Grace Asiegbu is a Chicago-based writer with over five years of experience crafting human-centered stories through impactful storytelling and audience engagement.

Nadia Carolina Hernandez is a bilingual Latina journalist with a passion for community storytelling with a focus on identity. She graduated from DePaul University with a BA in Journalism. She is committed to using journalism as a way to create community pride, increase transparency, and keep locals informed.

Obed Lamy is a video journalist and a documentary filmmaker. As a journalist with the Associated Press, he covers breaking news — including the exclusive phone call between Pope Leo XIV and his brother broadcast worldwide — and enterprise stories on immigrant communities. His films have screened at festivals across the United States, Canada, and South Korea. He won a Student Emmy from the Mid-America Emmy® Foundation and Best Emerging Filmmaker at the Fayetteville Film Festival. Born and raised in Haiti, Obed explores collective memory and silences in historical narratives through intimate, human-centered storytelling. A Fulbright Scholar, he earned an MFA in Documentary Media from Northwestern University and is a fellow of the Caribbean Film Academy and Kartemquin Films’ Diverse Voices in Docs program.

Carlos Acosta has been active in the social service field since 1990. He is currently the Owner & Lead Organizer/ Counselor of Phoenix Bilingual Services. He previously served as Staff Clinician at Blair Counseling and Mediation (Crystal Lake, IL), Senior Therapist with Irene Corzo and Associates (Lake Geneva, WI), Onsite Crisis Counselor with the McHenry Co. Crisis Program, and Clinical Screener at Northern Illinois University.

Carlos Acosta has served his community in various capacities. Carlos served as an elected McHenry County Board member (5th District) from 2018 to 2022. Carlos was previously an appointed member of the Woodstock Plan Commission (2004 - 2010). Carlos also served on the Board of Directors of the United Way of McHenry County (2003 - 2008), Leadership Greater McHenry County (2004 - 2008), and the McHenry County Community Foundation (2003 - 2007).

Carlos earned his B.S. in Leisure Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his M.A. in Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.

I’m Caitlin, a first-year journalism graduate student at DePaul University. Devoted to education, justice, and our shared humanity, I strive to tell stories that matter. Whether behind a camera or at a keyboard, I use multimedia storytelling to expose inequities, inspire meaningful change, and inform public discourse.