Amani Hamed earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the San Jose State University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.  

As a freelance journalist she covered crime, COVID-19 regulations, nursing strikes and the Bay Area arts and culture scene. She most recently wrote for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. 

As Community Engagement Manager, she oversees social media content, curates the Maynard Institute newsletter, and manages the Maynard Institute website, blog, and Medium page.

Alida Birnam joined the institute in December 2017 as executive administrator and keeps the Institute’s operations infrastructure running smoothly. From accounting to human resources, Alida is an integral member of the Maynard Institute team. Prior to joining the Maynard Institute, Alida worked at the Center for Investigative Reporting assisting with the logistics for their diversity fellowship program. She received her BS in Business Administration from U.C. Berkeley and holds a Master’s degree in International Business from Monterey Institute of International Studies (now Middlebury). She also homeschooled her three children who are now adults pursuing careers in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Rasheed Shabazz is a multimedia journalist, with experience in print, digital, and broadcast journalism. Rasheed was born in Oakland and grew up in West Alameda.

Rasheed’s work has been published in the East Bay Express, East Bay Times, Indybay, Oakland Local, Oakland Post, San Francisco BayView, and The Final Call. He previously hosted and produced radio news at KALX and hosted the The Black Hour podcast with the Peralta College’s 9th Floor Radio. After receiving his Associates Degree in Journalism at Laney College in Oakland, he transferred to UC Berkeley and received Bachelors’ Degrees in African American Studies and Political Science. While at Cal, he received an inaugural Google-AP Journalism and Technology Fellowship to launch a news website for the student magazine, Onyx Express. After graduating, Rasheed received a year-long Visiting Scholar appointment to teach journalism and media literacy with students on University of California campuses. Rasheed is a yoga teacher and triathlete, photographer, writer and world traveler.

Odette Alcazaren-Keeley is a diversity communications and media executive, and currently serves as the director of the Maynard 200 journalism fellowship program of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. In 2022, she was the recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California chapter, Unsung Hero Award and received recognition for her role as Director of the Maynard 200 Fellowship program, “one of the most powerful incubators for journalists of color in the country.”

She is also the president and founding partner of Global MediaX, a strategic multicultural and international media consultancy group headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its lead clients include the Presidio Trust, recipient of a 2018 Public Service Award, the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Catholic Charities of San Francisco and the African Diaspora Network. Previously, she had served as a consultant for the Democracy Fund.

A respected broadcast journalist, Odette’s career spans 20-plus years in the United States and the Philippines. Previously, at New America Media [NAM], she was the national media network director, television and radio news anchor/executive producer, and chair and co-emcee of the NAM Ethnic Media Awards. She hosted and produced NAM’s weekly segment on 91.7 FM KALW in the San Francisco Bay Area, the TV show “New America Now” and its monthly TV news magazine on Comcast Hometown Network [CHN] with the same program name. She was also an alternate anchor and segment producer for ‘Upside’ on Comcast CHN 104. 

In the 9/11 aftermath, Odette led the core group that launched the U.S. news bureau of The Filipino Channel TV of ABS-CBN International, headquartered in the Bay Area. She simultaneously served as news executive producer, co-anchor and head writer for “Balitang America” [News in America], the network’s flagship newscast. In the Philippines, she had worked in the network’s parent company, ABS-CBN Channel 2 as a news reporter, associate producer and head writer for its various production, news and current affairs programs and broadcast affiliates. Previously, she was a regular commentator and featured panelist on KQED TV and KQED Radio programs in San Francisco including ‘This Week in Northern California’ and ‘Pacific Time.’

Odette is a board trustee of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy based in San Francisco and a board adviser for the Filipino Food Movement.

She graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines Diliman, the country’s premiere state university, with a B.A. in Mass Communication and minored in Broadcast Journalism.

Felecia Henderson is Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Since 2020, she has served as a coach on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging issues to 100-plus print and broadcast news organizations nationwide that participate in the Table Stakes digital newsroom innovation program. She also leads Maynard’s signature Fault Lines® training program, the cultural competency curriculum for colleges and universities, and is a newsroom organizational change consultant.

Prior to joining the institute, Felecia was Assistant Managing Editor at The Detroit News where she was a member of the senior management team responsible for newsroom operations. In 2009, she successfully co-facilitated the largest newsroom change initiative to transition the organization to a digital news, four-day single copy, two-day home delivery model.

She began her journalism career at her hometown newspaper, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, KY, graduated from the Maynard Institute’s Editing Program for Minority Journalists at the University of Arizona, and held editing roles at the Detroit Free Press and Cincinnati Post.

Felecia is a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Visual Task Force. Locally, she was elected president and vice president-print of the Detroit NABJ.

Felecia earned a bachelor’s degree in Radio-TV/Journalism from Murray State University, which named her a Distinguished Alumna in 2019, and a Master of Organization Development from Bowling Green State University. She holds certification in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University and is a certified Emotional Intelligence practitioner from RocheMartin, an international leadership development organization.

P. Kim Bui is a 2023-2024 John S. Knight Journalism fellow. Recently, she was senior director of product and audience innovation at the Arizona Republic. Originally from Iowa, she’s focused her career on leading real-time news initiatives and creating new storytelling forms for digital, print, and broadcast companies catering to local, national and global audiences. Prior, she was editor-at-large for NowThis News and deputy managing editor for reported.ly, a distributed social journalism startup. 

She was in the inaugural class of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership from City University of New York’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She’s spoken on journalism and leadership worldwide and written about empathy in journalism for a number of research outlets. She writes a newsletter for emerging news leaders called “The Middles.”

Aaron Glantz served as Executive-in-Residence for the Maynard 200 Fellowship’s Investigative Storytelling Track in 2023. He is California bureau chief and a senior editor at The Fuller Project, the global newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking reporting that catalyzes positive change for women.

Aaron is a two-time Peabody Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, who produces journalism with impact. His work has sparked dozens of Congressional hearings and investigations by the FBI, DEA, Pentagon inspector general, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary execution. One project prompted the second largest redlining settlement in Justice Department history, against Warren Buffett’s mortgage companies.

In 2024 Aaron joined Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University, as a fellow.

Monique O. Madan is an investigative reporter at CalMatters and The Markup, where she uncovers the complex interplay between technology and societal issues. During her time at USA TODAY, uncovered botched construction and evidence of money laundering at the collapsed Surfside condominium building in south Florida in a project called “Left to Rot.” 

Before joining the investigations team, Madan covered immigration for the Miami Herald, where she was honored for “Immigration Pandemic,” her investigative series. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and The Dallas Morning News and led to the release of a man held in solitary confinement in ICE detention for an astonishing 11 years. She also exposed coercive self-deportation practices and significant gaps in immigration policies.

In 2019, she was a fellow at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. She is a graduate of Harvard University and Emerson College.

Tom is Assistant Managing Editor for Journalism Initiatives atThe 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. For the past six years, he has served as a coach in the Poynter Table Stakes program, which helps newsrooms make the transition to sustainable digital publishing.

Maria is a former enterprise editor at the Tampa Bay Times and The Houston Chronicle and, before that, managing editor at The Virginian-Pilot. She has edited dozens of award-winning projects, frequently lectures on narrative journalism, co-hosts a podcast (WriteLane) about craft and has been a Pulitzer Prize juror six times.

She is a board member of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism. Carrillo was born in Washington, D.C., two years after her parents left Cuba in exile. She now lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., with her husband, and they have two grown children.