Author: Allison Dodson

Adeline Mishler currently works at Ernst & Young (EY) as a staff business transformation consultant in their Government and Public Sector consulting practice.  In her current role, she specializes in using communications and change management strategies to empower federal, state, and local governments to solve their most complex challenges.

Before starting her career at EY, Adeline graduated from The Pennsylvania State University with degree in Business Management and minors Corporate Communications, Civic and Community Engagement, and the Legal Environment of Business.

Her background, interests, and passions are rooted in driving change to create a better world with a focus on communications, media, and change management. Her pervious experiences have included interning at entities and organizations including The Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Penn State’s Office of Government and Community Relations, The Cambria Region Chamber of Commerce, and The Community Foundation for the Alleghenies.

Outside of her current role, Adeline has a never-fading passion for community revitalization, social entrepreneurship, economic development, and youth civic engagement; she hopes to use communications as a mechanism to power lasting change in our world.

Adeline is a proud 2015 alumnus of WJMC and enthusiastic to be back. Adeline would like to thank WJMC for propelling the trajectory of her early education and professional interests.

George Kueppers is a full time Account Executive in the civic communication tech industry in Washington, D.C., and an adjunct faculty member of the Communication Department at George Mason University, where he also received his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Communication.  George is originally from Minnesota, and obtained Bachelor of Arts degrees in Political Science and Global Studies from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. When he’s not teaching or working on his doctoral studies and research, George enjoys playing music, video games, binging TV shows, watching sports, playing hockey, tennis, and basketball, and snowboarding. George’s research interests have spanned many sub-disciplines of communication, from political to strategic to environmental and risk communication and most recently health communication. Overall, George is interested in studying the dynamic relationships between communication, learning, and behavior, and his dissertation research explored this intersection in the context of interpersonal mental health communication and help-seeking. George has been a student of communication since the 7th grade when he joined his high school’s Speech & Debate (aka “competitive forensics”) Team, and is proud to be a graduate assistant here in the Communication Department at George Mason University.

Eric Lee is a freelance photojournalist based in Washington, D.C. He photographs stories about identity, community, and resilience.  His work has been featured in The Atlantic, Bloomberg, National Geographic, New York Magazine, New Yorker, NPR, Reuters, Texas Tribune, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others. A native New Yorker, Lee earned his B.A. in film studies at Gettysburg College in 2015 and graduated with a M.A. in new media photojournalism at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design in 2020.

Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter in the Washington bureau, where he covers President Biden, with a focus on domestic policy, the regulatory state and life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  A veteran political correspondent, he has covered the White House for 13 years, including the Trump and Obama presidencies.

Mr. Shear joined The Times in 2010, and has written extensively about national politics and policy-making in Washington. He documented Mr. Obama’s history-making presidency, including extensive reporting on passage of the Affordable Care Act and unsuccessful efforts at comprehensive immigration reform. He covered all four years of Mr. Trump’s chaotic presidency, and is the co-author of “BORDER WARS: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration,” published in 2019 by Simon & Schuster. Mr. Shear reported from Capitol Hill during the first Trump impeachment, documenting the attempt by Democrats to oust him from office over his effort to strong-arm Ukraine’s government for dirt on a political opponent.

During 2020, Mr. Shear worked with investigative teams at The Times to document the Trump administration’s response to the Covid crisis. He was a leading member of the team that won the Pulitzer Public Service prize for the paper’s coverage of the pandemic and its health and economic consequences. As he did during each of the prior two administrations, Mr. Shear travels the world with Mr. Biden, including a recent trip to Europe for a high-stakes meeting with President Putin of Russia.

Before coming to The Times in 2010, Mr. Shear spent 18 years at The Washington Post, writing about local communities, school districts, state politics, the 2008 presidential campaign and the White House. A member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, Mr. Shear is a 1990 graduate of Claremont McKenna College and has a masters in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He has two college-age children and lives in Washington with his wife.

Alexis Johnson is an Emmy-winning correspondent based in Washington D.C. Alexis began her career in journalism as a Multimedia Journalist at WVVA, the NBC affiliate in Bluefield, West Virginia. She then moved into digital and print news as a breaking news reporter for NJ.com in New Jersey. In 2018, Johnson was hired as a Digital News Editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette before switching to a reporting role covering trending topics at the start of 2020. 

Alexis joined VICE News in October 2020 and went on to cover politics, race, and culture. She appeared on multiple platforms including VICE News Tonight, VICE on Showtime, Counter Space, Breaking the Vote, VICE News Reports Podcast, as well as appearing across VICE’s social platforms including TikTok and Twitch. 

Alexis has covered the biggest national stories including the 2020 general election, the 2022 midterms, the aftermath of Jan. 6th, the inauguration of President Joe Biden, the Derek Chauvin verdict, the arrest and detainment of Brittney Griner, the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the fall of Roe v. Wade and the death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police. She was awarded a 2023 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism for her coverage of death threats made against election workers after the 2020 presidential election and the attack on American democracy.

Alexis also reported on cultural topics like Black spirituality, the struggles of Black TikTok influencers, and diversity in the pilot industry, a story that was nominated for a 2023 News and Documentary Emmy. She has also appeared as a host of the digital series VICE Debates, moderating a panel about colorism that reached over half a million viewers on Youtube.

For her final project at VICE, Alexis hosted, co-produced and co-directed a feature-length documentary titled Vice News Presents: When Black Women Go Missing that is streaming on Tubi. The film takes an in-depth look at the crisis surrounding the disproportionate number of missing and murdered Black women around the country and investigates the causes of the epidemic.

A Pittsburgh native, Alexis graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania before earning a Master’s Degree in Media Studies and Production from Temple University. She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists as well as Zeta Phi Beta Sorority.

Charles Bramesco is a freelance film and TV critic living in Brooklyn.  A former staff writer for Rolling Stone, he has also been featured in the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Guardian, and many other fine publications. His first book, a volume on vampire movies for the “Close-Ups” series from Little White Lies, is now on US and UK shelves, and his to-be-announced second book will be published in early 2023. His favorite movie is Boogie Nights.

Arelis Hernández is a reporter covering the U.S. Southern border and immigration. She has covered hurricanes, mass shootings and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.  She was part of the team that created the digital project “Sin Luz: Life without power,” which garnered an national Emmy nomination and international recognition. She joined the Washington Post staff in 2014 to cover Prince George’s County, a suburb of Washington D.C., where she grew up. Hernández has also spent time in Venezuela for the foreign desk and at one point lived in Puerto Rico to probe the politics, culture and social movements of the island archipelago. Before The Post, she was recognized nationally for her coverage of the racial dynamics of Trayvon Martin’s shooting death and other coverage in Central Florida. She was part of the award-winning team that assembled the “George Floyd’s America” project which won several awards including a Peabody. That reporting led to the publishing of a book about Floyd’s life. She has a BA in broadcast journalism from the University of Maryland with a minor in U.S. Latinx studies.