Board of Directors

Josh Hinkle, President

Josh Hinkle is KXAN’s director of investigations and innovation, leading the Austin, Texas, station’s 13-person investigative team on multiple platforms. He also leads KXAN’s political coverage as the executive producer and host of “State of Texas,” a weekly program focused on the Texas Legislature and elections, seen in 14 markets statewide.

His work surrounding investigative journalism, political reporting and multi-platform storytelling has been honored in recent years with an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, an IRE Award, seven national Edward R. Murrow Awards, three Walter Cronkite Awards, an SPJ Sigma Delta Chi Award, six National Headliner Awards, a National Press Club Award, three NLGJA Excellence in Journalism Awards, two American Legion Fourth Estate Awards and a Center for Integrity in News Reporting Award.

Josh earned Emmys in both 2013 and 2025 for Best Reporter in Texas and was named Reporter of the Year by the Texas Associated Press Broadcasters in both 2012 and 2013. In 2024, the Texas Association of Broadcasters recognized him with the Jason Hightower Award for Broadcast Excellence. Before coming to Austin, Josh worked as a reporter, anchor and producer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Columbia, Missouri; and Oklahoma City.

In addition to serving as IRE Board President, he sits on the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas Board of Directors, Lone Star Emmys Board of Governors and SPJ Ethics Committee. He also teaches as a faculty member for the NPPA News Video Workshop and chairs the RTDNA Awards Committee.

Josh earned his bachelor’s degree with honors in journalism and Spanish from Oklahoma State University, where he returned in 2024 as the Paul Miller Lecture Series speaker. After OSU, he gained his master’s degree in journalism and public policy from the University of Missouri. He has also been an adjunct professor of broadcast journalism at St. Edward’s University in Austin for several years.

Cindy Galli was most recently the executive producer of ABC News’ award-winning investigative unit, where she oversaw a team of reporters and producers specializing in investigations ranging from government fraud and corporate corruption to racial injustice, consumer and environmental issues. The team was recently honored with Peabody and Emmy nominations as well as a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, national Murrow and Overseas Press Club awards for its work. Cindy also built and launched a collaborative team comprised of owned station and affiliate reporters, working closely with her team to share resources and innovate enterprise storytelling across many platforms. Cindy also conceived and oversaw the network’s groundbreaking commitment to stay in and report on Uvalde, Texas in 2022 in response to the mass shooting there. A longtime consumer investigative producer and member of IRE since 1994, Cindy got her start at KGO-TV in San Francisco. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Cindy is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.

Alejandra Cancino is a senior reporter at Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit newsroom investigating the Cook County court system. Her award-winning work focuses on the intersection of government and business and combines data with personal stories to expose systemic failures.

Most recently, she co-authored a five-part narrative series detailing how lower-income Chicago tenants are trapped in unsafe buildings, forced to pay rising rents even as many of their landlords are allowed to shirk their responsibilities. Through an unprecedented data analysis, she and a co-reporter identified hundreds of buildings in Chicago where tenants faced eviction as the city was suing their landlords over unsafe conditions and exposed how laws and systems created to help tenants were failing.
Earlier in her career, Cancino covered manufacturing, economic development and labor as a business reporter at the Chicago Tribune. There, her investigative stories revealed how some corporations took advantage of an Illinois’ tax incentive program aimed at creating jobs even while laying off workers. Her reporting led to public hearings, an increase in the program’s transparency, and a de-facto moratorium of special tax breaks for large corporations.

Cancino also spent a year as an editor training emerging journalists at City Bureau. She is a former president and board member of the Chicago Headline Club, the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. In that role, she co-created a mentorship program aimed at training young journalists of color in FOIA and other investigative skills.

