Victor is a Brooklyn based photojournalist and filmmaker whose work is most often concerned with the legacy of armed conflict, human rights and the protection of civilians in conflict. He covers national and international news stories and social issues for major newspapers and magazines; shoots documentary photo projects that accompany the conflict and Taliban rule in Afghanistan the reclamation of historical memory in post-conflict Guatemala; and maintains a personal documentary practice that spans decades. He holds a Masters Degree in Visual Communication from Ohio University and is a 2024 ASU Future Security Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Tanner is a photo editor at The New York Times, currently assigned to the Styles section. In his decade at The Times, he has assigned photographers to cover a wide range of news and feature stories for different sections. He directed photo coverage of elections in 2018 and 2020, the Trump White House and Congress. Since 2021, he has served as co-editor of The Times Year in Pictures, which highlights the year’s most impactful photojournalism. Before The Times, he was a photo editor at TIME.com and the New York Daily News. He was born and raised in Kentucky and graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2011

Kathleen is a New Orleans based photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, who focuses on stories of struggle and injustice. Flynn has spent nearly 20 years as a working journalist, including a decade at the Tampa Bay Times and three years at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. She has covered in-depth community news, veterans issues throughout the country, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Thailand, immigration in Mexico, post-conflict Liberia, India’s booming pharmaceutical industry, and the war in Afghanistan.

With an award-winning career spanning three decades in visual storytelling, Jack has traveled the world covering events in 25-plus countries including 13 Olympic games and dozens of trips into war zones including Afghanistan and Iraq.

SB, is a Diamonstein-Spielvogel visual fellow at ProPublica, focused on documenting in-depth investigative stories through photography. She was previously a staff photojournalist at the Detroit Free Press and covered national politics as a 2021-22 photography fellow for The New York Times’s Washington bureau.
Originally from the California Bay Area, her personal work focuses on housing insecurity, disability, the life-altering impact of gun violence, and social issues that disproportionately affect Black and brown communities. As a journalist, her goal is to further representation within the industry and portray each story as honestly as it exists.

During Robert's 30-year career as a photojournalist in California and Indianapolis, he covered major sports like the Super Bowl, the Olympics in Athens, WNBA and NBA finals, and numerous basketball Final Fours.

Long an advocate for both newsroom stills and video, he's taught at the college level, judged various contests including Hearst and POYi, and has won numerous awards including the Missouri Journalism Medal for work on an IndyStar project that broke the USA Gymnastics & Larry Nassar pedophilia scandal, and a 2022 Emmy for video work about the cycle of deaths inside county-run jails in Indiana.

In early 2024 he transitioned into management and is the Deputy Managing Editor for Visuals at The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C.

As a photographer and videographer, she focuses on news and long-form stories about human connection and community, health, identity and the environment.
Supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation, her immersive digital stories exploring asylum, deportation and femicide on the U.S.-Mexico border earned a National Emmy, an Online Journalism Award and recognized by NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism. Her visual storytelling has been recognized by Pictures of Year International, the Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism, National Edward R. Murrow Awards and the ASNE Community Service Photojournalism awards. She also was part of The Seattle Times’ 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning team for Breaking News Reporting.

Jacqueline is a Mexican journalist and filmmaker whose work focuses on civil rights injustices and migration stories from different corners of the world. She’s reported on the accusations against Turkey for cutting water supplies in northeast Syria, the experiences of protesting as an undocumented immigrant, and the harrowing reality of the oxygen supply crisis in Peru during the pandemic. Her short film, "Until He's Back" (2024), about a father trying to recover his son’s remains won the Grand Jury Prize at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and a Special Jury Mention at Mountainfilm. She has worked for news organizations across the U.S., including The New York Times. She currently writes, produces and directs short documentaries for Scripps News.

Leslye started her career in 2012 as a visual journalist at The New York Times, where she reported on domestic and international issues including America’s opioid crisis, sexual assault on college campuses, and the impact of the Afghanistan war on U.S. troops and their families. In 2020,she and her co-director Catrin Einhorn released afeature-length film called Father Soldier Son on Netflix. The documentary follows one military family over ten years, becoming an intergenerational exploration of values and American manhood in the aftermath of war. The Wall Street Journal called it “novelistic in its sweep and complexity,” and it was praised by The Times of the U.K. as "one of the great war documentaries."

Chris is a cinematographer who specializes in non-fiction storytelling. He formerly worked as a staff director of photography at Blue Chalk Media, where he contributed to projects that earned recognition from the Northwest Regional Emmys, the AIB, Communicator, Telly, W3 and Webby Awards, among others.

