Meet our team

Spotlight PA is building a highly talented team of investigative journalists and ushering in a new era of accountability for state government and beyond. When the citizens of Pennsylvania pay their taxes, need help in a tough time, or vote a politician into office, we’ll be there to make sure they get what they deserve. Contact our reporters using the emails below, or see how to send us tips more securely.

You can also read more about our commitment to diversity.

Christopher Baxter

Editor in Chief

cbaxter@spotlightpa.org
@cbaxter1

Christopher Baxter is the founding editor of Spotlight PA and oversees all aspects of the newsroom. His work as an investigative reporter and editor has regularly prompted meaningful change in the form of new laws and regulations, criminal investigations, resignations, legislative hearings and more.

Most recently, he was the editor for data and investigations at NJ Advance Media (NJ.com & The Star-Ledger), where he led the newsroom’s highest-level investigative projects with a digital-first approach and an emphasis on journalism that gets results. Previously, he was the Mike Wallace Fellow in Investigative Reporting with the Knight-Wallace Fellowships at the University of Michigan and, before that, worked for four years as a statehouse investigative reporter in The Star-Ledger’s Trenton Bureau. He began his career as a local reporter for The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa.

His work has garnered numerous state and national awards, including the 2014 Livingston Award in Local Reporting and the 2018 Investigative Reporters & Editors Freedom of Information Award.

Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein

Development Director

joanna@spotlightpa.org
@jzbernstein

For the past 10 years, Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein has dedicated her time alternately to investigative journalism and fundraising and communications for nonprofits. Most recently, she was in charge of grants and partnerships for HolaCode, a coding bootcamp for returnees and deportees in Mexico City. As an investigative reporter, she was part of a team at the Miami Herald chosen as a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting, and her reporting on Takata airbag defects for Reuters was recognized by the Society of Publishers in Asia. Joanna received a master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a Stabile Investigative Fellow. She also attended Columbia for college, graduating magna cum laude with a major in English and a minor in Hispanic Studies. She was born and raised in Philadelphia and is fully fluent in Spanish.

Angela Couloumbis

Investigative Reporter

acouloumbis@spotlightpa.org
@angelasink

Angela Couloumbis has covered government, politics, courts and crime for The Philadelphia Inquirer since 1996. She has reported on forest fires in the Rocky Mountains, riots in Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati, the mob’s effort to infiltrate city hall in New Jersey’s poorest city and the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.

For the past 13 years, she has focused on government and politics in the Pennsylvania State Capitol, shedding light on backroom dealing and corruption. She was part of a two-member reporting team that, in 2014, exposed a secret effort by the state Attorney General’s office to shut down an investigation into lawmakers who accepted envelopes stuffed with cash from an undercover government informant. The reporting led to a series of resignations and criminal convictions over several years. She has spent the past 18 months focused on investigative reporting on the #metoo movement in Pennsylvania. Her coverage has included projects on secret, taxpayer-funded sexual harassment settlements in the Legislature and state government.

Carl Johnson

Technology Director

cjohnson@spotlightpa.org
@carlmjohnson

Carl Johnson is the Technology Director for Spotlight PA. Prior to joining the Spotlight PA team, Carl worked as a Newsroom Product Engineer at The Baltimore Sun for Tribune Publishing, a Tech Lead for PBS, and a web developer for The Atlantic.

Carl has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Hawaii and is interested in looking at online publishing and full stack development from a critical perspective. Before becoming a software engineer, he worked as an educator for 9 years.

He lives in Baltimore with his wife, daughter, two cats, and a dog.

