Thanks for heading over to our team page. We’re glad you’re interested in us enough to find out who we are. We know that every connection with our neighbors not only helps us do our jobs better, but also helps us learn new ways to better our community.
A little bit about the team: We are a group of journalists, community leaders, volunteers and subscribers who believe that local news in central Virginia is an important part of our civic health, and can serve more diverse communities better. Together we are creating the kind of local news organization that our community deserves and needs. We are passionate about the profession of journalism and committed to understanding and building a local news ecosystem that works.
We are committed to an equitable workplace, because we know we can’t uphold our values in our journalism and community if we can’t do it in our own office with our own team. Here’s more about or staff and board.
Let’s talk
The best way to reach us is by messaging us through this website. This way, your note will reach the right people on our team and we’ll have the right information to respond. We read everything you send! Contact us here.
But if you want to talk directly with someone on our team, here are the first folks to reach out to.
Atlee Webber
Community Editor
My job is to understand your news needs and bring your ideas to our reporters. I also share Charlottesville Tomorrow’s successes and learnings with donors, partners and our colleagues in the news industry. I’m a product of Virginia public schools, from kindergarten through college, and I am proud to be strengthening the information ecosystem of my home state. I want to talk to you about what you want in local news. Schedule a time to chat here.
Sakeena Alkateeb
Revenue and Partnerships Lead
As Revenue and Partnerships Lead, I work to grow our capacity and deepen our connections with the community. That means engaging with donors, local businesses and philanthropic partners who believe in the power of free, local news. I moved to the U.S. in 2009 and have called Charlottesville home ever since. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of fundraising for several local nonprofits that serve our community in powerful ways. Are you interested in supporting our work? Send me an email anytime.
Sabrina Feggans
Community Engagement Lead
I work on community events at Charlottesville Tomorrow. Raised in Central Virginia, I’m deeply committed to this community and rooted in the belief that powerful storytelling and collaborative spaces are key to creating lasting change. My work is to create pathways for more people to be heard and ensure real experiences shape the way we deliver news and connect communities together. Let’s talk about your ideas for events and meetings, ways to make local news more accessible for everyone, and collaborations that will empower us all. Send me an email so we can work together.
Meet the rest of the team
Angilee Shah
CEO and Editor-in-Chief
My goal as the leader of Charlottesville Tomorrow is to help my neighbors feel pride and ownership over our local news. Together, we are building a local newsroom that follows the issues that matter to our diverse communities, and also includes more of our perspectives. Enough about me, I’d love to know more about you. Let’s find a time to talk.
Michaux Hood, CFRE
Chief Sustainability Officer
I was born in Charlottesville (attended City elementary and Albemarle County high schools!). I’ve worked independently with local businesses and nonprofits since 2000 and with Charlottesville Tomorrow since 2018. I love to talk with our supporters about their local histories and why they feel local, independent news that is free to all residents is crucial to the health of our home. Interested in supporting the great work our reporters do? Get in touch with me by email here.
Ashley Harper
Director of Product and Technology
Access to information is critical to making informed decisions. My purpose at Charlottesville Tomorrow is to ensure our community can access and interact with our reporting. I’m constantly looking for new ways to expand our reach and make it easy for people to connect with us and each other. In addition to building out our digital products and brand, I work with our editorial team to create visuals and help audiences understand data. Have feedback about our website or how you access our work? Take a walk with me in the newsroom.
Akash Sinha
Managing Editor
As a leader of Charlottesville Tomorrow’s editorial staff, I want to ensure our news informs, connects and serves our local communities. I’ve been a journalist and newsroom manager for many years, and I’m a big believer in the power of news as well as the many talented people behind it. Our team wants to do our best for you, our readers, so please tell us more about you and what you’d like to read. Schedule some time to chat here.
Jessie Higgins
Democracy Editor
As a reporter, I focus our local democracy and run our annual, essential Voter Guide. If there’s something you think we should be investigating, please email me here.
Erin O’Hare
Neighborhoods Reporter
Hello! I’m Erin, a longtime Charlottesville city resident and Charlottesville Tomorrow’s neighborhoods reporter. I write about our homes, the roads we travel, the buses we take, the water we drink, the parks where we play and relax, the histories of buildings and blocks. I’ve never met a stranger and love to listen, so, get in touch with me by email here.
Anastasiia Carrier
Public Health and Safety Reporter
I got my start in local news in West Virginia. After a few years of focusing on national and global news, I’m excited to move back to the region and community-focused journalism. As a public health and safety reporter, I focus on the people as well as public and private organizations that impact our well-being. I’m tracking health care and criminal justice, but also community initiatives and stories that impact and empower people in their daily lives. Let’s work together to create a safer, healthier community! To share your concerns, ideas and stories, email me here.
