laws, the prosecution of school officials and the creation of child-protection units in school districts and state education departments.
Jennifer is a graduate of Ohio University and lives in Chicago.
Jimmy Tobias, Investigative Reporter, The Nation, The Guardian
Jimmy Tobias is an investigative reporter who primarily covers wildlife, public lands, public health, and the politics of conservation. His public records reporting has sparked federal investigations, informed Congressional probes, and helped spur concrete policy change in Washington D.C. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Intercept, HuffPost, High Country News, and numerous other outlets.
Josh McGhee, Chicago Bureau Chief, MindSite News
Josh McGhee is an investigative reporter covering the intersection of criminal justice and mental health with an emphasis on public records and data reporting. He has covered Chicago on various beats for the last decade, including criminal justice, courts, policing, race, inequality, politics and community news. He’s previously reported at DNAinfo Chicago, WVON, the Chicago Reporter and Injustice Watch.
Kate Linderman, National Real-Time Reporter, McClatchy Newspapers
Kate Linderman covers national news for McClatchy’s real-time time. She reports on politics in addition to crime and courts in the Midwest region. Kate is a 2023 graduate of DePaul University and is based in Chicago.
Katrina Pham, Audience Engagement Reporter, Borderless Magazine
Katrina Pham is a multimedia journalist who reports on Chicago’s immigrant communities for Borderless Magazine. She produces social media content, repackages stories in vertical video formats, and publishes the magazine’s twice-weekly newsletter. As a reporter for Borderless, she’s also investigated the city’s migrant shelters and response to the increase of new arrivals nationwide.
Kristen Schorsch, Reporter, WBEZ Chicago
Kristen Schorsch is an award-winning reporter on WBEZ Chicago’s government and politics team, where she covers Cook County and specializes in public health. Her stories have been on air and online nationwide through NPR and KFF Health News. Most recently, she examined the ripple effects of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, the potentially brewing mental health crisis among new arrivals, and the power and influence in Cook County politics.
Mack Liederman, General Assignment Reporter, Block Club Chicago
Mack Liederman is a reporter for Block Club Chicago who covers citywide issues spanning topics that impact Chicagoans, including transportation, politics and criminal justice issues.
María Inés Zamudio, Investigative Journalist, Invisible Institute/ProPublica
Zamudio is an award-winning investigative journalist. Zamudio has spent nearly two decades reporting on racial inequalities and underlying policies. She’s a FOIA enthusiast and FOIA Fest Bootcamp co-founder.
Matt Topic, Partner, Loevy + Loevy
Matt Topic leads the Media and Intellectual Property practice at Loevy + Loevy. He and his team have litigated hundreds of state and federal open records cases.
Megan Crepeau, Chicago Correspondent, Bloomberg Law
Megan Crepeau is a reporter covering Chicago’s many court systems and the many people they affect.
Melody Mercado, Reporter, Block Club Chicago
Melody Mercado covers the Loop, West Loop, Gold Coast and River North for Block Club Chicago. She started her career as a television reporter at NBC affiliate WHO13 News, where she played an integral role in covering the Iowa Caucus and the racial justice protests of 2020. She later covered the Des Moines city government, with a focus on local policy and its effect on the community for the Des Moines Register.
Mila Koumpilova, Senior Reporter, Chalkbeat Chicago
Mila Koumpilova is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat Chicago, where she covers Chicago Public Schools. She previously wrote about higher education and immigration at the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis. Mila has also covered education at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and The Forum in Fargo, N.D.
Nell Salzman, Immigration Reporter, Chicago Tribune
Nell Salzman is a reporter with the Chicago Tribune, who specializes in immigration and policy. She is originally from Denver, Colorado and attended Brown University. She previously worked at KTNA radio in Talkeetna, Alaska, and Westword in Denver.
Nicholas Diakopoulos, Professor, Northwestern University
Nicholas Diakopoulos is a Professor in Communication Studies and Computer Science (by courtesy) at Northwestern University where he is Director of the Computational Journalism Lab (CJL). Diakopoulos’ research is broadly oriented around topics related to Computational Journalism with active research projects on AI, automation, and algorithms in news production and distribution. He is the author of the award-winning book Automating the News: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Media from Harvard University Press and edits the Generative AI in the Newsroom blog: https://generative-ai-newsroom.com/
Quinn Myers, Reporter, Block Club Chicago
Quinn covers several neighborhoods for Block Club as well as City Hall, where he’s written about everything from little free libraries to the intricacies of bond deals and budgets. He previously worked for WTTW, WBEZ and other local outlets.
Regina Waldroup, Reporter, NBC Chicago
Regina Waldroup joined the NBC 5 news team in 2013 as a general assignment reporter. Regina began her broadcasting career as an intern at NBC 5 for now-retired investigative reporter Renee Ferguson. Regina also has worked at CBS, NBC and Fox news stations in Oregon and New York. A native of Harvey, Regina is the youngest girl among eight siblings.
Sarah Conway, Senior Reporter, City Bureau
Sarah Conway is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter in Chicago. She writes narrative stories rooted in records, data, and public engagement. Sarah is the senior reporter at City Bureau, a journalism lab reimagining local media.
Shelley Geiszler, Attorney, Loevy + Loevy
Shelley is an attorney with Loevy + Loevy’s Transparency Team. She handles state FOIA cases.
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