Open Campus Staff
Maria Archangelo is the chief revenue officer. An experienced nonprofit news leader and team builder, Maria previously was vice president of partnerships at Chalkbeat. Before Chalkbeat, Maria was executive director for the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, a nonprofit news organization, and previously held leadership roles at other media groups, including the Stowe Reporter/Waterbury Record and the Rutland Herald/Times Argus, both in Vermont, and at The Baltimore Sun Media Group.
Email | @MariaArchangelo
Nichelle Corbitt is the operations manager. She comes to Open Campus after working for six years at Junior Achievement of Greater Washington, where she was most recently senior operations manager. Nichelle previously ran their JA Finance Park® program and facility in Prince George’s County. She redesigned the program for delivery via virtual platform during the pandemic.
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Nick Fouriezos is a national reporter covering the role of college in rural America. Nick is an experienced enterprise and investigative reporter with bylines in The New York Times, Baltimore Sun, Daily Beast, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and USA Today, among others. As OZY Magazine’s Washington correspondent for six years, he wrote stories from six continents and covered two presidential elections.
Email | @nick4iezos
Naomi Harris is a national reporter covering higher education and racial equity. Previously, Naomi was part of our Open Campus Local Network, covering higher education in Pittsburgh for PublicSource. Before that, she covered education for The Capital Gazette, in Annapolis, where she focused on systemic racial and socioeconomic inequities in the school system.
Email | @NaomiJayHarris
Sara Hebel is the co-founder and editor-in-chief. A former assistant managing editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sara has more than two decades of experience as a newsroom leader and higher-education journalist. She’s steered award-winning enterprise journalism, set newsroom coverage agendas, and created national reporting workshops for college journalists. In her first reporting jobs, Sara covered public policy in Congress and the states.
Email | @shebel
Colleen Murphy is the managing editor. She’s an experienced editor who’s led a team of student journalists covering higher ed with CalMatters, created curriculum for a course on policy reporting at the School of the New York Times, and spent several years as an editor of tax coverage at Bloomberg.
Email | @_colleenmurphy_
Scott Smallwood is the co-founder and chief executive officer. The former managing editor and director of digital products at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott has nearly 20 years of experience covering higher education and leading award-winning journalism. He’s led teams of developers and worked closely with sales staff to shape new products. He started his career as a local government reporter in South Carolina and New Mexico.
Email | @ssmallwd | LinkedIn
Charlotte West is a national reporter covering the future of postsecondary education and prisons. Charlotte has more than a decade of experience writing about education, housing, juvenile justice, and politics. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Hechinger Report, USA Today, Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, Fortune, and CalMatters.
Email | @szarlotka
Lauren Wiley is the director of local development and revenue. Lauren began her career as a local reporter before joining the nonprofit sector nearly 20 years ago. She has experience in individual and foundation fundraising, event planning, and communications. Lauren started working in nonprofit education journalism in 2014 at the Philadelphia Public School Notebook and most recently at Chalkbeat.
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Paul Fain is an editorial contributor who writes The Job, our Open Campus newsletter about connections between education and the American workforce. Paul is a veteran higher education journalist and analyst. Subscribe to The Job here.
@paulfain
Maddison Hwang is an editorial assistant. They are a senior at the University of California at Santa Cruz, majoring in philosophy and education.
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Local Reporters
Emma Folts covers higher education in Pittsburgh for PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. Emma first joined PublicSource as an intern in summer 2020, and she later interned for the Los Angeles Business Journal. She’s a graduate of Syracuse University, where she’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in newspaper and online journalism.
@emmafolts
Jason Gonzales covers higher education in for Chalkbeat Colorado, in partnership with Open Campus. He previously reported on colleges and schools for The Tennessean and is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
@ByJasonGonzales
Ian Hodgson is an education data reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, working in partnership with Open Campus. He previously covered health and the environment for the Times and is a graduate of Queen’s University, in Ontario, Northwestern University, and Columbia University.
@IanJHodgson
Divya Kumar covers higher education for the Tampa Bay Times, in partnership with Open Campus. She’s a graduate of the University of South Florida and Columbia University.
@divyadivyadivya
Molly Minta covers higher education for Mississippi Today, in partnership with Open Campus. Molly previously worked for The Nation and The Appeal and is a graduate of the University of Florida.