Allie Pitchon
Public Institutions Reporter
I believe deeply in journalism that builds stronger communities and shines light on the systems and decisions that shape our daily lives. I’ve lived and worked all over the place, including almost two years as a reporter in Petersburg and two year-long fellowships working on the investigative desks of the Miami Herald and The New York Times. I’m a a corps member with Report for America and part of the Open Campus cohort of journalists who report on higher education. I grew up in a big city (Buenos Aires), but I’ve come to value places where local connections run deep. I’m excited to get to know Charlottesville one bookstore and coffee spot at a time — and by getting to know you. Email me here.
La Shawn Pagán
Education Reporter
Hi, I’m passionate about using my platform as a journalist to tell people’s stories. My role in the newsroom is to learn and report on all the ways that children, teens and adults learn in central Virginia. I believe that communities that have access to education are communities that grow stronger. If you have any tips, questions, or if you’d like for me to report on something that really matters to you please email me!
Aliyah Cotton, MFA
People and Culture Officer
I work to make Charlottesville Tomorrow be as inclusive, healthy and rewarding a workplace as we can be. As a University of Virginia alum, Charlottesville feels like home to me, and I love being able to support the community that has given so much to me.
Leela Prasad
Data Lead
I love working at the intersection of data, content and strategy. As Charlottesville Tomorrow’s Data Lead, my job is to make data accessible to our team, helping them interpret and understand the numbers. I uncover emerging trends, identify when critical shifts occur, map where opportunities exist, and help explain why these insights matter to our whole community.
Bonnie Newman Davis
Editor-at-large
I started working for newspapers, mostly in Richmond, Virginia four decades ago. Since then I’ve taught college students, been managing editor of a Black-owned weekly newspaper, created a nonprofit media organization, and written a book, “Truth Tellers: The Power and Presence of Black Women Journalists Since 1960.” I’m working with Charlottesville Tomorrow on the stories that matter to you, and helping build up the next generation of Virginia journalists.
Larry Graham
Talent Recruitment and Development
I’m the founder of The Diversity Pledge Institute and Lunch Counter Mentality. I aim to support every organization that understands the benefits of a diverse and inclusive work environment. As newsrooms strive to reflect the communities they serve, I’m excited to work with such a diverse team as the staff at Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Andra Landi
Copy Editor
I work with Charlottesville Tomorrow to make sure that the stories we publish are clear, factual and relevant to our readers. I’m passionate about highlighting the beauty and diversity of central Virginia’s rural communities, where I’ve spent my entire career as a local journalist. I believe that the best journalism is done in partnership with community members, so if you have an idea for something we should cover, reach out.
William Lanzana
Financial Advisor
I’m the Co-Founder of Forward Financial Intelligence (FFI), a Charlottesville small business that empowers local companies and nonprofits with advisory and financial and accounting services. I enjoy sharing my years of accumulated experience at large corporations with our community. FFI is working with Charlottesville Tomorrow to support its growth and sustainability with thoughtful and practical financial management.
Charlottesville Inclusive Media was founded by Charlottesville Tomorrow, In My Humble Opinion radio show and Vinegar Hill Magazine to bring greater representation to central Virginia media. Find out more about the collaboration.
Board of Directors
Barbara Kessler, Chair
Barbara Kessler has lived in the Charlottesville/Albemarle community for more than half her life (no age disclosed here!). She gets her energy from learning and connecting people to resources that may help in their success. Barbara is currently managing talent development and engagement projects. She has worked in education and the private sector focusing on workforce development, community outreach, and human resources management and volunteers(ed) with many area nonprofits. Always wondering about her purpose, she is working on incorporating exercise, family, friends, and fun (work and volunteering) into how she spends her time. Barbara and her husband, Jay, currently live with two four-legged furry children, Emma and Bennett. She has served on Charlottesville Tomorrow’s board since 2023.
Kristen Suokko, Vice Chair
Kristen Suokko is a consultant assisting nonprofit organizations with organizational development, planning, grant writing, and more. Most recently she was Executive Director of Local Food Hub in Charlottesville.
Kristen spent the first part of her career in Washington, DC with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the US Department of Energy. In 1998 she moved to Charlottesville to work in environmental philanthropy for the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the Blue Moon Fund and joined the staff of Local Food Hub in 2013.
Kristen holds a degree in Russian from Middlebury College and has been involved with a number of boards and civic organizations in and around Charlottesville. She has served on Charlottesville Tomorrow’s board since 2023.
Aleen Carey
Aleen Carey is a former high school Spanish teacher and currently works at food justice nonprofit Cultivate Charlottesville as outreach and resource program director. After earning her undergraduate degree from James Madison University, Aleen taught for a decade in Prince William and Albemarle Counties.
When she left the classroom, Aleen remained involved in the field of education professionally, working for Teachstone, and on a volunteer basis by joining the board of City Schoolyard Garden (CSG).