Charlotte Keith

Investigative Reporter

ckeith@spotlightpa.org
@char_keith

Charlotte Keith joins Spotlight PA from The Investigative Post, a nonprofit news outlet in Buffalo, N.Y., where she has reported extensively on the corrupt and wasteful spending in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s ‘Buffalo Billion’ economic development program. In 2016, her reporting on problems in Erie County’s child protective services unit was a finalist for the national Livingston Awards for Young Journalists in the local reporting category. She has experience translating her stories for both radio and television, and her work has also appeared in the Albany Times-Union, ProPublica, and the Texas Observer. Originally from London, she earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge, where she edited Varsity, the independent student newspaper. She graduated with honors from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.

Rebecca Moss

Investigative Reporter

rmoss@spotlightpa.org
@rebeccakmoss

Rebecca Moss joins Spotlight PA from The Santa Fe New Mexican, where she covered the environment, nuclear waste, problems at assisted living facilities, and clergy abuse within the Catholic Church. As part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, she spent more than a year investigating serious worker health and safety problems at the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons facilities, as well as failures by the Department of Labor to fairly adjudicate workers’ compensation claims. The reporting led to Congressional efforts to preserve an independent nuclear safety board. The series also won the Association of Health Care Journalists’ Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism in the public health category and, in collaboration with Investigate TV, the National Headliner Award for environmental reporting. Prior to the New Mexican, she reported from Cambodia, where she covered public health and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Her work has also appeared in The Village Voice, Elle.com, and Vogue.com. Originally from New Mexico, she has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Liz Navratil

Investigative Reporter

lnavratil@spotlightpa.org
@LizNavratil

Liz Navratil has covered state government and politics for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Philadelphia Inquirer since 2017. She is part of the team that won a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for coverage of the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Prior to arriving in the state capital, she covered crime for the Post-Gazette. During that time, she exposed the department’s flawed response to a disconnected 911 call made by a woman who was murdered. She also worked as part of a team that revealed that the then-police chief and others worked together to steal from the bureau. She was named a finalist for an IRE Award and received a letter of commendation from the judges of the Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting.

Aneri Pattani

Investigative Reporter

@aneripattani

Aneri Pattani comes to Spotlight PA from The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she covered mental health, suicide and health disparities. Also, she helped launch a biweekly solutions-oriented series called Made in Philly aimed at engaging diverse communities. Previously, she uncovered New York City’s failure to protect children from lead poisoning as a reporter for WNYC, and exposed the abuses of Florida’s disability services system as a producer on the podcast Aftereffect. She has also been a James Reston reporting fellow at The New York Times, and reported from Liberia with columnist Nicholas Kristof. Pattani’s articles, on topics ranging from politics to crime to business, have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Texas Tribune, CNBC and The Hartford Courant. Originally from Connecticut, she graduated from Northeastern University in Boston in 2017.

Daniel Simmons-Ritchie

Investigative Data Reporter

dsimmons-ritchie@spotlightpa.org
@Daniel_SR

Daniel Simmons-Ritchie has worked in journalism for nearly a decade, most recently as an investigative reporter for PennLive/The Patriot News in Harrisburg, Pa. His journalism combines traditional reporting skills, including an extensive understanding of Pennsylvania’s Right-To-Know law, with data analysis and web scraping. His reporting has led to resignations, fomented lawsuits, sparked government reforms and earned more than a dozen state and national awards for public service journalism, including a 2017 Investigative Reporters & Editors award and a 2014 Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Simmons-Ritchie is formerly from New Zealand and moved to the U.S. in 2011. Before he was hired by the Patriot-News in 2014, he worked as an enterprise reporter in South Dakota and as a county government reporter in southern Oregon.

Sara Simon

Investigative Data Reporter

ssimon@spotlightpa.org
@sarambsimon

Sara Simon is a software engineer turned investigative data reporter. She comes to Spotlight PA from the New York Times, where she built research tools to assist reporters in the newsroom. Her data work at the Times spanned desks and beats, from homicide convictions in opioid deaths to state-level abortion restrictions to contestant patterns throughout Miss America pageant history. Previously, Sara was a web developer at Vermont Public Radio. She studied English at Wellesley College before heading to the Turing School of Software and Design.