Ed started his career early as a teenager, covering the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the fall of the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu, Somalia while he was studying in the Middle East. He completed a feature documentary looking at the intersection of American policing and those living with mental illness and has been covering the ongoing social justice protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

He won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean and was named the Documentary Storyteller of the Year by POYi. His visual coverage of the 6 January 2021 Capitol protests in the United States contributed to a Staff Public Service Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post.

Ben is a Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer and correspondent. Ben spent nine years as the New York Times' first international multimedia correspondent, based in Cairo, Istanbul, Nairobi, and Bangkok. Later, he was the inaugural Filmmaker-in-Residence for FRONTLINE on PBS before joining VICE in 2020. He has reported from over 60 countries and documented most of the major wars of the past decade.

Carey is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, educator, and communications expert based in New York City and president of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA). She produces award-winning visual storytelling photography and video for editorial, non-profit and commercial clients. Her recent storytelling has focused on social emotional learning in public education, narrowing the gender gap in tech, financing women entrepreneurs in Peru and connecting with a growing refugee population worldwide. Her cinematography on the feature documentary The Long Night brought attention to domestic minor sex trafficking and the film won first place prizes from NPPA, World Press Photo and POYi.

Mick is currently the CEO of Mick Cochran Global Enterprises, LLC. Previously he was Director of Photography at USA TODAY, Art Director at The Providence Journal, Assistant Managing Editor at The Charlotte Observer and Photography and Graphics director at The State Journal-Register. His specialties include photojournalism, publication design, copy editing, photo editing, publishing, media law, contracts, staff management.
"Two sentences, okay, this is one. I’ve been part of the photojournalism scene for 54 years."

Max is the Senior Visuals Editor at The Indianapolis Star. Aside from daily news and long-term project work, he has coordinated coverage and edited major sporting events including the Indianapolis 500, the Masters and the Olympics. Max has been recognized by NPPA as the Newspaper Editor of the Year and was part of a team to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award grand prize.

Lisa graduated from Western Kentucky University, where she majored in mass communications and government, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree. She worked as a reporter and newscaster at WKCT-Radio and as a reporter and anchor at WBKO-TV in Bowling Green, KY, before retiring after 30 years as a newswoman for The Associated Press.

Tom Eblen, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, is a writer and photographer based in Lexington. Before retiring from full-time journalism, he was with The Associated Press, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Lexington Herald-Leader, where he was the managing editor and a columnist.

Libby taught creative and professional writing, including journalism, at Berea College for 29 years. She's published creative nonfiction essays and four books of poetry. This will be her sixth year as a Writing Coach.

Beth teaches General Studies at Berea College. This is her eighth year serving as a Writing Coach at the Mountain Workshops Project. Gardening, hiking, meditating, doing yoga, and writing haiku help her breathe her way through this life.

Liz taught journalism for more than 30 years before retiring in 2014 and becoming a writing coach for the Mountain Workshops that same year. Early in my career as a newspaper reporter and freelance writer, I often took my own photographs, and since retiring have taken up photography again. I have had photographs in several juried shows and sometimes exhibit with my husband, Gary, as Two Profs Photography.

Maryjean worked 41 years, most of them as a sportswriter, for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Her specialty was horse racing. Upon retirement she obtained a PhD in U.S. History and taught at the university level for about seven years. She continues to work as a free-lance writer.

A former writer for The Courier-Journal, Chris Poynter now leads public relations and partnership at Brown-Forman Corporation in Louisville. He's a 1994 WKU graduate.

Gabi is currently based in Wausau, a small town in the heart of Wisconsin. Coming from a history of rich, multicultural work, she has always ventured where her career takes her. She has been able to take her first official step as a photojournalist by having agency over the coverage across four Wisconsin towns. Her photojournalistic experience spans the past five years as she traveled the world through six-month internships with MLive: Kalamazoo Gazette Branch and the Colorado Springs Gazette alongside a study abroad experience at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Aarhus, Denmark.

Jan is a journalist-engineer with The Pudding who specializes in data visual storytelling. She has been awarded top prizes from the Society of News Design and the Online Journalism Awards, has contributed to Pulitzer and Emmy finalist projects, has had her work displayed in the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery, and is a LEGO Adult Night building competition winner. Her internet claim to fame is a data-driven piece on the size of women's pockets. She's been designing the Mountain Workshops t-shirts for the last 3 years.

Kurt is an Endpoint Engineer for Western Kentucky University’s Information Technology Services. A 1998 graduate of the WKU Photojournalism program, Kurt worked at multiple newspapers before joining the WKU PJ department as a staff member in 2003. Kurt has been involved with the Workshops for over 20 years. He lives in Bowling Green with his wife Jana, son Nate (who is a junior at WKU) and daughter Kara (who will be a sophomore at WKU next year).