Aleen honed her nonprofit skills at the Center for Nonprofit Excellence (CNE) and uses them to focus on issues of equity in the Charlottesville area. She also serves on the board of the Building Goodness Foundation. She has served on Charlottesville Tomorrow’s board since 2024, serving as chair in 2024 and 2025.
Shilpa Davé
Shilpa Davé is a scholar of Asian American and South Asian American popular culture and film studies in the Department of Media Studies and an assistant dean in undergraduate education in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. She has published widely on Asian Americans in the media and has been interviewed by multiple outlets on the radio and in the press including NPR, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian and the Associated Press. She has worked with several nonprofits including serving on the Executive Board for Live Arts in Charlottesville, the national Executive Board of the Association for Asian American Studies, and a past faculty council member for the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). She has been lucky to travel nationally and abroad for work and pleasure and is an avid sports fan. She joined the Charlottesville Tomorrow board in 2026.
Claudine Ebeid
Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of audio at The Atlantic, home to podcasts Radio Atlantic, Autocracy in America and The David Frum Show. Prior to joining The Atlantic, she was senior editor of news projects at The New York Times. She spent eight years at NPR, where she was a supervising producer and editor at Morning Edition, and a producer for All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. She was also the creator and host of the podcast Broken Ground, from the Southern Environmental Law Center, where she also worked in communications. She got her start at WBUR in Boston. Claudine lives in Charlottesville with her husband Colin McElwain, daughters Noura and Leila, and their dog Bindi and tortoise, Brien[sic]. She joined the Charlottesville Tomorrow board in 2026.
Amel Gorani
Amel Gorani is Co-Principal of Nabta for Feminist Resourcing, a consultancy team focusing on resourcing of civil society organizations especially in contexts of crisis. Amel is an international development, peace and conflict, gender and inclusion specialist with over 25 years experience in diverse sectors. She has worked for international development agencies, governments, private foundations, academic institutions and NGOs, focusing on Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. She has worked extensively on migration and refugee issues, marginalized and vulnerable groups, political participation, governance, conflict-resolution, peace building and post-conflict reconstruction. Amel is a native Arabic speaker, speaks English and Swedish fluently, and has an intermediate-level command of French. She lives in Charlottesville with her family and joined the Charlottesville Tomorrow board in 2026.
Bonnie Gordon
Bonnie Gordonis a music historian who works across disciplines and creative practices and a professor at the University of Virginia. Her most recent book “Voice Machines: The Castrato the Cat Piano and Other Strange Sounds” was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023. She is Vice President of the American Musicological Society, a founding faculty member of the Equity Center at UVA and a co-director of the Sound Justice Lab. She also co-directs Cville Tulips, a program that supports women and children who have recently arrived from Afghanistan. In the music department, she teaches classes on music history, noise, gender, race and history as storytelling. In addition to her scholarly writing, she has published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Slate and the CVILLE Weekly. She plays jazz, rock and classical viola. Bonnie joined the Charlottesville Tomorrow board in 2025.
Joshua René
Joshua René is a Founder, Design Strategist, Adjunct Instructor, Speaker, and Thought-Leader. After 18+ years in leadership roles ranging from supervisory to a tenured directorship, Human Services taught him that serving people begins with serving how we think. Eager to do something about the gaps that industries found so easy to ignore, he dove in headfirst, packaged up decades of service, product, and behavior strategy, and introduced a model provoked by the question, “Whenever we sit down to solve a problem, we should always ask ourselves, what’s the human need behind it?” Say hello to Human-Centered Design!
Around 2016, he created the proprietary design consultancy, The Spill Teem® – a creative team of facilitators, workshoppers, speakers, and Human-Centered Strategists that partner with organizations to reignite their natural ability to see things in new ways. Founded in the United States and with teams in the United Kingdom, The Spill Teem® covers a lot of innovative ground, helping organizations thrive in the spaces of their services, products, and behaviors.
In addition to The Spill Teem®, he serves as an Adjunct at Piedmont, Virginia Community College, and is a relentless vinyl record collector. Joshua has served on Charlottesville Tomorrow’s board since 2023.
Troy Robinson
Troy Robinson is an entrepreneur, businessman, media professional, and civil rights leader with deep roots in Central Virginia. He owns and operates the Inspirational Cuts Barbershop and Inspirational Limo and Bus Company in Ruckersville, the Order Up Mobile Food Cart in Charlottesville, and is co-host and manager of the In My Humble Opinion Talk Radio Show and The Body Radio Show, highly-rated FM radio talk programs. A graduate of Orange County H.S., Troy is a certified IBEW union electrician and a graduate of the Community Investment Collaborative’s business training programs. He comes from a long line of African American civil rights and community leaders– his maternal great-grandfather built the first school bus for black children in Culpeper County out of farm parts and his paternal great-grandfather was a close advisor to the Washington D.C. civil rights leader Dorothy Height.
