Meet the Team

Sammy Sussman is a freelance investigative journalist based in New York City. He has been working on this project since June 2023, when he filed an initial round of records requests with district attorney’s offices throughout New York. A music composition major in the undergrad, much of Sammy’s previous reporting has focused on alleged misconduct in classical music. Sammy is a 2023 graduate of the Stabile Investigative Journalism program at Columbia University.

Dillon Bergin is a data reporter for MuckRock. He works with local newsrooms to find and analyze public records in their investigative reporting, hosts a monthly webinar called FOIAFriday and leads the Data Liberation Project. Dillon was a member of the Documenting COVID-19 team, a project funded by MuckRock and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Before that, he was a Report for America corps member with Searchlight New Mexico and a Fulbright Germany Journalism Fellow. He’s currently a National Science-Health-Environment Reporting Fellow.

Sanjana Bhambhani is a freelance multimedia journalist and documentarian based in New York. She has written, directed and produced visuals for stories about national politics, incarcerated populations, law enforcement and medical and scientific misinformation for the BBC, MSNBC, New York Focus and MuckRock. Sanjana also amassed a following on social media telling little-known stories about women from history.

Emma Rose Brown is a freelance reporter and researcher based in New York City. She covers politics and criminal justice issues in the US, and her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Miami Herald, New York Focus, and Business Insider. Emma is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a Toni Stabile Investigative Reporting Fellow.

Pooja Dantewadia is a New York City-based investigative data reporter focused on social justice, economic issues, and politics. She combines reporting, data analysis, and graphics to make complex topics accessible and engaging. Currently at the Los Angeles Times, she creates elections-related data and graphics. She has previously worked at Mint, CNN-News18, and IndiaSpend.

Declan Bradley is a reporting intern for The Chronicle of Higher Education and webmaster for Behind the Badge. He is a graduate of the Lede Program for Data Journalism at Columbia University, and lives in Washington, D.C. His work, including visualizations of campaign finance data and an investigation into the improper storage of student data at Reed College, has won top awards from the Associated Collegiate Press.

Annika Grosser was the lead data reporter on this project until September 2024. Now a journalist at the BBC News Labs, she works on exploring new tools and formats to produce innovative journalism. Previously, she reported on the world’s richest people for Forbes and worked as an analyst and misinformation reporter at NewsGuard. Annika graduated with a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.