Class of 2023-24 Scripps Fellows

Kara Fox, digital producer, CNN International. Kara is a journalist whose work unpacks the why and how behind breaking news — with a reporting focus on women’s issues, geopolitics, culture and corruption.

Since 2016, Kara has worked as a digital producer at CNN International, crafting features from across the EMEA region ranging from alternative youth movements in Putin’s Russia, the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in Erdogan’s Turkey and the plight of Rwandan dissidents. Her work has been cited in US Congress and in the Irish Oireachtas. 

Before that, she worked as a photographer and multi-platform visual journalist, documenting daily life in the isolated kingdom of Bhutan; political movements in Myanmar, Cambodia, Haiti and the UK. Kara began her career in New York, where she worked as a photo editor at National Geographic Adventure Magazine and the World Picture Network.

As a Ted Scripps fellow, she will develop a project about climate change’s unique threats to women.

Rebecca Halleck, senior editor, The New York Times. Rebecca is a senior editor at The New York Times, where she has covered elections, the pandemic, extreme weather events, policing, and racial justice protests. She contributed to The Times’ live coverage of the coronavirus, for which the paper won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Before joining The Times, she was a digital editor at the Chicago Tribune and an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois, and a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University.

During her fellowship year, Ms. Halleck will examine the legal and policy frameworks surrounding climate change and climate action. She will focus on the emerging patchwork of state environmental rights amendments, the climate justice movement, and other remedies for individuals in the realms of politics, public policy and domestic law.

Elliot Ross, photographer. Elliot is a Taiwanese-American photographer rooted in the American West with a practice defined by long-term inquiries in service of understanding how landscapes – both natural and artificial – shape community and culture. Within this framework of cultural geography, his ongoing projects investigate the water crisis unfolding across the Western United States, how indigenous communities on the frontlines of climate change are confronting a physical and spiritual loss of home through self-determination, and how the artifice of geopolitical borders shape and divide identity. During his career, he has collaborated with a wide variety of journalistic outlets including National Geographic Magazine, TIME, The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Looking forward, he is incredibly grateful to dedicate a year towards building his academic knowledge and growing his family of peers through the Ted Scripps Fellowship. He plans on using this time and the incredible depth of the fellowship’s resources to build the foundation of the next chapter of his career as a journalist focused on water, climate change and Western American society. Specifically, he plans to enroll in classes concerned with topics of hydrology, Western historical context, and disruptive communication while also engaging with the vibrant community the University of Colorado hosts. Throughout these experiences, he will continue to develop his latest long-term project, Geography of Hope, that explores a whole host of environmental and social issues through the lens of an ascendant Glen Canyon ecosystem. 

Ishan Thakore, multimedia producer and journalist. Ishan is a multimedia producer and investigative journalist. His work has appeared in THE CITY, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Netflix, the BBC, National Geographic blogs and Al Jazeera. He is the recipient of IRE’s Journalist of Color Fellowship, a Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship, and a BBC/Sundance Institute Fellowship.

As a Ted Scripps fellow, he will study and report on the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to protect the New York region from storm surges, and what that reveals about the federal government’s approach to coastal resiliency. His investigation hopes to question whether we can engineer our way out of coastal risks, and who gets to be saved when our tenuous control of coastlines is lost. 

Clifton Wiens, writer and filmmaker. Clifton is an independent writer and filmmaker who previously worked at National Geographic in various capacities. He was senior script researcher/editor on such documentaries as Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ and the Edward Norton-narrated series ‘Strange Days on Planet Earth,’ which focused on climate change crises around the globe.  He also was a development producer on numerous films including Egyptology, paleontology, archaeology, and many topics. Going freelance in 2011 he continued to produce and script films for various documentary outlets in southeast Asia, including post-producing ‘Malaysia from Below,’ which won best natural history/wildlife film at the Asian Television Awards in Singapore. He has also worked as a policy analyst, a congressional speechwriter, book editor, and as a development researcher and writer on factual-based scripted series.

During the fellowship, Clifton will develop a documentary film exploring apocalyptic beliefs and their impact on attitudes and policy related to climate change and other environmental issues.