Tending the fire: meet the team behind Buffalo’s Fire

Jodi Rave Spotted Bear is the founder and director of the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance, a 501-C-3 nonprofit organization with offices in Bismarck, N.D. and the Fort Berthold Reservation. Jodi spent 15 years reporting for the mainstream press. She's been awarded prestigious Nieman and John S. Knight journalism fellowships at Harvard and Stanford, respectively. She also an MIT Knight Science Journalism Project fellow. Her writing is featured in "The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity," published by Columbia University Press. Jodi currently serves as a Society of Professional Journalists at-large board member, an SPJ Foundation board member, and she chairs the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee. Jodi has won top journalism awards from mainstream and Native press organizations. She earned her journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Tori Marlan is Buffalo Fire’s Guest Managing Editor. An award-winning journalist whose freelance work has been featured in a variety of newspapers, magazines and digital publications, she lives and works on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen people.

Previously, Tori was a staff reporter for the Chicago Reader, Capital Daily, and the Investigative Journalism Foundation. She has served as a judge for Canada’s National Magazine Awards and has mentored early-career reporters through the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Bret Anne Serbin is a Montana-based journalist. Throughout her career, Bret has covered the fallout from an abusive religious cult in Northwest Montana, domestic violence resources in rural counties and housing affordability challenges in Missoula. The recipient of multiple Montana Newspaper Association statewide awards, Bret previously reported for the Missoulian and the Daily Inter Lake. She lives in the Gallatin Valley.

Pier Paolo is a journalist and technologist who has worked at the intersection of journalism, product design, UX and software development for over 20 years. He experiments with new workflows and storytelling formats to broaden reach and deepen engagement through content innovation, data and automation.

A native Italian, he has worked in New York as a foreign correspondent covering politics and finance. He has built content management systems and engineered AI‑driven solutions for journalism.

At the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance he is the Product & Audience Growth Lead and contributes to Buffalo's Fire as a data journalist.