Swetha Kannan is a former graphics and data journalist at the Los Angeles Times. In 2020 she was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in explanatory reporting alongside colleagues Rosanna Xia and Terry Castleman for a two-part series examining the difficult situation California faces in preserving its coastlines amid rising sea levels. She specializes in animation technology and is always looking to apply her skills in new and engaging ways. Kannan graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA in fine arts and minors in animation and game design. She grew up in New Jersey and gladly escaped the cold weather to settle in Los Angeles.
Corina Knoll is a former reporter for the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She was on the team that investigated corruption in Bell — which led to the paper’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize for public service — and went on to cover the trials of the city’s former officials. She later contributed to the paper’s coverage of the San Bernardino terror attack that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. As a regional reporter, she wrote features about the San Gabriel Valley and the Westside. During her courts beat, she covered high-profile criminal cases and civil disputes, including the Jackson family vs AEG and Bryan Stow vs LA Dodgers. She and two colleagues investigated sheriff’s deputies whose histories of misconduct landed them on the department’s top-secret Brady list. She left The Times in January 2019. Raised in the Midwest, she is a graduate of Macalester College.
Maya Lau is a former investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she focused on rapid-response investigations into the chaos inside the USPS, problems with signature verification on ballots and challenges of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. In her prior beat covering the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, she led a team that produced a series revealing how the misconduct of hundreds of deputies had been hidden from judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys for decades, raising questions about whether some defendants received fair trials. She came from the Advocate, based in Baton Rouge, La., where she was the lead writer on a team that won an Investigative Reporters and Editors award for stories revealing the financial dealings of the long-serving warden of the notorious Angola Prison. She graduated from Vassar College.
Joel Rubin is an associate editor for New Initiatives and executive producer of L.A. Times Studios. He previously was an assistant editor in Metro, overseeing the criminal justice team, and prior to that covered federal courts and agencies, the Los Angeles Police Department and the region’s public schools. A native of Maine, he moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to join the Los Angeles Times.
