Center for Public Integrity adds three to staff

Melissa Hellmann joins the Center for Public Integrity as a reporter covering racial, gender and economic inequality. Previously, she was a reporter at the Seattle Times and has also worked freelance for NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, Time Out, SF Business Times, and others.

She has also worked for Seattle Weekly, the Associated Press, YES! Magazine, TIME Asia, and SF Weekly. She is also the president of the Seattle Association of Black Journalists and holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.

Sophie Austin joins as an American University fellow. She joins after completing a news internship with The Dallas Morning News. She has also interned at PolitiFact and has freelanced for The DC Line, a nonprofit covering local news in Washington, D.C.

She also completed a Dow Jones News Fund data journalism residency with Investigative Reporters and Editors instructors. Austin has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from American University.

Amy DiPierro joins as a data journalist. Previously, she has worked at The Desert Sun and BusinessDen. She was a contributor to the project “Nowhere to Go,” which was honored with a Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

DiPierro is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Stanford University, where she was a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and a fellow at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation.