GBH Fellows FY27

GBH has awarded its 2027 Fellowships to seven exceptional producers.

The Becton Fellowship, named for former GBH President Henry Becton Jr., honors producers who exemplify a strong commitment to public service through investigative journalism, educational content, and science media.

The Margret and Hans Rey Fellowship, named for the creators of Curious George and funded by the Curious George Foundation, recognizes creators advancing arts, health, children's programming, and public affairs.

The Peter S. McGhee Fellowship, dedicated to former head of national programming Peter S. McGhee, recognizes a mid-career non-fiction filmmaker demonstrating outstanding intelligence, fairness, and excellence in documentary production.

Renuka Balakrishnan is an associate producer with the GBH News video team, where she reports, produces and edits short and longform videos across a wide range of topics — often adapting them for radio and the web. Her original videos have covered food insecurity, AI, Boston’s rental market, and more. She also works with newsroom reporters and producers to make their stories shine on digital platforms. Previously, she produced videos for The World. She graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in history.

Alma mater: Barnard College, Columbia University

Current City: Boston, Mass.

Anthony DeLorenzo is the Senior Web Developer for FRONTLINE since 2019. He builds FRONTLINE's award-winning interactives, including Un(re)solved, which tells the stories of lives cut short and examines a federal effort to investigate more than 150 cold cases dating back to the civil rights era, along with a series of collaborations with The Associated Press including War Crimes Watch Ukraine and Lethal Restraint. His most recent, Inside the Scam, follows four scams as they unfolded against the people targeted, drawing on extensive interviews and hundreds of pages of chat transcripts and documents to show the specific language and techniques scammers use to manipulate victims, and the red flags to watch for. He led the technical build of FRONTLINE's redesigned website to be a streaming first destination, which launched in 2025 on a modernized backend and frontend. Anthony also develops tools that change how the newsroom works, from an automated daily briefing that surfaces FRONTLINE's reporting against the news cycle, to a system that lets the video team stand up YouTube live streams in minutes rather than a week, to AI pipelines that help reporters work through large document sets and bring FRONTLINE's journalism to audiences in more languages. He was selected for the 2025 AI Journalism Lab at CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and advocates for careful, ethical use of AI in newsrooms.

Alma mater: Northern Arizona University

Current city: Stamford, Vermont

Chris is a producer with GBH’s NOVA and a former PBS Accelerator Fellow. Currently, he is the producer for "Particles of Thought", NOVA’s flagship podcast series and the co-producer of Knowledge Keepers, a broadcast episode revealing the innovation and engineering imbedded in Native American and First Nation communities. Previously, he was the digital series producer for NOVA's Legacy of the Land, an award-winning anthology exploring climate change in Native American and Alaskan communities. He also produced NOVA Remix, a podcast series bringing NOVA episodes to audio platforms.

Prior to NOVA, Chris produced non-fiction and digital content for National Geographic, SYFY, USA, NASA, and more. He has over 15 years of production and science storytelling experience and holds a bachelor’s in Film from the University of Texas and a Master’s in Conservation from the University of California San Diego.

Away from production, Chris is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and practices native language learning and seed-keeping. He also spends his time searching the Mojave with his wife and daughters.

Alma mater: University of Texas, Austin, Bachelor’s in Film; Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Master’s in Conservation

Residence: San Diego, Calif.

Katie O'Rourke is Senior Producer, Digital Content and Strategy for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, where she leads the series' digital strategy and oversees the development of original digital programming, short-form documentary content, and social video. Since joining the series, she has helped define AMERICAN EXPERIENCE's digital voice by creating programming that honors the series' editorial mission while exploring new approaches to historical storytelling for digital audiences. A Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer, O'Rourke got her start at Steeplechase Films with filmmaker Ric Burns, and has worked on projects for Netflix, PBS’s POV, American Masters, and Twin Cities PBS.

Alma mater: University of Wisconsin – Madison

Residence: St. Paul, Minn.

Kacie Quinn is a producer for GBH Kids, where she develops educational content across television, digital media, and podcasts. She has contributed to acclaimed series and podcasts including America’s Awesome Kids, ARTHUR, MOLLY OF DENALI, Pinkalicious & Peterrific, and Work It Out Wombats!. Her work focuses on blending meaningful learning with engaging storytelling and memorable characters. Kacie holds dual bachelor’s degrees in Media for Children & Young Adults and Communication from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Alma mater: University of Massachusetts Amherst

City of residence: Salem, Mass.

Trajan Warren is a reporter with the GBH News Equity & Justice unit. Before joining GBH News, he covered banking, finance, professional services and sport business — often through a lens of equity — for the Boston Business Journal. He previously worked at the Triad Business Journal in North Carolina covering higher education, health care, banking, and innovation. He is a graduate of East Carolina University.

Alma mater: East Carolina University

City of residence: Everett, Mass.

Sebastian Walker is a multiple Emmy-, Peabody- and DuPont-winning journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering the world’s biggest stories. Together with Frontline director Adam Desiderio, he was one of the first international journalists to arrive in Kabul following the Taliban takeover, producing a documentary special that won the Emmy for Best Story. Walker’s reporting from the front lines of the fight against ISIS in Mosul won the Emmy for Outstanding Continuing Coverage, and he won the same award documenting the final battle in Syria that ended the ISIS caliphate.

Walker has produced acclaimed work from Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Libya, Iran, Brazil, El Salvador, Myanmar, the Sahel and across the United States. Before VICE, Walker was host of an award-winning documentary show on Al Jazeera America and the network’s correspondent in Haiti, where he broke the story of the UN’s responsibility for a deadly cholera epidemic that killed thousands. Walker started his career as a stringer for Reuters in post-invasion Baghdad, and he is currently based in Washington, D.C.

Alma mater: The University of Manchester, Bachelor of Arts (BA, joint honours degree), History & French

Residence: Washington, D.C.