2025 Ferriss-UC Berkeley Journalism Fellows
Berkeley, California
Izzy Bloom
Izzy Bloom is a reporter at KQED public radio and the producer of Political Breakdown. Izzy has reported longform audio stories about the indigenous land back movement for The California Report Magazine and heritage language loss for NPR’s Code Switch, for which she was a finalist at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. For the fellowship, Izzy is reporting on how psychedelics can treat mental health conditions.
X @izzyabloom
New York, New York
Saugat Bolakhe
Saugat Bolakhe is a science writer based in New York City. He writes around the themes of everything in life sciences, biotech, and environment. He has written for The Atlantic, Wired, Scientific American, Nature, Science News, The Xylom, Quanta Magazine, New Scientist, EOS, Knowable Magazine, and other publications. In 2024, he was also recognized with the Science Journalism award from the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology. He has a BS in Zoology from Tribhuvan University, Nepal and an MA in science journalism from Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. He also manages an international community of early career science journalists at The Open Notebook, a journalism non-profit dedicated to help health and science journalists improve their craft. For the fellowship, he is reporting about the mystic and cult following surrounding mad honey, which is harvested from the Himalayan cliffs of Nepal.
X @saugat_optimist, LinkedIn Saugat Bolakhe
Washington D.C.
Christina Cala
Christina Cala is the senior producer of Code Switch, NPR’s show about race and identity. She’s fascinated by stories about Latinx communities, migration, identity and language. Her work has also been featured on All Things Considered, TED Radio Hour, Life Kit, It’s Been a Minute, and Popular Science. Her 2019 immigration reporting on President Trump’s asylum crackdown won a Murrow Award. Her reporting on the fight around Lakota language revitalization won a Gracie Award. For the fellowship, Christina is reporting on the rising popularity of Ayahuasca in Colombia, and whether that is a threat or a boon for the Inga and Kamentsá tribes who offer the plant medicine.
X @christinacala, Linkedin
New York, New York
CD Goette-Luciak
CD Goette-Luciak is an investigative journalist who’s written for The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, The Guardian, Vox and NPR. He is an Investigative Reporting Fellow for the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University and received an Overseas Press Club Foundation Fellowship to report for the Los Angeles Times from Mexico. Fluent in English, Spanish and German, he has covered stories in every country in the Americas, reporting on democracy, migration, climate change, human rights, organized crime and corruption. He previously worked as a reporter for the Latin America Advisor and Radio La Ciudadana, and was the Senior Latin America and Caribbean Analyst for the IDB Group in Washington, D.C. He received a Master’s in Public Policy and a B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia, where he was a Jefferson Scholar.
X @CDGoetteLuciak, LinkedIn, Instagram
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Leila Goldstein
Leila Goldstein is a journalist covering stories across Southeast Asia. Her work has been published by NPR, The Guardian, BBC, Marketplace and The World. She has covered the return of looted Cambodian relics, a landmark environmental rights lawsuit in Thailand and the trafficking of Indonesian citizens in the illegal organ trade. As a 2024 Longworth Media Fellow, she covered the impact of U.S. solar tariffs on the global solar manufacturing supply chain, from Vietnam to Ohio. For the fellowship, she is reporting on the expansion of ketamine production and trafficking in Southeast Asia.
X @leila_goldstein, LinkedIn
Brooklyn, New York
Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi
Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi is a host and reporter for NPR’s Planet Money, telling stories that creatively explain the workings of the global economy. His work often explores the financial and cultural architecture of consumerism, from corporate returns policies, to subscription services, to new forms of consumer credit. He’s also drawn to tales of unintended consequences, like the time a well-intentioned chemistry professor unwittingly helped unleash a global market for synthetic drugs, what happened when the US Patent Office started granting patents on human genes, or how the internet cookie became a tool of mass surveillance. And he’s interested in the places where the market economy meets the natural world, from the story of how manatees got addicted to fossil fuels, to the fight over one of the most valuable lobster fisheries in the world, to the tale of the orphaned baby squirrel that became a social media celebrity, then a political martyr, and finally inspired a cryptocurrency worth billions of dollars. For the fellowship, he’s reporting on the world of psychedelic churches.
Instagram @alexi.horowitz.ghazi
(photo credit: Mamadi Doumbouya)
Brooklyn, New York
Manisha Krishnan
Manisha Krishnan is an Emmy award-winning journalist and senior culture editor at WIRED. A former senior reporter for VICE News, she has been publishing groundbreaking drug reporting for a decade. She embedded with a fentanyl dealer to investigate deadly new synthetic drugs in the VICE News Tonight documentary "Beyond Fentanyl", which won a 2023 Emmy for outstanding health coverage. Her work on a highly-addictive legal supplement known as “gas station heroin” won a New York Press Club award and has been used to change policy. Manisha has also published documentaries and feature stories on the rise of psychedelic churches in the US, a Black community using magic mushrooms to heal from racism, and Silicon Valley workers embracing kambo—a purge-inducing frog poison used by Amazonian tribes. Her fellowship will focus on a burgeoning frontier of psychedelic therapy: using psychedelics to treat drug addiction, for WIRED. Manisha is from Vancouver, Canada and now lives in New York City.
X @manishakrishnan, BlueSky @manishakrishnan.bsky.social
Austin, Texas
Andrew Logan
Andrew Logan is a screenwriter, producer, and journalist based in Austin, TX. As a screenwriter, he co-wrote Chappaquiddick, a political thriller that chronicles the true story of the infamous Ted Kennedy scandal, starring Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, Ed Helms, and Bruce Dern. The script was listed on the prestigious Black List in 2015, and in 2017, Andrew was named on Variety’s 10 Screenwriters to Watch list. Additionally, Andrew has produced several independent films that have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and South by Southwest. His journalism has appeared in Texas Monthly, the Texas Observer, and other outlets.
BlueSky @byandrewlogan.bsky.social, Instagram @byandrewlogan
Oakland, California
Adreanna Rodriguez
Adreanna Rodriguez is an independent journalist and producer based in Oakland, California. As a Hunkpapa Lakota/Chicana woman, her research, podcasts, and documentaries focus on issues of social and climate justice for Indigenous communities, as well as femme stories. While employed at VICE, she was an Ida B. Wells fellow through Type Investigations, where her feature audio story “Roe Was Never Enough,” was a finalist for a Third Coast International Audio award, and the recipient of a Gracie Award. In 2024 she completed a yearlong investigation with Audible, among several other independently produced audio stories for clients like PRX and LWC Studios. Adreanna holds a M.A. in Visual Anthropology from San Francisco State University and a Graduate Certificate in Documentary Studies from the Maine College of Art. For the fellowship, Adreanna will be covering the use of sacramental peyote within Native American communities.
X @aadreannaa, LinkedIn @aadreannaa, Instagram @aadreannaa
New York, New York
Sammie Seamon
Sammie Seamon is a freelance journalist and MFA candidate in Literary Reportage at the NYU Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute. Currently based in New York City by way of Austin, Texas, she often reports in Spanish-speaking communities and contributes bilingually to Molino Informativo in the Bronx, NY. For the fellowship, she is writing for the Guardian US on the use of psychedelics for the treatment of cluster headache, an incredibly painful neurological disorder that lacks a pharmaceutical solution, and how patients are still advocating for and contributing to psychedelic research.
X @sammie_seamon, Instagram @samsealion