New SRL staff hired to expand the organization’s reach and impact

Student Reporting Labs welcomes three new talented staff members who will be working with students, teachers and local partner stations to strengthen SRL’s resources and increase the visibility of the groundbreaking work being produced by youth around the country.

Briget Ganske is a multimedia storyteller and educator. She grew up in Iowa, exploring life with the Kodak camera her grandparents gave her. She earned her B.A. in English, creative writing from Northwestern University, studied documentary photography at The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, and received her Ed.M. in arts in education from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

For the past eight years, Briget has been a freelance photographer and video storyteller. She’s led photo and video workshops with youth in New York, South Africa, Boston, Maine, and Richmond. Since 2015, she’s been working as a videographer at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Briget recently moved to Alexandria with her husband and their two-year-old son. She is excited to join SRL and is looking forward to helping students produce high-quality digital content.

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Adriana Gallegos is from Albuquerque, New Mexico and studied journalism at the University of New Mexico. After graduating from college, she worked as a TV reporter at a small news station in Laredo, Texas. She reported on issues affecting the Mexican border including crime and immigration.

Adriana switched gears and went to Washington, D.C. to work for a local congress member as a press secretary. Since then, she has worked in communications and marketing.  Adriana has a heart for telling the truth about the issues affecting people on a daily basis.

Adriana is looking forward to meeting the students and the teachers who are part of the SRL program and celebrates the power they have to tell stories that adults overlook. As a former journalist, Adriana will reconnect to her roots in trying to promote the great stories students are producing.

Rawan Elbaba is the incoming Digital Associate Producer for SRL. She received her B.A. in communication with a concentration in media production, and a double minor in journalism and graphic design from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Prior to joining SRL, she was the Digital Media Associate at the Arab American Institute, where she was responsible for creating visual content that promoted AAI’s voice online. She was also responsible for managing the organization’s website and social media where she worked to enhance community engagement.

Rawan is also the co-founder and Executive Editor of Layali Webzine, a digital lifestyle magazine for millennial Muslim women. She is currently pursuing a Masters of Professional Studies in Journalism at Georgetown University. She was born and raised in the Washington, DC area. Rawan is looking forward to enhancing her storytelling skills by learning from  young journalists She believes today’s middle and high school students have a lot of insight to offer around current events and critical issues facing our country.