Cancino is a proud University of Florida alum. Go Gators! Social Media: @writeralejandra.bsky.social

Jodie Fleischer is managing editor, investigative content, for Cox Media Group. Previously, she was an investigative reporter for WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. She’s earned several of journalism’s top honors including a duPont-Columbia Award, an IRE Award for Innovation, and numerous regional Murrow and Emmy awards. In 2015, she was recognized by the FBI director for her investigation of sovereign citizens that led to a dozen arrests and a change in state law. Her reporting on deadly police shootings helped change Georgia law to limit special treatment for officers. Jodie also exposed fraudulent activity which prompted the closure of a drug rehab run by the Church of Scientology, and her government corruption investigations have led to numerous indictments and resignations. Jodie also worked for WSB-TV in Atlanta and stations in Orlando and South Carolina. She’s a graduate of the University of Florida. Twitter: @jodienbc4

Kate Howard is an editorial director at The Center for Investigative Reporting, where she works for the Reveal radio show and podcast and Mother Jones. Previously, she spent four years as managing editor at the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit newsroom by Louisville Public Media. There, Howard oversaw a team of five reporters and edited the investigative podcast Dig, which won an IRE Award and was nominated for a Peabody Award. Previously, Kate spent nearly 14 years as a newspaper reporter, including stints at The Tennessean, The Florida Times-Union and the Omaha World-Herald. She has served on the IRE board since 2022, and is also on the board of directors at Louisville Public Media. Howard is based in Louisville, Kentucky.

Aaron Kessler is an award-winning journalist specializing in investigative reporting and data science at the intersection of business and politics. He has 20 years of experience as a reporter, data journalist and newsroom innovator covering a range of subjects including politics, health care, finance, technology, transportation and housing. He currently works for the The Associated Press, based in Washington, DC.

Ana Ley, a journalist with 15 years of experience, is a reporter at The New York Times. Previously, she worked at five newspapers, including the San Antonio Express-News in San Antonio, Texas; the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Review-Journal; and at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, where she was a reporter and then editor.

She is an active member of IRE, serving as a mentor in the year-long Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship, speaking on panels at various conferences and serving on several committees. Proficient in FOIA law and computer-assisted reporting skills, Ley has won numerous awards over the years, including a first-place Headliner Award in 2021 for local news coverage. She also was a finalist for a Livingston Award that year for local reporting on the enduring legacy of racism in Virginia politics. Ley was born in the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and grew up in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas-Pan American. She is a longtime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and served as a mentor for NAHJ's Student Project for eight years.

Brian M. Rosenthal is an investigative reporter at The New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Before joining The Times in 2017, he worked as a beat reporter covering state government, first for The Seattle Times and then for the Houston Chronicle. He won the 2020 Pulitzer in Investigative Reporting for a series of stories about predatory lending in the taxi industry, and he was part of a team that won the 2015 Pulitzer in Breaking News for coverage of a deadly mudslide. He also was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer in Public Service for revealing that Texas was secretly denying special education to tens of thousands of children with disabilities. He also has won an IRE medal, a national Emmy Award, the George A. Polk Award (three times) and the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, in addition to being named a finalist for the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics. He grew up in Indiana and graduated from Northwestern University. Twitter: @brianmrosenthal

Paroma Soni is a data and graphics reporter for POLITICO in New York, where she covers trade policy, agriculture and immigration for professional audiences. She was previously an associate visual journalist with FiveThirtyEight, where she worked on several graphics-driven investigations into election denial, abortion access and economic policy. She was a Delacorte Fellow at Columbia Journalism Review, where she investigated online censorship and press freedom in India as well as the systemic murder of journalists in Mexico – both long-form data projects that were named finalists for the SAJA Awards. She has contributed to many other publications, including The Markup's "Still Loading" series on internet speed disparity which won several awards, including the IRE Philip Myer Award, the 2023 Sigma Award and four SABEW awards. She has also been a video producer at BuzzFeed India in Mumbai, where she was born and raised. She has a master's degree in data journalism from Columbia University.

Katie is a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. She is an investigative reporter and editor for the Howard Center’s new accountability reporting initiative, The Beam. Katie spent six years as the Executive Producer of Investigations at 12News in Phoenix before joining Cronkite’s faculty in Fall 2025. At 12News, Katie managed a team of multimedia journalists prompting state investigations, policy change, lawsuits and legislation. Among these include reporting that exposed allegations of fraud in Arizona’s school voucher system, reporting that prompted policy change to protect citizens from extreme heat in Arizona and reporting that launched a state investigation into allegations of insurance fraud that targeted retired first responders.

Before coming to Phoenix, she worked as an investigative data journalist at 9NEWS in Denver and at Rocky Mountain PBS. Her work has been recognized with 15 regional Emmy Awards, a National Headliner, the Sigma Delta Chi Award, the 2018 Investigative Reporter & Editor’s Award and 2018 National Edward R. Murrow Award. Katie graduated from the University of Iowa.