Our contributors

Rose Hoban (founder, editor, reporter) spent more than six years as the health reporter for North Carolina Public Radio – WUNC, where she covered health care, state health policy, science and research with a focus on public health issues. She left to start North Carolina Health News after watching many of her professional peers leave or be laid off of their jobs, leaving NC with few people to cover this complicated and important topic.

Hoban took a circuitous route into journalism—after a decade of practicing nursing, she  enrolled at UC Berkeley’s journalism school. While at Berkeley, she also earned a master’s in public health policy.

Hoban has aired stories on PRI’s The World, NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and News and Notes, Living on Earth, the California Report and KQED FM news. She’s also published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Contra Costa Times, and the Anchorage Daily News and in the North Carolina Medical Journal. She spent three years as a weekly freelance contributor to Voice of America radio news, where she wrote about research and international public health issues.

Hoban’s work has been recognized both regionally and nationally with numerous awards, including the broadcast journalism’s highest award—the Columbia-DuPont, a Gracie Award, an Edward R Morrow award, and a Society for Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade award. In 2010, she was awarded a fellowship by the Association of Health Care Journalists to do in-depth reporting on North Carolina’s mental health system. She has also been a Knight Digital Media Fellow.

Hoban has an undergraduate degree in architecture from Columbia and another in nursing from the Catholic University of America. She lives in Chapel Hill with her husband, a computer scientist.

Taylor Sisk (reporter, editor) is a writer, editor, researcher, producer and documentary filmmaker. He has served as a managing and contributing editor of The Carrboro Citizen and an associate and contributing editor of the Independent Weekly and has contributed to a wide range of publications. Organizations with which he’s worked include: the Social Science Research Council, the Drug Policy Alliance, the National Undersea Research Program and the UNC School of Public Health.

Sisk has won awards from the N.C. Press Association for enterprise and feature writing – including a series on the breakdown of the mental health care system in North Carolina – and has been cited for excellence in higher education reporting by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Stephanie Soucheray (research reporter) is a freelance medical, science and general interest reporter. Originally from St. Paul, MN, Soucheray graduated from St. Olaf College in 2007 with a degree in English and history.  She received her MA in medical and science journalism from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2012, and has written extensively for newspapers, magazines, public radio, and the web. Her work has been featured in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Northfield News, Minnesota Public Radio, the Raleigh News &Observer, Yale Medicine magazine, the Duke School of Medicine, and UNC-CH healthcare publications. She lives in Durham, NC with her husband and daughter.

 

 

Nancy Wang (reporter) is a North Carolina native who is currently enrolled in UNC-Chapel Hill’s MD-MPH program. She just completed her third year of medical school and is working on her master’s in public health this year.

She has an undergraduate degree in Psychology-Neuroscience from Duke University. While at Duke, she worked as a staff writer and arts and entertainment editor for the student newspaper, The Chronicle, and spent a summer as a staff writer for The Charlotte Observer. She is currently a freelance arts and entertainment writer for The Charlotte Observer. Wang is also very interested in medical and science journalism and hopes to incorporate it into her future career as a practicing physician.

 

Saja Hindi (reporter) has worked for various news organizations through jobs or internships in North Carolina, including the daily Wilmington newspaper, the Star News; the Union County Weekly; and WUNC, the local NPR affiliate, among others.

She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English/Journalism from N.C. State University in 2010. During her tenure at N.C. State, she worked as editor-in-chief of the daily student newspaper, Technician, and was the radio station WKNC 88.1 FM’s public affairs director where she produced and hosted “Eye on the Triangle.” After graduation, Saja served a year and a half as an AmeriCorps service volunteer and continued to freelance.

She got married in July to her sweetheart, Aaron. She plans to continue reporting and furthering a career in journalism.

 

Jill Braden Balderas (reporter) is a multimedia journalist focusing on medicine and health policy.  She has covered these issues on six continents and across all mediums, including in The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, PRI’s “The World” and  international TV networks.  In 2011, Balderas was awarded a fellowship by the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University to cover malaria in Uganda.  As managing editor at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, D.C., Balderas oversaw several news and information publications focusing on domestic and global health policy issues from 2003 to 2011.

Balderas recently relocated to Charlotte, N.C., with her husband who anchors the FOX Charlotte evening newscast.