BIO:

b. 1979

A San Francisco native, I have created social documentary projects across the Americas focusing on cultural identity, social inequality, violence, workers rights and the environment.

Most recently, I was awarded a grant by For Freedoms, in collaboration with National Geographic, to continue my work on faith and labor in the California central valley migrant worker community.  I am also a Professor of Journalism and a Catchlight Global-Fellow.  My work with Catchlight, The Pulitzer Center and The Marshall Project has focused on documenting mass incarceration's effects on minority communities and visuals-based, education curriculum development and instruction in juvenile detention facilities and communities disproportionately affected by mass incarceration.

I have lead multiple visual storytelling workshops for professional educators and journalists across the USA as well as for children and teens in the US and Mexico. I have also lectured on visuals based curriculum at universities nationwide, including at Harvard Law School.

My 2-year project, Downstream, Death of the Colorado is held in the permanent collection at the United States Library of Congress and was recognized by POYi with the Global Vision Award. My project on the drug war and culture of violence in Mexico, La Guerra Mexicana, was awarded the Domestic News Picture Story of the year by the NPPA. My work has been recognized with numerous other awards from both national and international press organizations.

After completing the Journalism program at SFSU, I worked primarily for The Wall Street Journal from 2008 - 2014 and currently focus on long-term documentary magazine features in California, the American Southwest, and Mexico.

My work has appeared in National Geographic, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, California Sunday Magazine, Harpers, The Atlantic, GQ, Esquire, Fortune, Mother Jones, Newsweek, TIME, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Wired, Politico, Virginia Quarterly Review, PDN, American Photo, The Fader, The New York Times, U.S.News & World Report, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.