Diana Jean Schemo, Executive Editor / Co-Founder – djschemo@100r.org

Diana Jean Schemo is an author and award-winning veteran national and foreign correspondent, with more than 25 years at The New York Times and The Baltimore Sun.  She has covered poverty and child abuse, religion and culture. The Times nominated her coverage of education for a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

As bureau chief for The Times in Rio de Janeiro from 1995 to 1999, Schemo tracked the drug war in Colombia, and that country’s brutal conflict between leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries. Her stories chronicled the rise of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, counterfeiting in Paraguay, indentured servitude in Brazil, and journeys to the heartland of Brazil, where she wrote of previously uncontacted native tribes.

Before joining The Times, Schemo became the first woman assigned overseas for The Baltimore Sun, heading the paper’s West European bureau in Paris and, upon the fall of the Berlin Wall, opening a second bureau in Berlin. She covered the trial of Klaus Barbie, the infamous “Butcher of Lyon,” nuclear arms negotiations, the Kurdish exodus from Iraq following the first Gulf War, and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. She has reported from more than 25 countries and regions, from Somalia to Israel, Iraq to the Amazon. She is a three time winner of The Times Publisher’s Awards, and other prizes.

Schemo’s work has appeared in Ms., Marie Claire, New York and the New York Times magazines. She is the author of the 2010 book Skies to Conquer: A Year Inside the Air Force Academy (Wiley). The book tracks a year in the life of one squadron at a time of upheaval in the military’s youngest, if most controversial, service academy.

Chad Bouchard, Staff Writer – bouchard@100r.org
Chad Bouchard writes about politics, corruption, development and tax havens, and produces 100Voices, 100Reporters’ series of video interviews with people describing their encounters and experiences of corruption. As a foreign correspondent based in Indonesia for four years, Bouchard’s coverage appeared in The Sunday Telegraph, The Financial Times, and other publications. His radio stories have aired on National Public Radio, Public Radio International, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Voice of America.

Bouchard began his career in 2002 at NPR affiliate WFIU in Indiana, where he covered daily news, wrote and produced award-winning news features, hosted and produced talk shows and covered the Indiana Statehouse for a statewide public radio network. He is a graduate of the University of Maine.

Aaron Kessler, Staff Writer – kessler@100r.org
Aaron Kessler is an award-winning journalist who for nearly a decade has investigated a wide range of subjects from financial crimes by corporations and individuals, to politics and government abuses at the local, state and federal levels, to terrorist financing networks.

He recently spent several years covering fraud and the housing meltdown for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. His investigation of contaminated Chinese drywall wreaking havoc in U.S. homes prompted the largest investigation in the history of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, thousands of lawsuits, and exposed the cover-ups by numerous companies and government agencies.

Kessler has also served as a Washington Correspondent for the Detroit Free Press, and his work has previously appeared in publications including the Kansas City Star, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and the Joplin Globe. He was also deputy director of the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonprofit dedicated to tracking political money and influence.

Kessler has twice been a finalist for American business journalism’s highest honor, the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, and he has won multiple awards for investigative and enterprise reporting from the Society of American Business Editors & Writers. He’s also been the recipient of the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Kevin Carmody Award for In-depth Reporting, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Award, and numerous state-level honors. Last year, he was also named as a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

Kessler received his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and his M.A. from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.