The AJI Team

Kevin D. Grant

Executive Director 

Kevin joined AJI as its inaugural director of development in 2024. He co-founded The GroundTruth Project — home of Report for America and Report for the World — in 2014, editing and publishing award-winning journalism with leading partners and helping to create more than 1,000 full-time and fellowship roles with hundreds of newsroom partners in dozens of countries. He holds an M.A. in journalism from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. He’s an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, sits on the board of Gigafact, rescues greyhounds and enjoys the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Alyssa Rosenberg

Education Director

Prior to joining AJI, Alyssa was most recently the Letters and Community editor at The Washington Post, where she worked for more than a decade as a columnist and op-ed editor. Previously, she held editorial roles at ThinkProgress, Washingtonian, Government Executive and National Journal. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary. She co-hosts the “Across the Movie Aisle” podcast.

Emily Barr

Former President and CEO of Graham Media Group

Emily Barr had a 43-year career in broadcast television, including the last ten as president and CEO of Graham Media Group, a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company, formerly known as The Washington Post Company. She is the former head of the ABC Board of Governors and the NBC Affiliates Board, and was the former TV chair of the National Association of Broadcasters. Barr serves on the boards of the Associated Press, The Maine Monitor and Carleton College.

Dr. Battinto L. Batts, Jr.

Dean of Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University

Battinto Batts, Jr. is a dean, a professor, an award-winning journalist and educator with deep experience in philanthropy and nonprofit administration. He previously served as director of journalism strategies for the Scripps Howard Foundation in Cincinnati, Ohio. Batts holds a doctorate in higher education management from Hampton University, a master’s degree in media management from Norfolk State University and a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Tom Huang

Assistant Managing Editor for Journalism Initiatives at The Dallas Morning News

Tom Huang is Assistant Managing Editor for Journalism Initiatives at The Dallas Morning News, where he edits enterprise stories, oversees the newsroom’s internship program and leads the newsroom’s community-funded journalism initiative, which seeks philanthropic support of public service journalism.

Since 2020, he has helped launch The News’ Education Lab, which has expanded education reporting with the support of local foundations; Arts Access, a partnership with KERA that covers arts and culture through an equity lens; and the Dallas Media Collaborative, an alliance of news outlets and universities focused on solutions-based reporting on affordable housing. As an adjunct faculty member of The Poynter Institute, he organizes seminars for professional journalists on writing, reporting and editing.

John Kimelman

Journalist and Trustee, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation

John Kimelman is a veteran financial journalist who has worked as both a writer and editor on the staffs of Barron’s, CNBC.com, and American Banker. Early in his career, John spent five years as the Washington correspondent for the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail where he covered the West Virginia congressional delegation and the federal agencies for West Virginia readers.

John has an undergraduate degree in history from Clark University, a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University and an MBA from Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Nancy, an entertainment lawyer.

Melissa Moss

President, Moss Advisors, LLC

Melissa Moss is the President of Moss Advisors LLC, a strategic consulting firm that discreetly works with senior corporate executives, major corporations, and nonprofit organizations and helps them navigate the complex intersection of business, politics and media. She was previously a Senior Vice President at Capital Guardian Trust Company, one of the nation’s oldest and most successful investment management firms. A pioneer in the internet membership model, she was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Women’s Consumer Network, (WCN).

Moss has spent over 20 years working in national public policy and political institutions and in federal and state government, including the first Clinton administration and California Gov. Jerry Brown. She was also Finance Director of the Democratic National Committee. During her tenure, the DNC raised the most money in its history. She also helped to launch the Democratic Leadership Council as National Field Director.

Moss currently serves on the boards of the Shakespeare Theatre Company. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Kennedy Center National Symphony Orchestra and as Chair of the Development Committee. Ms. Moss has also served on the board and Executive Committee of Wolf Trap, the national park for the performing arts, First Book, a national organization dedicated to children’s literacy, The National Partnership for Women and Families, and the National Building Museum. She was appointed by President Obama to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Moss is an honors graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and received her Masters in Public Administration at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She also attended the Mass Media Institute at Stanford University. She is married, has twins, and lives in Washington D.C.

Sonal Shah

Former CEO, The Texas Tribune

Sonal Shah is a cross-sector leader and institution builder with a career spanning government, business, philanthropy, and media. She most recently served as CEO of The Texas Tribune, where she strengthened one of the nation’s leading nonprofit news organizations and deepened its role as a trusted source of information for Texans. Her work emphasized the importance of local journalism in supporting informed communities, recognizing that access to credible, independent information underpins effective institutions, economic participation, and public trust.

Previously, she held senior roles across sectors, including leading global development and impact investing initiatives at Google.org, serving in the Obama White House and at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and working at Goldman Sachs. She is also the founder of Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation and The Asian American Foundation (TAAF).

Sonal is known for her strategic insight, governance expertise, and ability to align mission, capital, and execution across sectors. She serves as board chair of Consumer Reports.

