Meet the Team

Justin Brake (settler, he/him) is a reporter and editor at The Independent, a role in which he previously served from 2012 to 2017. In recent years, he has worked as a contributing editor at The Breach and as a reporter and executive producer with APTN News. Justin was born in Gander and raised in Saskatchewan and Ontario. He returned home in 2007 to study at Memorial University and now lives with his partner and children in Benoit’s Cove, Bay of Islands. In addition to the channels below, you can also follow Justin on BlueSky.

Angela Antle is the 2025 Rachel Carson Writer in Residence at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University, host and producer of the podcast GYRE, an interdisciplinary PhD candidate (Memorial University) and a member of Norway’s Empowered Futures: A Global Research School Navigating the Social and Environmental Controversies of Low-Carbon Energy Transitions.

Heidi Atter is a Labrador-based journalist dedicated to sharing personal stories showcasing the resilience, challenges, culture, and voices of the Labrador community.

Leila Beaudoin (she/her) is an award-winning video journalist, filmmaker, and mother of two cats. She has bachelor’s degrees in English and journalism, and a certificate in communications. A student of life, she’s worked as an au-pair in France, and in Canada’s Northwest Territories. She studied journalism at the University of Regina’s prestigious journalism school. Beaudoin grew up on the Northern Peninsula but spent the first half of her career reporting out west for both CTV and CBC. She wrote about her experience growing up in rural Newfoundland in the acclaimed anthology Land of Many Shores. In 2019, Leila was recognized for her work in video journalism with a silver Atlantic Journalism Award. In 2020, she was named Women of Distinction (Public Sphere). She was also a 2022 nominee for the Lansberg award. Leila made her mark in Newfoundland and Labrador journalism reporting  with NTV, where she was one of NTV’s chief reporters on social issues and the fishery. These days she’s living in a cottage by the sea, freelance reporting, and working with a team focused on sustaining coastal communities.

Drew Brown is a writer from Grand Falls-Windsor. He was a national columnist with VICE from 2015 to 2020 and Editor-in-Chief of The Independent between 2019 and 2023. He was a PhD candidate in political theory at the University of Alberta before transitioning to a career in journalism. He is currently finishing a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology through Yorkville University and begins clinical practice in 2026. He lives in St. John’s with two black cats and an alarming number of books.

Kari Brown has a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Nursing. She has spent over 3 decades caring for people in street, emergency, hospital, and community settings as both a Registered Nurse and as a Nurse Practitioner. Kari travelled extensively before being fortunate enough to end up in Newfoundland and Labrador and make it her home. She is passionate about her adult children, her pets, running, and health equity.

Yumna Iftikhar is a Pakistani Canadian journalist covering the impact of federal and provincial policies on minority communities. She also writes about climate change and Canada’s energy transition journey. Yumna holds a Master of Journalism from Carleton University. She was awarded the Bill McWhinney Memorial Scholarship for International Development and Journalism for her work on transgender rights in Pakistan. She also received the Emerging Reporter Fund on Resettlement in Canada. Yumna has bylines in The Globe and Mail, CBC, and the Ottawa Citizen.

Hope Jamieson (they/them) is a PhD candidate in Memorial’s Faculty of Business Administration and president of Annex Consulting, a social purpose consulting firm specializing in affordable housing.

Originally from the Maritimes, Elizabeth Yeoman has been walking, cycling, driving and using public transit in Newfoundland and Labrador for the past thirty-five years. Drawing on those experiences, she is co-editor with Robin Whitaker of Making Connections. She has made a CBC Radio Ideas show about walking (The Least Possible Baggage) and co-directed a documentary film about the struggle for the right to walk in St. John’s (Honk If You Want Me Off The Road). She is on the Board of Directors of Bicycle NL and is a member of Challenge Car Culture NL. Elizabeth also writes about language, culture and translation. Her most recent book is Exactly What I Said: Translating Words and Worlds.

Born and raised in Gander, Tom Baird is an associate professor of mathematics at MUN. A regular contributor to the Indy, he has been a board member since 2013.

Jonathan (he/him) is an environmental geographer based in Corner Brook, NL. He has a PhD from UBC and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Toronto and UWinnipeg. He has published widely on the politics of natural resource governance, extractive industries, and climate change. He joined the Indy Board of Directors in 2024.

Hailing from Corner Brook in Western Newfoundland, Kaila (she/her, settler) works as Innovation Coordinator at Grenfell Campus. She spends much of her free time biking, running, cross-country skiing, and taking in concerts and cultural events–while squeezing in time to cook and bake to keep up her energy. In past lives she’s worked as a foreign service officer with Global Affairs Canada and coordinated an advocacy campaign aimed at ending impunity for sexual abuse committed by UN personnel, and has a Master’s degree in Immigration and Settlement Studies. At the height of the pandemic, Kaila returned to Newfoundland and Labrador to reestablish her roots at home, and ran for the NDP in the 2021 federal election. She deeply values her memberships with the Western Environment Centre and the Indy, and is a volunteer with Corner Brook’s Sexual Assault Response and Advocacy (SARA) project and a community spin instructor.

Michelle Porter is the descendent of a long line of Métis storytellers (the Goulet family) originally from the Red River area. Her first novel, A Grandmother Begins the Story (2023), was the winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her next novel, A Glacier’s Guide to Dying, will be released in September 2026. She lives in Newfoundland and Labrador where she teaches creative writing at Memorial University. Michelle also served as the Indy’s Editor-in-Chief in 2018.

In addition to sitting on the Board of The Independent, Robin Whitaker has contributed to the Indy on issues ranging from electoral reform to shared-use trails. She and Elizabeth Yeoman are co-editors of Making Connections. In her day job, she works as an anthropologist at Memorial University and is active in her union, MUNFA, which she served as president from 2017-2019. Robin is currently President of the Canadian Association of University Teachers and President of the National Union of CAUT. Robin grew up in Portugal Cove and now lives in St. John’s. She can often be found on a bicycle.