Seema Mehta is a political writer for the Los Angeles Times who covered the 2020, 2016, 2012 and 2008 presidential campaigns, as well as multiple gubernatorial, Senate and mayoral races. She was a Knight-Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan for the 2018-19 academic year studying automation and AI and their impacts on voters in the Midwest. A graduate of Syracuse University, the East Coast native swore when she joined The Times in 1998 that she would only spend a few years on the Left Coast. Many years, a husband, a house and a few cats later, she can’t imagine living somewhere she couldn’t golf year-round.

The Daily Orange is Syracuse, N.Y.'s only 501c3 nonprofit newsroom that delivers essential coverage at no cost to its readers. The D.O. is entirely run by Syracuse University students — with no oversight or funding from the university — who work tirelessly to produce award-winning projects that inspire change. The D.O. 's mission is to inform and build community through fierce and fair reporting in Onondaga County and beyond. The newspaper is currently delivered to more than 300 locations on and off campus, including downtown Syracuse and surrounding neighborhoods. While our growing digital product, dailyorange.com, sees hundreds of thousands of visitors each month, our print paper helps us reach community members who may not be able to access our content on the internet.

Open California is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that focuses on politics and policy in Sacramento. They publish Capital Weekly and host a podcast, put out the 100 most powerful list in the state’s capital, record oral histories of notable electeds and history makers, and put on regular conferences and panels.