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We’re excited to welcome Patricia Flores to Media Impact Funders as our new Civic Science Fellow! Patricia joins the 2026–28 Civic Science Fellows cohort, the program’s largest to date, bringing together 44 Fellows and more than 60 funding and host partners working to strengthen connections between science and society. MIF is among this year’s host partners. Patricia will manage MIF’s Science & Health Media Funders Network, a new community exploring how media investments can advance public health and science outcomes. The network will help grantmakers understand the funding landscape, identify gaps and opportunities for investment, and explore how audience trust, behavioral science and AI can inform their grantmaking. Patricia will contribute original research and translate the network’s insights into practical guidance for funders across the field. The fellowship is part of a broader civic science movement based on the idea that science serves communities better when more people have a voice in shaping scientific research and its applications. Civic science seeks to build two-way collaboration between scientists and the communities affected by their work. At MIF, Patricia’s work will focus on exploring the role public interest media can play in supporting this collaboration between science, health and civil society. Health… Read More

You might say I started my journey as Executive Director of Media Impact Funders at an inauspicious time. Congress had just rescinded funding for public media and in the preceding months we’d seen massive federal funding cuts across USAID, science, arts and humanities. And of course all this played out as we grappled with the massive disrupting force that generative AI poses to the field. I was tremendously grateful for the opportunity to help steer an organization positioned to have outsized impact at a critical moment—and frankly I was also somewhat overwhelmed by that same opportunity. Luckily, I was fortunate to encounter an old friend whose advice was strident and simple: Start by listening. I was smart enough to recognize wise words, and I began my MIF tenure with a robust listening tour of more than 100 stakeholders—and in many ways that tour never ended. I still spend vast amounts of time on zoom, on the phone or over coffee, hearing from different media funders about what’s working or not working, what they’re most excited about or terrified to tackle. These conversations not only have helped us build the strategy that’s carried MIF through this first year of a new… Read More