Our 2022-2023 student interns are paired with their respective fellows below:

Fellow Lee Hawkins's team

Andrew Amouzou, senior

Andrew Amouzou is a rising senior who is eager to get started with the O'Brien Fellowship program. As a journalism major, he has been able to experience the world of journalism right away through classwork and with the Marquette Wire student media organization that he will lead starting next fall. He looks forward to growing his skills, this time in investigative reporting. He believes being able to work on a podcast series will help him navigate through a new route of multimedia journalism that he is sure to learn a lot from.

Ziyang Fu, second-year graduate student

Ziyang Fu is a second-year graduate student studying Digital Communication Strategies at Marquette. Fu says he believes in "nothing but truth and justice" and he is eager to promote an ethical communication industry. He worked with 2021–22 O'Brien Fellow Sari Lesk on a project regarding small businesses in Milwaukee and their access to capital. He expects to take a deep dive into investigative reporting and seek solutions to pressing issues.

John Leuzzi, senior

John Leuzzi is a rising senior from Mount Laurel, NJ, studying journalism and digital media. He has worked as a sports reporter, assistant sports editor, and sports audio producer at the Marquette Wire. This past year at the Wire, he served as the executive sports editor. He recently took home gold at the Milwaukee Press Club Gridiron Dinner for Online: Best Sports Story for his feature article on former Marquette women's basketball and now Connecticut Sun guard Natisha Hiedeman. Leuzzi says he is looking forward to, through the fellowship, pursuing stories that make an impact within a community.

Fellow Lauren Lindstrom's team

Maria Crenshaw, senior

Maria is a rising senior at Marquette University majoring in journalism and minoring in digital media and history. She reported for the Marquette Wire on the projects team and focused on investigative work there. During her time at the Wire she reported on a variety of topics such as food insecurity, sexual assault, the Marquette University Police Department, and COVID-19. As an O'Brien intern, Maria hopes to gain more experience in the professional newsroom and hopes to push herself to create impactful journalistic work with the guidance of her fellow.

Hannah Hernandez, senior

Hannah Hernandez is a rising senior from Milwaukee, WI. She is studying journalism with a double minor in writing-intensive English and Spanish. She currently works as a news reporter for the Marquette Wire and will intern at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the summer of 2022. Hernandez says she wants, through journalism, to highlight misrepresented communities that are often overlooked.

 

Fellow Samantha Shapiro's team

Skyler Chun, senior

Skyler Chun is a rising senior studying journalism and international affairs, with a minor in digital media. She grew up in Aiea, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. She served as the managing editor of the Marquette Journal this year and was formerly the executive Arts & Entertainment editor for the Marquette Wire. She loves telling stories that explore new perspectives and open up conversations, and she's looking forward to gaining more experience in public service journalism through this fellowship.

Julianna Okosun, senior

Okosun is pursuing a BA in Journalism with a minor in Digital Media (2023), and a MA in Digital Communication Strategies (2024), as a part of Marquette's Accelerated Degree Program. She was born and raised in Copenhagen, Denmark, and moved to the United States in 2020 to play for Marquette's Women's Basketball Team. For the Marquette Wire she has worked as an audio producer for Marquette radio, creating weekly audio packages and hosting the podcast A&E Breakdown. Okosun is passionate about working in collaboration with others and applying a social justice lens to her work.

 

Fellow John Diedrich's team

Alexandra Rivera Grant, first-year graduate student

Alex Rivera Grant is an incoming first-year graduate student studying digital communication strategies. She will be graduating in May 2022 with a bachelor's in digital media from Marquette. She is currently the Marquette Wire's first editor of diversity and inclusion and has previously worked on a late-night entertainment show for three years prior. Her passion has always been about people. She believes there are many perspectives to be shared and she wants to help people feel seen.

Ben Schultz, senior

Schultz is a senior journalism student from Wauwatosa, WI, a Milwaukee suburb. He has worked at the Marquette Wire as a sports reporter. Schultz says his interest in journalism came from a passion for writing, sports and stats and being able to incorporate them all together. Upon graduation, expected in December 2022, Schultz hopes to work as a print reporter writing data-driven stories or covering sports at the collegiate or prep level.

The O’Brien Fellowship is committed to providing experienced journalists with the tools to pursue ambitious long-term projects in service of the public interest. In this vein, each fellow is paired with a hand-selected team of student interns who provide quality reporting and production support over the course of the project.

Our interns aren’t assigned busy work. They’re treated as entry-level reporters whose work and skills have a real impact on our fellows’ success. Many students even gain byline credit or go on to work in the fellow’s home newsroom in a university-sponsored summer internship. In this way, we strive to not only empower experienced journalists to do great work now, but also to train up-and-coming reporters to do great work in the future.