Judges

Salvador Rizzo has been a journalist for The Washington Post and a reporter for the “Fact Checker” since 2018.

He previously spent seven years covering politics in the state of New Jersey, with a focus on Chris Christie’s governorship, state finances and the courts. Salvador was a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger and later for the Bergen Record. He was also editor of political news for the New York Observer.

Born in San Benito, Texas, Salvador grew up in the neighboring city of Brownsville and later in Monterrey, Mexico. He speaks Spanish and a little Japanese.

He studied English at Emory University, where he was also editor of the student newspaper. Salvador was a part-time intern and editor at The Washington Post from 2008 to 2010.

Perla Trevizo is a reporter for the ProPublica-Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative. She is a Mexican-American reporter born in Ciudad Juárez and raised across the border in El Paso, Texas, where she began her journalism career.

Perla spent more than 10 years covering immigration and border issues in Tennessee and Arizona before joining the Houston Chronicle as an environmental reporter. She has written from nearly a dozen countries, from African refugee camps to remote Guatemalan villages, with the goal of broadening readers’ understanding of the global issues that impact the local communities where she has worked.

Her work has earned her national and state awards including the Dori J. Maynard Award for Diversity in Journalism, French-American Foundation Immigration Journalism Award, and a national Edward R. Murrow for a story done in collaboration with Arizona Public Media. She was also honored as the 2019 Arizona Journalist of the Year by the Arizona Newspaper Association. She is currently a co-chair for the Society of Environmental Journalists 2022 annual conference, which will take place in Houston, Texas.