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Staff

Military Veterans in Journalism was founded in 2019 by U.S. Marine Corps veteran Russell Midori and U.S. Navy veteran Zack Baddorf.

Casandra Burr

Community Engagement Manager

Casandra Burr is a social media and engagement manager from Greenville, South Carolina. She has a B.S. from Indiana University in dietetics and has worked with VA patients in the past.

Devon Lancia

Partnerships Director

Devon Lancia is an Army brat from Savannah, Georgia. She graduated from the University of Florida with a B.A. in Classical Studies in 2015. She has spent much of her life volunteering with veterans' organizations to make a difference in veterans' lives.

Lori King

Sword & Pen Host

Lori King is a retired military journalist, with 18 years of service in the Active Army and Army National Guard and three years in the Air National Guard. She retired from the 180th Fighter Wing (Toledo, Ohio) in 2000. She is also a retired Toledo Blade newspaper photojournalist, hanging up her cameras in August 2021 after 26 years.

King is currently an adjunct multimedia/media writing instructor at three universities: Kent State University (Ohio), University of Toledo (Ohio) and Wayne State University (Detroit).

She is also the host/producer of our podcast Sword & Pen and of the Ohio News Photographer Association’s The Buckeye Visualist podcast.

King is a graduate of DINFOS and has a B.S. in photojournalism and an M.A. in journalism education from Kent State University.

Marcy Bach

Membership Coordinator

I’m a native New Yorker where I worked for a nonprofit community agency in Brooklyn for over 11 years as a UPK teacher and later as Family Service Coordinator.
During my time there I earned a Family Development Credential from the University of Connecticut.
Two years ago, I married my husband, who is an Army veteran and we relocated to sunny Florida. I continued my focus in community services working at a foster agency for the Department of Family and Children services.
With the firm belief of the importance of giving back to the community, I currently volunteer at our local hospital. My husband and I also enjoy taking time to discover new places in Florida.

Noelle Wiehe

Mentorship Manager

Noelle Wiehe is an Army veteran with a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Cincinnati and more than 10 years of reporting experience. You can find her work in two separate Keith L. Ware Awarded publications, a tiny town's local newspaper in Texas, throughout Army.mil and on the former Coffee or Die Magazine by Black Rifle Coffee Company's website. She hails from Cincinnati, Ohio, but currently resides in Lafayette, Louisiana, where she prioritizes being an aunt to her Wiehe niece and nephew.

Rich Dolan

Program Manager

Rich Dolan is a former U.S. Army infantry officer who served on active duty for just over six years. During that time he served in various leadership positions and deployed twice to Afghanistan. Rich exited active duty and joined the National Guard in 2020 where he now serves as a Platoon Training Officer at New York State Officer Candidate School. Rakkasan!

Rich enjoys freelance writing and has been published in The Points Guy, Military Times, U.S. Veterans Magazine and the Maneuver Center of Excellence Donovan Research Library on a variety of topics.

Sara Feges

Director of Finance

Sara Feges is a native of Slovenia, a small country in Central Europe. She moved to the United
States with her husband in 2017 and now lives in Texas, San Antonio. She earned a Bachelor's
degree in Business Administration in 2015 and wrote her thesis on Media and Politics in the
United States of America. Since then she worked in Sales Operations and Event Management.
Mother of two boys enjoys spending time with her family, taking walks in nature and reading.

Zack Baddorf

Executive Director / Founder

I’m a journalist and filmmaker with more than 15 years of experience producing award-winning stories from more than 30 countries, including Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the West Bank, and Kashmir, as well as rebel-held territory in Sri Lanka and Burma.

My work has been published by the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Reuters, AP, The Guardian, CBS, ABC, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, VICE, RYOT, Al Jazeera English, and other publications in video, radio, photo, and print formats. My videos on social media alone have more than 30 million views.

While based in the Central African Republic, I broke the news of the American military ending its mission against the Lord’s Resistance Army. My in-depth reporting on the Syrian town of Moadamiyah contributed to humanitarian access being granted to besieged people there. Weeks before Russian troops invaded Crimea, my reporting from the peninsula highlighted its political importance in the conflict.

I worked as director of video for the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, crafting anti-ISIS videos. For a year in Afghanistan, I worked on rural, remote bases for the U.S. Special Operations Command as a civilian videographer, alongside Green Berets, Navy SEALs and Afghan security forces.

I have also worked as an adjunct professor at New York University and New York Film Academy, teaching public relations and broadcast journalism. I've got a master of fine arts degree in documentary studies, a master of arts degree in international relations, another master’s in public relations and a bachelor's in journalism.

Email me at [email protected] .

Associates

These members of MVJ’s team support and contribute to a variety of our operations and programs.

Clyde Gunter

Social Media Lead, Common Defense

Clyde Gunter is a United States sailor turned multimedia journalist who is currently completing his studies in Documentary Filmmaking at The New York Film Academy. Clyde served on active duty in the United States Navy from 2013 - 2018 as an Operations Specialist. He initially served three years in Sasebo, Japan, where he deployed with two amphibious warfare ships as his department's career counselor. Then he concluded his final two years of service in San Diego, California on board the guided missile destroyer USS Decatur (DDG 73). During his enlistment, in a matter of two years, Clyde was promoted from the apprentice ranking of E1 to the supervisory ranking of E5 for his exemplary performance along with several recommendations from his senior officials. As a result of his tenacious work ethic paired with heavily-praised leadership abilities, he is a two-time recipient of The Navy & Marine Corps Achievement Medal (2016, 2017) as well as the Humanitarian Service Medal (2014).

Drew F. Lawrence

Reporter & Producer, Military.com

Drew Lawrence is an Army veteran, reporter, and producer of Military.com's Fire Watch podcast. He is a graduate of The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, where he studied journalism. He hails from Massachusetts and is a proud New England sports fan.

Francisco Martínezcuello

Team Member

Francisco Martínezcuello was born in Santo Domingo, República Dominicana and raised on Long Island. He’s been writing short stories and journaling since he was a teenager. His passion for literature and writing continued throughout his 20 years of Marine Corps service and helped him understand the impact of war on our nation’s veterans. Martínezcuello is currently a reporting fellow with KYUK Public Media in Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, where he covers a variety of area stories and issues.

Lily Zhang

Graphic & Web Designer

Lily is a designer and artist who was born in Montreal and raised in New York City. She has an extensive background as a multi-disciplinary graphic designer and art director who specializes in creative direction and development across multiple platforms. She specializes in art direction for web, interactive, print and video, with a focus on branding and identity design, creative strategy, and user interface experience.
She is an active creative director for small consultancy groups, and has worked as an art director for CSS Industries, Simplicity Creative Group, and Rode Advertising. She has years of design experience elevating brands into lifestyle identities so that they become authentic and memorable. She left large-scale corporate advertising to give more individualized attention to clients through her work at Drum Circle Media. Her vision combines vibrancy with minimalism, to draw attention to brands she believes in.