OpenNews

Meet the 2015 fellows.

Our 2015 Knight Mozilla Fellows stand tall at the Los Angeles Times.

Meet the 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellows

Our 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellows bring diverse backgrounds and experiences into the newsroom for 10 months. Bringing their talents to the Guardian, NPR, Vox Media, the Center for Investigative Reporting, La Nacion, and the New York Times and Washington Post, our class of 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellows will be bringing new ideas and perspectives to the news.

  • Tara
  • Juan
  • Livia
  • Linda
  • Julia
  • Kavya
  • Francis </ul>

    Tara Adiseshan | New York Times/Washington Post

    Tara Adiseshan is a designer and data visualization engineer who is excited about civic media, learning tools, and community platforms. From designing search futures at Autodesk to conducting user research around rainwater harvesting in rural India, Tara has had the opportunity to apply design methodologies and build solutions in a variety of disciplinary spaces. Tara believes that access to and understanding of information and data can be a key leverage point through which social systems change. Tara will be a Fellow at the Coral Project, a collaboration between the New York Times, the Washington Post, and OpenNews.

    Follow Tara on Twitter at @taraandtheworld

    Juan Elosua | La Nacion

    Juan Elosua is a Spanish telecommunications engineer with broad experience in tech consultancy and financial services IT. In 2011, he discovered data journalism and became a data addict and freelance developer, and can now be found turning data upside down to extract knowledge from it. He strongly believes open data will play a key role in shaping the future of modern societies, and has trained journalists to help them find stories and work efficiently on data-related projects.

    Follow Juan on Twitter at @jjelosua

    Livia Labate | NPR

    Livia Labate is a user experience designer and manager with a passion for in-house practice development. Livia is interested in how open source tools empower news creation and dissemination, and shape access to information and social participation. With over 15 years of industry experience, she has worked with large organizations such as Comcast and the BBC as well as heavily contributing to the development of the Information Architecture community of practice through the IA Institute. More recently, Livia has led Marriott’s Digital Standards and Practices group, focusing on stewardship and governance of digital experiences.

    Follow Livia on Twitter at @livlab

    Linda Sandvik | the Guardian

    Linda Sandvik is a creative technologist and proto-MacGyver who likes to make things that inform, educate, and empower people and communities. She previously worked in local government and at Last.fm, and is a co-founder of Code Club, and her particular interests lie in using play and technology to help people discover their natural affinity for teaching themselves new things. She has a passion for open data, open knowledge, and serious games.

    Follow Linda on Twitter at @hyper_linda

    Julia Smith | CIR

    Julia Smith is a design professional from Omaha, NE. She’s held a variety of roles in journalism and IT, having worked as a designer and developer on news sites, mobile applications, enterprise software, and corporate websites. She is fascinated with civic media and loves exploring the connections between storytelling, design, and technology to create experiences that empower community change.

    Follow Julia on Twitter at @julia67

    Kavya Sukumar | Vox Media

    Kavya Sukumar is a developer-journalist who appreciates both elegant code and well-written prose. Everything about journalism fascinates her and she wants in on it all. She has reported and written stories, analyzed data and built a CMS. She has more than eight years of experience working at technology companies as well as in newsrooms. Kavya was a software engineer at Microsoft when the journalism bug bit her. She has a graduate degree from Medill School of Journalism where she was a Knight Scholar. She is currently a Data & Interactives Editor with the The Palm Beach Post’s investigative team.

    Follow Kavya on Twitter at @kavyasukumar

    Francis Tseng | New York Times/Washington Post

    Francis Tseng is a programmer and interaction designer interested in natural language processing, internet socializing, demystifying technology, and systems modeling. After two years at IDEO, he became a Knight Foundation prototype grant recipient in 2014. He is currently teaching the News Automata course at the New School's Design + Journalism program and designing and building _critical_ software with friends at Public Science. Francis will be a Fellow at the Coral Project, a collaboration between the New York Times, the Washington Post, and OpenNews.

    Follow Francis on Twitter at @frnsys