The Team
Photographer: Andrea Bruce
Andrea’s work focuses on people living in the aftermath of war, concentrating on the social issues that are sometimes ignored and often ignited in war's wake. For almost 15 years she chronicled the world's most troubled areas, focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2016, she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University where she studied political theory and democracy and held the first “Democracy Dinner” to gain ideas and guidance for this project.
For eight years she worked as a staff photographer for The Washington Post, where she originated and authored a weekly column called "Unseen Iraq.” She also worked at The Concord Monitor and The St. Petersburg Times after graduating from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995. She is now a member/ owner of the photo agency NOOR.
Awards include the 2018 IWMF Anja Niedringhaus award, a 2014 World Press Photo award and the inaugural Chris Hondros Fund Award in 2012 for the “commitment, willingness and sacrifice shown in her work.” She was named Photographer of the Year four times by the WHNPA, received several awards from the Pictures of the Year International contest, including the 2017 Environmental Vision Award for work in National Geographic Magazine, and was awarded the prestigious John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club in New York.
In 2018 she was a CatchLight Fellow for the Our Democracy project and a National Geographic Explorer.
Currently, she is based in North Carolina.
Work: https://www.noorimages.com/andrea-bruce
Writer: Rebecca Lee Sanchez
Rebecca is a freelance multimedia journalist, currently working alongside photographer Andrea Bruce on the project Our Democracy. She is a 4th year PhD candidate at the European Graduate School, where she is earning her Doctorate in Philosophy and Media and Communications. She holds a Master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Bachelor’s from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied anthropology and printmaking.
Previously a photo editor at NBC News and MSNBC, Rebecca worked under Director of Photography Amy Pereira on award winning feature projects and daily coverage. She began her journalistic career at the GlobalPost, later the GroundTruth Project, where she was the writer and editor for the daily RIGHTS vertical, covering human rights and social justice, and the deputy editor for
Special Reports. She was a 2014 ICFJ Bringing Home the World fellow, for which her multi-media project on abortion in Argentina won a 2015 Regional Edward R. Murrow award. She then went on to work freelance, positioned in the Vatican City and covering the 2014 Extraordinary Synod of the Bishops. Though she was primarily a writer, Rebecca also trained in video production while earning her master’s in broadcast journalism at the J-School, and studied photography under Nina Berman, whom she later taught alongside as an adjunct professor of visual storytelling at the Columbia J- School. She is currently working on a dissertation examining representations and manipulations of violence in visual news media and the role of images in creating and altering realities, in today’s digital landscape.
Work:
Masters of the Screen: On Media Warfare, Optics, and Photography as Fatal Strategy
Edel Rodriquez
NBC: Edel Rodriguez: Weaponized Cover Art, Viral Dissent
Harvard Nieman Lab: Predictions for Journalism 2019
GlobalPost Series: Argentina’s abortion battle pushes women into legal labyrinth
Looking at Argentina’s Catholic women of worship
Legal restrictions lead to ‘DIY abortions’ in Texas and Argentina alike
Educator/Videographer: Lorraine Ustaris
Lorraine is committed to pedagogically- driven multimedia work that lies at the intersection of education and journalism. As Our Democracy’s video journalist and education specialist, she uses her experiences in production and public education to create documentary video content, pedagogical strategies, and digital curricular materials that will ensure the reach and impact of the project’s website and multimedia maps in schools and communities around the world. Ustaris earned her master’s in education at Villanova University and is a graduate of the Graduate School of Journalism and documentary film program at Columbia University. She has over a decade of experience teaching literature,
literacy and multimedia storytelling at the secondary and college levels and creating innovative curriculum for numerous education organizations. Ustaris has been a teaching consultant for the National Writing Project for nearly a decade and has presented her work at national and international conferences. In 2012, she won the Lindback Award for distinguished teaching. Her classroom practice is the subject of a new book Arts-based Teaching and Learning in the Literacy Classroom by education researcher Jessica Whitelaw. Before joining Our Democracy, Ustaris was a multimedia producer for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Her work has been featured on The Atlantic Selects, National Geographic's Out of Eden Walk, Elle.com, the Pulitzer Center, PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, and PRI’s America Abroad.
Production portfolio