Katherine Ellis is a senior in communications at the University of Utah. After four years dedicated to her university paper, the last year as editor-in-chief, she recently finished up an internship with USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

Most of her experience has been writing and editing but she enjoys photography as a hobby and studied video production in Genova, Italy, summer of 2015.

When she’s not researching or writing stories, you can find her blogging, exploring, obsessing over her cat Winston, or curled up with a good book. She likes her sugar with a little bit of coffee and her burritos smothered.

Jonathon House was born in Syracuse, New York, to wonderful parents. He grew up in a typical suburban environment and went to Cicero-North Syracuse High School.

After graduation, he jumped around a few jobs and schools but was not focused on his schoolwork. He joined the United States Marine Corps in 2011 in order to learn about himself and gain some maturity.

It worked, as he ascended the rank structure quickly, attaining the rank of sergeant in only three years. He left the Marines in July 2016 and immediately enrolled at Emerson College, where he studies journalism on the G.I. Bill.

Kristin Torres is just another Mexican-American studying Russian in the Midwest. When she realized that her favorite NPR reporters had quirky degrees and eclectic life experiences, she left behind a journalism major and picked up Russian—a degree that offered opportunities to travel and explore the same discourses that brought her to reporting, such as religion, race, immigration and identity.

She got a bit carried away: a 2012 intern at NPR, Torres has since lived twice in Russia and was a State Department research fellow in Kyrgyzstan. She graduates with her master’s in Russian from the University of Missouri in 2017.

Liz Tung grew up in Upper Darby, a blue-collar suburb of Philadelphia that’s become a magnet for new immigrants. After graduating high school, she spent two years studying fiction writing at Eugene Lang College before transferring to Wesleyan.

After college, she headed to China for a backpacking trip that turned into a six-year stint in Beijing, where she wrote about music and culture for local magazines, in addition to freelancing. She met her husband there, and this past summer returned to the US to attend the CUNY School of Journalism, where she’s concentrating on urban reporting and audio journalism.

Alexandra Watts is a senior at Arizona State University studying journalism. After graduation, she will continue her studies as a journalism graduate student, also at ASU.

She has interned at KJZZ on both the digital and news sides and worked with both Arizona PBS and The Public Insight Network Bureau, which is part of American Public Media. In 2016, she became the first ever audio and podcast editor for The State Press, ASU’s student news publication.

She has developed podcasts and audio stories while leading a team of reporters and collaborating with other desks. She’s also working on her thesis about Arizona’s 1960s counterculture.