Judy Woodruff

Senior Correspondent, PBS NewsHour

Judy Woodruff is a senior correspondent and the former anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has covered politics and other news for five decades at NBC, CNN and PBS.

Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in journalism and communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustees of the Freedom Forum, The Duke Endowment, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and is a director of Public Radio International and the National Association to End Homelessness. Judy is a graduate of Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita.

She has received numerous awards including the Peabody Journalistic Integrity Award and an Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the Radcliffe Medal, the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism from Arizona State University. She is the recipient of more than 25 honorary degrees.

Judy lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, journalist Al Hunt, and they are the parents of three children and grandparents of one.

Tim Alberta

Senior Instructor & Mentor

Tim Alberta is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. Hailing from Brighton, Michigan, he attended Schoolcraft College and later Michigan State University, where his plans to become a baseball writer were altered by a serendipitous stint covering the legislature in Lansing.

He went on to spend more than a decade in Washington, reporting for publications such as the Wall Street Journal, National Journal and National Review. Tim would ultimately serve as chief political correspondent for POLITICO before moving back to Michigan and joining The Atlantic in 2021.

In 2019 he released his first book, “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump,” and co-moderated the year’s final Democratic presidential debate. In 2023 he followed up with, “The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” and in 2024 he won a National Magazine Award for his profile of Chris Licht, the chairman of CNN Worldwide.

DeNeen L. Brown

Lecturer

DeNeen, an award-winning writer, has been at The Washington Post for more than 35 years, covering night police, education, politics and culture, and serving as a foreign correspondent in Canada. She is a producer on two documentaries about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and a professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, where she teaches feature writing and “The Power of the Writing Voice.”

Josh Dawsey

Senior Instructor & Mentor

Josh Dawsey is an investigative reporter focused on politics at The Wall Street Journal. He most recently worked as a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined The Post in 2017 and covered the White House from 2017 to 2021. He was part of the team of journalists that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the newspaper’s coverage of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and a team that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the role of the AR-15 in American life. He is also a two-time recipient of the White House Correspondents Association award for news reporting and a lecturer at the Allbritton Journalism Institute. Josh is a proud graduate of the University of South Carolina and the enthusiastic owner of a rambunctious rescue dog named Pepper.

Eric M. Garcia

Lecturer

Eric is the Washington bureau chief and senior Washington correspondent for The Independent and the author of the book “We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation.” He is also a columnist for MSNBC. He previously worked as an assistant editor at The Washington Post’s Outlook section, an associate editor at The Hill, and a correspondent for National Journal, MarketWatch and Roll Call. He has also written for The Daily Beast, The New Republic and Salon.

Juana Summers

Lecturer & Mentor

Juana Summers is a co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered, which she joined in June 2022.

Summers previously spent more than a decade covering national politics, most recently as NPR’s political correspondent covering race, justice and politics. She covered the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and has also previously covered Congress for NPR. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications across multiple platforms, including Politico, CNN, Mashable and The Associated Press.

In 2016, Summers was a fellow at the Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service. She got her start in public radio at KBIA in Columbia, Mo., on the campus of the University of Missouri. She is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, and is originally from Kansas City, Mo.

Byron Tau

Lecturer

Byron is an investigative reporter at the Associated Press. He previously worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico and NOTUS. At the Journal, he served as a White House reporter during the Obama administration; covered Congress with a focus on the intelligence, oversight and judiciary committees; and was a legal affairs and national security correspondent. For Politico, he covered the White House, lobbying, campaign finance and politics. He has an undergraduate degree from McGill University in Montreal, and a graduate degree from Georgetown University in Washington D.C. He’s a native of Holliston, Mass. and the author of “Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State.”

Cheryl W. Thompson

Lecturer & Mentor

Cheryl W. Thompson is an investigative correspondent for NPR.

Prior to joining NPR in January 2019, she spent 22 years at The Washington Post, where she wrote extensively about law enforcement, political corruption and guns, and was a White House correspondent during Barack Obama’s first term. Her investigative series that traced the guns used to kill more than 500 police officers in the U.S. earned her an Emmy, a National Headliner, an IRE, a White House News Photographers Association and other awards. In 2015, her reporting found that nearly one person a week died in the U.S. after being Tasered by police. The story was part of a year-long series on police shootings in the U.S. that won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

In 2017, her examination of Howard University Hospital revealed myriad problems with the storied facility, including that it had the highest rate of death lawsuits per bed than the five other D.C. hospitals. Her project published in May 2018 investigated the unsolved serial murders of six black girls in the nation’s capital nearly 50 years ago, and won an SPJ DC award for magazine feature writing. She has won numerous other awards, including two Salute to Excellence Awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, and was named NABJ’s Educator of the Year in 2017. She was part of the Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2002 for Sept. 11.

Thompson is a member of NABJ, teaches investigative reporting as an associate professor at George Washington University and serves as board president of Investigative Reporters and Editors. She is the author of the new book, “Forgotten Souls: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen.”