Iván Carrillo (CDMX, 1970). Journalist, editor and TV host specialized in science, health and the environment. He is co-founder and co-director of Historias sin Fronteras and En Común (podcast). He is a member of the 2016-17 generation of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship del MIT and is part of the National Geographic Society's global community of Explorers. As well, Ivan is the general editor of the Tec Review platform specialized in science, innovation and entrepreneurship and is the head of the Ibero-American Scientific and Cultural News (NCC) that is broadcast in 20 countries and three languages. Recently he launched the Aquatic Atlas program on YouTube dedicated to the conservation of the oceans. He has collaborated with the most important national media and his reports in Natgeo (LA) and Newsweek en Español have been recognized with the most outstanding awards in Mexico.
S. Lynne Walker is the president and executive director of InquireFirst and co-founder of Historias sin Fronteras, which was established in 2019 to provide reporting grants to science, health and environment writers in Latin America.
Lynne is a Pulitzer Prize finalist who spent much of her career reporting from Mexico, where she served as Mexico City Bureau Chief from 1992 to 2008 for San Diego, Calif.-based Copley News Service.
Her four-part series on a small Illinois town transformed by immigration, “Beardstown: Reflection of a Changing America,” was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. She was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2005 for her outstanding coverage of Latin America.
As executive director of InquireFirst, which she founded in 2016, Lynne continues to travel to Latin America to work with colleagues on new ways to produce in-depth reporting on science, health and the environment and conduct investigative reporting. She has instructed Spanish-language journalism workshops in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador.
Lynne also launched Bajo la Lupa, a grant program to support investigative reporting in Latin America and she is the co-founder of En Común: Conocimiento en Voz Viva, a Spanish-language radio program that reports on science, health and the environment for rural and indigenous audiences in Mexico.
Jonathan Palma has fifteen years of experience as a journalist and is part of the investigative staff at the newspaper Diario Expreso in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he specializes in data reporting. He is also a member of CONNECTAS Hub. Previously, he was part of the investigation unit of the newspaper El Universo.
Jonathan's work focuses on investigating irregularities in public contracting, public administration, public safety and prisons, as well as the environment. His reports have been published by Mongabay Latam, Diálogo Chino, El Espectador, and El Nuevo Herald, among others.
One of his most notable environmental research projects focused on tortoise trafficking in the Galapagos Islands, revealing in 2019 the operations of a network of traffickers led by a Chinese national from Peru. In 2023, one of the Ecuadorian operators of the network was sentenced to prison.
Leslie Moreno Custodio is a Peruvian journalist, photographer and videographer who covers social justice, environment and health. Her audiovisual work explores issues from a documentary perspective. She is a member of the Association of Photojournalists of Peru and CONNECTAS Hub.
Leslie's work was awarded the Laura Rodríguez Dulanto Special Health Category of the National Journalism Awards 2023 by the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS). Leslie has also worked as an investigative journalist and photographer for Peruvian media outlets IDL-Reporteros and Ojo Público, where she was on a team whose work was selected as a finalist for a United Nations global award in the StoryTeller category (2019), and which received an honorable mention for the Inter-American Press Association (2018) Journalistic Excellence Award.
Her work has been published in national and international media such as El País, Diálogo Chino, Internazionale and Salud con Lupa.
Photo:
Jonathan Palma / Ecuador
Leslie Moreno Custodio / Peru
Web Design, Infographic and illustration:
Miguel Ángel Garnica
Translation:
Jessica X. Valenzuela / Translation to English
Jerusa Rodrigues / Translation to Portuguese
Deforestation has left scars in the mountainous corridor of Ecuador’s provinces bordering Peru. But in a village of paramo and montane forest, residents are giving nature a respite by protecting their micro forests.
The rural community of Segunda y Cajas in northern Peru leads efforts to protect one of the most biodiverse areas and vital sources of water for the region. Faced with a simmering conflict over mining activity, community members are waging their own private battle to preserve one of the country’s most environmentally important forests.