Justin is currently a visual communications specialist at Springfield Clinic in Springfield, Illinois. He was previously a staff photographer at the State Journal-Register from 2006 to 2021, covering life in and around the capitol city. Fowler, a native Kentuckian, found his love photojournalism on accident at Western Kentucky University in 2000 and took his first staff photographer position in Janurary of 2006 at the SJR. While studying photojournalism and political science at WKU, Fowler had internships at The Lexington Herald-Leader, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Naples Daily News and The State Journal-Register.

Nic is a documentary filmmaker and photographer in Atlanta, GA. With experience in commercial film production, he has developed a love for non-fiction storytelling and the documentary process. He is forever seeking to document fascinating characters, relationships, places, and the narratives they weave.

Teresa is an Air Force veteran who has more than 21-years experience in military journalism and visual information. Her experiences in the military include editing and design of several military newspapers and writing and editing news and feature articles on a vast array of military-related subjects as well as research and design of World War II educational products and memorabilia. She has designed and edited several military history books, pamphlets, brochures and posters. She is the office coordinator for the School of Media & Communication at WKU.

Sam is a visual storyteller based in the Washington, D.C. area. When she is not at work, you can find her on the trails, in the ocean, or at the farmer's market obsessing over Swiss chard. Sometimes, when she is lucky, work takes her to these places to document their charm and splendor.

Brian, a long-time visual and digital innovator, award-winning photographer and true friend of the Mountain Workshops is a former Photojournalist-in-Residence at Western Kentucky University, Director of Photography & Editorial Systems at The Flint (Mich.) Journal newspaper, from 1999-2006. Prior to The Journal, Brian worked at the Muskegon Chronicle and was recognized as Michigan Photographer of the Year. He served in various roles on the Michigan Press Photographers Association board for more than two decades.

Akash Pamarthy is a photographer based in Ohio. His photography focuses on searching for answers to equality and humanity through a lenses of culture, immigration and identity.

Amy is the Digital Communications Manager for the Baker School at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She spent two decades as a photojournalist between the Troy Daily News in Ohio, South Bend Tribune in Indiana, and the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee, and even did some time as the storyteller for Zoo Knoxville. Originally from Nashville, she is a 1998 graduate of Western Kentucky University’s photojournalism program. The job may change, but the heart remains the same, finding new and interesting ways to tell stories.

Steve Smart, a 1992 graduate of WKU, is a corporate media producer, photographer and editor. He is a senior manager at Deloitte, a global consulting firm producing a wide variety of internal media and marketing communications.

Jonathan is an Emmy Award winning producer with a track record of telling stories of human ambition. During his decade of spaceflight coverage at TIME, he has been the lead producer of three major projects: A Year in Space, published as both a 12-part series and two one-hour specials on PBS, won an Emmy for Outstanding Science & Technology Documentary. Space Explorers spanned 7-years and is the largest production ever filmed in space. He brokered the access with NASA and other production partners to send three VR cameras to the International Space Station, capturing the first-ever spacewalk in virtual reality and earning a Primetime Emmy in 2021. Most recently, Jonathan was lead producer on Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space (Netflix, 2021).

Adam is a filmmaker based in New York, NY specializing in short-form documentaries. He produces, shoots and edits. Small crews and solo shoots are his specialty. Adam's clients include The New York Times, CNN, The New Yorker, TED, ABC, NPR, Bloomberg, OceanX, TIME, and The Weather Channel.

Jonathan has bounced around in the visual storytelling world ever since graduating from Western Kentucky University’s PJ program in 1993. His favorite newspaper job was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming before being lured away by the money of crazy big weddings. For the past seven years he has taught at WKU and has helped run all aspects of the workshops. Now his main job at Mountain is to make sure everything comes together without anyone noticing.

Jeanie has been teaching at WKU for close to 22 years and is fueled by inspiring her students to see the best in themselves. She was the recipient of the National Press Photographers Association’s Robin F. Garland Educator Award in 2021, which recognizes outstanding educators who shape a new generation of visual communicators and photojournalists through their lessons.

Tim, a 1988 graduate of WKUPJ, has been a professor of photojournalism since 2001 at WKU. He has been involved with the Mountain every year since 1985 and now directs the production side of the workshops making sure your experience is one of a kind.

James is the program coordinator for the WKU Visual Journalism and Photography program and director of the Mountain Workshops. Though his work is very important to him, it pales in comparison to the greatest blessings in his life – his wife, six kids and two grandchildren.