Troy works to leverage his experience as a businessman, media professional, and man of faith to create a more equitable society. He lives in Ruckersville with his wife Maxicelia Robinson and their children. He has been on Charlottesville Tomorrow’s board since 2021.
Richard Schragger
Richard Schragger is the Perre Bowen Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he has taught since 2001. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of constitutional law and local government law, federalism, urban policy, and the constitutional and economic status of cities. He received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and an M.A. in legal theory from University College London. He is a faculty fellow at the Miller Center, a faculty adviser to the Local Solutions Support Center, and a member of the American Law Institute. He is the author of City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Rich served for many years on the board of ReadyKids. He and his wife, Risa Goluboff, reside in Charlottesville, with their two children, Solomon and Eliana, both of whom attend Charlottesville city schools. Rich has been on the board of Charlottesville Tomorrow since 2023.
Peter Thompson
Peter Thompson served as Executive Director of The Center at Belvedere in Charlottesville from 1999 through 2023, positively impacting our community by creating opportunities for healthy aging through over 100 programs and scores of partnerships. During Peter’s tenure, The Center grew from a $400,000 annual budget in a 17,000 square foot facility to a $3 million budget in a 47,000 square foot facility that opened in 2020. The new facility received the American Institute of Architects Merit award for design in aging. The International Council on Active Aging gave The Center two Pinnacle Awards in 2022 as America’s premier community center for healthy aging and for wellness leadership. The local Community Climate Collaborative (C3) award was given for its environmental wellness initiatives.
He earlier served with WVPT-PBS and WMRA-NPR as well as a previous career as a restaurant manager. Peter earned his B.A. in History from the University of Virginia and his MPA in Nonprofit Management from Virginia Commonwealth University. His community service includes the Board of Directors of OLLI, Madison House, Chamber of Commerce, and the Center for Nonprofit Excellence. He was Virginia’s representative to the National Institute of Senior Centers Leadership Council and he helped found the Charlottesville Area Alliance, which works together for an age-friendly community, and is the Chair of the Transportation Work Group. He lives in Albemarle with his wife Barbara Millar and rescue dog Archie. He has been on Charlottesville Tomorrow’s board since 2024.
Rupa Valdez
Dr. Rupa Valdez is a professor at the University of Virginia with joint appointments in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of Medicine. Valdez’s work seeks to understand and support the ways in which people manage health at home and in their communities. She draws heavily on community engagement with community organizations and individuals from multiple health disparity populations. She has testified before Congress on the topic of health equity for the disability community and received the Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society for her pioneering work in patient ergonomics.
Valdez is also the Co-Founder and President of the Blue Trunk Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to travel accessibility. She lives with multiple chronic health conditions and disabilities, which have and continue to shape her research, teaching and advocacy. She joined Charlottesville Tomorrow’s board in 2025.
Past Board Members
- Michael D. Bills (2005-2013)
- Cathy Smith Train (2005-2019)
- Tony Vanderwarker (2005-2015)
- Mac Thompson (2005-2012)
- Terence Sieg (2005-2010)
- Paula Newcomb (2005-2009)
- Stephen McLean (2005-2011)
- A.D. Hart (2005)
- Renee Grisham (2005-2008)
- Brian Wheeler (2005-2017, Executive Director)
- Leigh Middleditch, Jr. (2008-2021)
- Joseph Barnes (2008-2011)
- Wistar Morris (2009-2021)
- Carol Hurt (2009-2019)
- Meghan Welsch (2011-2018)
- Kim Tanzer (2011-2014)
- Carrington King (2012-2016)
- Richard Strubel (2012-2017)
- McGregor McCance (2012-2016)
- Sasha Farmer (2012-2016)
- Bruce Miller (2014-2017)
- Heather Hill (2016-2017)
- Martin Klingel (2016-2018)
- Martin Silverman (2016-2018)
- Giles Morris (2018-2023, Executive Director)
- Paul Henderson (2017-2021)
- Michael Stoneking (2018-2019)
- Richard Aguilar (2018-2020)
- Cat Strumlauf (2018-2021)
- John “Jack” Brown (2019-2020)
- Shantell Bingham (2020-2022)
- Angilee Shah (2020-2022, 2023-, CEO)
- Xochitl Diaz (2021-2022)
- Christopher Ali (2020-2023)
- George Beller (2017-2023)
- Oliver Platts-Mills (2017-2023)
- Maggie Guggenheimer (2022-2024)
- Filadelfia Soto (2024)
- Bill Lewis (2020-2024)
- Meredith Strohm Gunter (2022-2024)
- Jack E. White (2025)
- Miguel Coradine (2021-2025)
- Veronica Gomez-Torres (2025)
- Jacqueline Salmon (2021-2025)
- Tim Gould (2022-2025)
