When it was announced that all North American bird species directly named for people would be renamed, I quickly sought out local experts to explain what this would mean for birders in our region, and get their (varying) opinions. This was a quick turnaround on a somewhat wonky — but impassioned — topic.

2022 NEW JERSEY PRESS ASSOCIATION AWARD WINNER: PFAS-contaminated wells were slowly being identified in a New Jersey neighborhood, but no one was talking about how extensive the problem really was. I went door to door to find out what neighbors were experiencing, and pressed the issue with local and state officials.

My passions for astronomy and local history collide when a local billionaire embarks on a historic spaceflight. The story includes commentary from another local astronaut.

As coronavirus cases surged to their peak in late 2020, a historic moment: Witnessing the first vaccinations in the Lehigh Valley.

2021 NEW JERSEY PRESS ASSOC. AWARD WINNER: A history feature that compared local storylines from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic to the present day COVID-19 news. Inspiration for developing an ongoing historical headline feature, Lehigh Valley Then. Submitted to the NJPA in a portfolio of history pieces.

2021 NEW JERSEY PRESS ASSOC. AWARD WINNER: An unexpected benefit from the pandemic shutdowns, air quality was widely reported to have improved. But what did that look like locally? Through collaboration with colleagues at nj.com, I seized an opportunity to take a simple look at a complicated science, collecting and verifying data and seeking context from experts in the field.

This one was personal. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, someone I knew personally became the local hospital's first person to come off a ventilator — and live. In this historic moment, I took it upon myself to tell one family's story.

To cover the local impacts of climate change, I sought out some of the people who already feel it most accutely: winemakers. Going to farms and soliciting industry experts, I sought to explain a complicated topic in a more relatable way. This was done in conjunction with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets.

I grabbed my camera and hopped on a single-engine environmental survey flight along the Appalachian Trail. Probably the single most fun assignment I've ever had.

The James Webb Space Telescope is all over the news now, but I interviewed one of the brilliant minds behind it years ago! It was 2007, and Dr. John Mather was fresh off his Nobel Prize in physics for his work with the COBE satellite analyzing leftover radiation from the Big Bang, and I was fresh out of school where I had studied astronomy. I spoke with him (and some of his former high school teachers) at length. The resulting story and sidebar about his research remains a career highlight.