Management

SpotlightDC's management team oversees its operations.

Harry Jaffe, cofounder and president of SpotlightDC, is a veteran local journalist, columnist and author. He serves as executive director, with oversight of operations, grants and development.

Brenda Malottke serves as SpotlightDC's principal financial advisor. She's director of nonprofit operations for TYDECO.

Sam Delgado oversees SpotlightDC's social media and online presence. She's a freelance multimedia journalist with bylines in Vox.com, Civil Eats, and The 51st.

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is responsible for awarding SpotlightDC grants to journalists and overseeing finances, management, policy and sustainability.

Margaret “Peggy” Engel directs the Alicia Patterson Journalism Foundation and was the managing editor of the Newseum. She was a reporter for the Washington Post, Des Moines Register and Lorain Journal and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. She serves on the advisory board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and chairs the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards board.

Harry Jaffe has been writing columns and reporting on crime, politics, business and sports in the Washington region for 40 years. He began covering local matters with Regardie’s magazine in 1986. From 1990 to 2016 he was National Editor and feature writer for Washingtonian magazine. Jaffe co-authored Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, DC, revised in 2014, with journalist Tom Sherwood. His work has also appeared locally in the Washington Post, DC Examiner and nbcwashington.com.

Denise Rolark-Barnes took over as publisher of The Washington Informer in 1994 and has built the publication into a thriving, multi-media community news organization. She has also served as the director of the Washington Informer Charities and is the executive producer of WIN-TV, a weekly digital news broadcast program aired on Facebook and YouTube.

Terence Samuel was the Editor in Chief of USA Today. He served as Managing Editor at NPR, and has reported for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and US News & World Report, where he was chief congressional correspondent. He was a director of editorial programming for AOL Black Voices before joining the Washington Post Company to help launch TheRoot.com in 2007.

Brian Kelly is Editorial Director and Executive Vice President of U.S. News & World Report, a publisher of news and consumer information products. Kelly is a member of the executive committee with primary responsibility for all the company’s content, which includes the website usnews.com, print and e-book guides on education and health care, and a conference-and-events business. He was formerly a senior editor at The Washington Post and the editor of Regardie’s Magazine. He began his career as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. He is a vice president of the Economic Club of Washington and a board member of The Children’s Inn of The National Institutes of Health.

Cheryl W. Thompson is an award-winning investigative correspondent for NPR. Prior to joining NPR in January 2019, she spent 22 years at the Washington Post, where she wrote extensively about law enforcement, political corruption and guns, and was a White House correspondent during Barack Obama’s first term. She was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2002. An investigative journalism professor at George Washington University, Thompson became the first African American president of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) in 2018. She was re-elected in 2019. 

Kojo Nnamdi, “Maybe the best radio interviewer in town” according to The Washington Post. Nnamdi hosts The Politics Hour with Kojo Nnamdi, Fridays at noon with resident analyst Tom Sherwood on WAMU 88.5. He’s been the voice of the DMV for more than 50 years on radio and television.

Advisory Board

The Advisory Board reviews and recommends proposals for funding to the Board of Directors. They may also provided guidance and feedback to grantees.

Katherine Boo is an investigative feature writer and author of New York Times bestseller and National Book Award-winning Behind the Beautiful Forevers. A contributor to the New Yorker, her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and Washington Monthly. Her writing about disadvantaged populations for the Post won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2000; she’s won a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 2002.

Ken DeCell grew up writing for his parents’ weekly newspaper in Mississippi, was founding editor of Memphis magazine, editor-in-chief of Roll Call, co-author of The 13 Keys to the Presidency (Madison Books, 1990), and for three decades senior editor of The Washingtonian.

Mark Feldstein is the Richard Eaton Chair of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland Merrill School of Journalism. He spent 20 years as an award-winning on-air investigative correspondent at CNN, ABC News and various local television stations.

Keith Harriston, teaches reporting at George Washington University. During his 23-year career at the Washington Post he was city editor, deputy national editor and metropolitan editor. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist twice, once for his investigative series that led to broad reforms in hiring and training of applicants to the Metropolitan Police Department, and a second time after serving as lead reporter for a series of articles on the impact of gun violence on Washington, D.C.

Bill Hogan was Editor of MHQ – The Quarterly Journal of Military History; Center for Public Integrity, Director of Investigative Projects, Senior Fellow (2006-08).

Mike Isikoff was chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, where he is also editor at large for reporting and investigations. He has been an investigative correspondent for NBC as well as a staff writer for Newsweek and the Washington Post. Isikoff wrote Uncovering Clinton and, with David Corn, Hubris, about the selling of the Iraq War, and Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.

Mark Lee is a contributing columnist with the Washington Blade, and is a recipient of a ‘Best of D.C.’ Editor’s Choice Award for ‘Best Newspaper Columnist’ by Washington City Paper.

Stephanie Mencimer covers law, social policy and presidential politics as a staff reporter for Mother Jones. She’s served as an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, Washington Monthly editor, and reporter for the Washington Post and Washington City Paper. 

Dana Louise Priest is an investigative reporter with the Washington Post and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner; she became the third John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2014.

Tom Sherwood reported on the District for the Washington Post from 1979 to 1989, then continued covering the city and region for NBC4 Washington. He’s the guest analyst for Kojo Nnamdi’s weekly Politics Hour on WAMU and covers District affairs for the Washington City Paper.

Del Wilber is the Washington Investigations editor for the Associated Press. He has also worked for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Baltimore Sun. He is the author of two books, including “Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan,” which was a New York Times best-seller.

Chris Wilson was the director of data journalism at TIME.com. He is the author of RaphaelJS: Graphics and Visualization on the Web.

Eric Pianin is a veteran journalist who spent over 25 years as an editor and reporter for The Washington Post. He has covered D.C. government, congressional budget and tax issues, environmental policy, homeland security and national politics. Pianin served as domestic policy editor and congressional editor as well as national political editor for washingtonpost.com.

Deborah Nelson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who joined the Merrill College faculty in 2006 after five years as the Washington investigations editor for the Los Angeles Times. Before that, she reported for The Washington Post, The Seattle Times and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Support

The following people advise and support SpotlightDC operations in various capacities.

Duane Morros offers pro bono counsel to SpotlightDC.

Alexandra Dickinson is the Managing Partner at Beekeeper Group. Alex advises SpotlightDC on branding, marketing and social media matters.

Maddie Poore is the Director of Development at The 51st. Maddie advises SpotlightDC on development, digital and membership matters.

Dayflower Studio, a Brooklyn-based creative digital agency, created the SpotlightDC website.