@mintamolly
Amy Morona covers higher education for Signal Cleveland, in partnership with Open Campus. Previously, she covered higher education for Crain’s Cleveland Business with Open Campus, was a K-12 and higher education reporter for the cable channel Newsy, and worked as a producer on the PBS reporters’ roundtable show “Washington Week.” She’s a graduate of the University of Akron and Emerson College.
@amymorona
Daniel Perez covers higher education for El Paso Matters, in partnership with Open Campus. He was previously an editor, staff writer, and copy editor at the El Paso Times and most recently worked in the marketing and communications department for the University of Texas at El Paso. He’s a graduate of California State University Los Angeles.
@dannyp_news
Lisa Philip covers higher education for WBEZ Chicago, in partnership with Open Campus. She has has previously covered education for WUNC in Durham, N.C., and the Baltimore Sun Media Group. She’s a graduate of the University of Washington and Indiana University.
@LAPhilip
MJ Slaby is the bureau chief and covers higher education for Chalkbeat Indiana, in partnership with Open Campus. Previously, she covered K-12 education for the Indianapolis Star and has also covered higher education for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, in Tennessee, and for the Bloomington Herald-Times, in Indiana. She’s a graduate of Indiana University.
@mjslaby
HBCU Student Journalism Network
Jarrett Carter Sr. is a program mentor for the HBCU Student Journalism Network. He works at Howard University as director of operations, strategy, and communications. A veteran journalist, Jarrett was the founder of HBCU Digest, an online publication he built into a resource for coverage of the economic, cultural, political, and industrial factors impacting historically Black institutions nationwide.
@jarrettcartersr
Wesley Wright is the assistant editor of the HBCU Student Journalism Network. He’s assistant director of student media at Florida Atlantic University and a former education journalist. He’s also worked on the ReNews Project, which helps start and revive student news organizations at HBCUs and elsewhere.
@Wesley___Wright
Auzzy Byrdsell is a student fellow for the HBCU Student Journalism Network. A junior studying kinesiology and journalism at Morehouse College, he’s a contributing writer for the Maroon Tiger, vice president of James P. Haines Society, and student leader for the Morehouse College National Alumni Association.
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Brittany Patterson is a student fellow for the HBCU Student Journalism Network. A senior at Southern University and A&M College, she is majoring in mass communications with a concentration in print and has served as co-news section leader of The Southern Digest.
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Jasper Smith is a student fellow for the HBCU Student Journalism Network. She’s a junior journalism major from Phoenix, studying at Howard University. Jasper has interned at Street Sense Media and serves as the editor-in-chief at the Hilltop newspaper.
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Skylar Stephens is a student fellow for the HBCU Student Journalism Network. She’s a sophomore at Xavier University of Louisiana majoring in mass communication.
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Alivia Welch is a student fellow for the HBCU Student Journalism Network. A senior journalism and media studies major at Jackson State University, she serves as the managing editor for The Blue and White Flash, a student-led publication.
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Tyuanna Williams is a student fellow for the HBCU Student Journalism Network. A junior at Claflin University, she’s majoring in mass communications and has interned for the Fort Lauderdale Magazine.
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Board of Directors
LaSharah Bunting is a media executive with nearly 20 years in journalism. She’s currently vice president and executive editor at Simon & Schuster. Her experience includes managing a multi-million dollar portfolio of journalism investments at the Knight Foundation and driving editorial and digital transformation at The New York Times.
Caroline Hendrie is a long-time leader in the national education journalism sector, serving for 12 years as executive director of the Education Writers Association and 14 years as managing editor and national reporter at the nonprofit news organization Education Week.
Amy Kovac-Ashley is head of national programs for the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. She previously was executive vice president & chief of news transformation at the American Press Institute, where she worked with local innovators in newsrooms across the country, and is a former higher education reporter.
Arlene Notoro Morgan is the assistant dean for external affairs at Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication. She worked for several decades as a reporter and editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer and as an associate dean at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She’s led professional development programs for news professionals and received awards for her work on diversifying the news industry.
Abigail Seldin is the chief executive officer of the Seldin/Haring-Smith Foundation, where she partnered with Getty Images to create new stock photos of today’s college students and led the development of SwiftStudent, a free digital tool for college students seeking financial-aid appeals. She’s also co-founder of the Civic Mapping Initiative, where she leads a team charting the proximity of public transit stops to public services.
Scott Smallwood is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Open Campus.
Ted Weidlein is an experienced media executive who was a long-time editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Chronicle of Philanthropy,