2026-2027

Lee Hawkins is a Pulitzer Prize-finalist investigative journalist and author whose work examines the intergenerational effects of violence, trauma, resilience, and government-sanctioned violence and atrocities on Black American families and other families across the United States. He is the author of I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free, a critically acclaimed memoir that traces 400 years of his family’s history through investigative reporting, DNA analysis, and archival research. The book was nominated for a 2026 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. It was also named an Oprah Daily Black History Month pick, and Amazon selected it as an Editor’s Pick and Best History Book. Hawkins is the creator, co-producer, and narrator of the 2024 long-form podcast series What Happened in Alabama? and 2025’s Unlocking the Gates for American Public Media. He was part of The Wall Street Journal team named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2022 for coverage of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and is the recipient of numerous honors and fellowships, including the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism and the O’Brien Fellowship for Public Service Journalism at Marquette University. Hawkins is a six-time winner of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Salute to Excellence Award and a two-time Gerald Loeb Award finalist.

Previously, Hawkins spent 19 years at The Wall Street Journal as a reporter, editor, and on-camera journalist. His tenure there included covering New York City public schools, with particular attention to how the pandemic affected the nation’s largest school system and its students.

As a Spencer fellow, Hawkins will investigate the persistence of corporal punishment in American public schools, especially its impact on Black children and communities.

Madison Hopkins is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter focused on public accountability and the systems that shape people’s daily lives. Most recently, she was a senior investigative reporter with the Illinois Answers Project, the nonprofit newsroom of the Better Government Association in Chicago.

In 2022, Hopkins and Chicago Tribune reporter Cecilia Reyes won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for “The Failures Before the Fires,” a yearlong investigation into Chicago’s lax enforcement of building code violations. The project documented dozens of fatal fires in buildings long known to city officials as dangerous, revealing systemic failures in oversight and accountability.

Hopkins’ past work includes reporting on environmental oversight, disability services, early childhood systems, and other areas where government responsibility intersects with vulnerable populations.

As a Spencer fellow, Hopkins will investigate the structural drivers of caregiver burnout and mental health strain among families raising autistic children. Her reporting will examine how the systems and communities that families rely on can better support caregivers and help autistic children thrive.

Liz Bell has covered education in North Carolina for a decade for the nonprofit publication EdNC, and has copublished work in national outlets including The 74 Million, The Hechinger Report, and Early Learning Nation. In recent years, she has been the only reporter in the state focused on the early childhood beat, investigating the child care crisis, its effects on children, families, and communities, and emerging solutions. Her work is routinely cited by state policymakers and early childhood researchers.

Recent coverage includes stories on the rise of early childhood apprenticeships, a look at community colleges’ strategies to serve parenting students, and a deep dive into the needs of in-home child care providers. Bell is an alumna of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

During her fellowship year, Bell will study some of the first American attempts at universal child care and their lessons for the rest of the country. As some states and communities make historic early childhood investments, Bell will examine how these efforts impact not only young children and their families but also our collective understanding of education in the early years.

Gabriela Goitía Vázquez is an educator, writer, and media-maker. While teaching AP Human
Geography, Spanish Literature, and English Composition in Miami-Dade Public Schools, she prioritized place-based learning, storytelling, and mapmaking as methods for engaging students and empowering communities. Her work as an educator has been recognized by the National Book Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a former rookie teacher of the year in Miami-Dade. Goitía Vázquez is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and earned a master’s in computing in education from Columbia’s Teachers College.

As a Spencer fellow, Goitía Vázquez will create a narrative atlas exploring the relationship between schools and storms, paying particular attention to how climate disasters have impacted educational trajectories, how schools can serve as recovery sites during and after disasters, and how to protect schools and children when climate crises occur.