👥 Meet our mentors: The journalists guiding the next generation of community storytelling

Mentorship is one of the defining elements of the 2026 Altavoz Lab fellowships, a relationship rooted in trust, collaboration and shared responsibility toward community-centered reporting. Our Nick Oza fellow and Community Journalism fellows work alongside journalists, editors, investigators and visual storytellers who believe impactful journalism is built through dialogue, care and collective growth.

Roberto “Bear” Guerra, mentor of the inaugural Nick Oza Visual Fellow, responded with an immediate “Yes” when we invited him to serve in this role. His enthusiasm reflected a belief in the power of visual journalism and in the responsibility of supporting emerging storytellers to document their communities with empathy and integrity.

Bear will help shape inaugural fellow Gabriela Campos’s visual reporting project about women in New Mexico’s lowrider culture, exploring identity, culture, memory and belonging. Bear, a photographer and visual editor at High Country News, explores the relationship between people, place and environmental and cultural change across the American West in his own work. He has been recognized by the American Society of Media Editors, American Illustration, American Photography and the Indigenous Journalists Association, and he is known as a mentor who is deeply committed to collaboration, ethical storytelling and creating more equitable newsroom cultures.

That same commitment to community-centered journalism is shared by all mentors guiding the 2026 Community Journalism Fellowship, including:

• Dagmar Thiel, managing director, Vita Activa
• Mónica Ortiz Uribe, independent podcast host and producer
• José Luis Castillo, investigative journalist and founder of La Esquina TX
• Perla Trevizo, ProPublica -Texas Tribune investigative Unit
• Brentin Mock, reporter, writer and editor
• Cindy Carcamo, independent journalist and Nieman Fellow
• Mago Torres, investigative journalist, data analyst and researcher
• Lottie Joiner, independent journalist
• Ruxandra Guidi, impact and engagement manager, Altavoz Lab

Together, they bring expertise spanning investigative and data journalism, immigration reporting, narrative storytelling, audience engagement, environmental coverage, and culturally grounded reporting practices. Over the next seven months, they will provide editorial guidance, one-on-one coaching, and collaborative support to help fellows strengthen investigations, deepen reporting, and build stronger relationships with their communities.

Altavoz Lab’s mentorship model offers something increasingly essential: journalists investing in one another, passing knowledge forward, and ensuring that community storytelling remains rooted in humanity, accountability and trust.

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