Role: Producer, co-cinematographer and editor.
A pageant queen took her own life. Her mom continues to write her story.
In 2019, nearly 3 million viewers tuned in to see Cheslie Kryst become the oldest Miss USA in history at 28. She quickly amassed a huge social media following. She was even hired as a New York correspondent for “Extra” and interviewed stars such as Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift.
Then, in 2022, Cheslie took her own life. But her death had not been a spontaneous decision.
“Cheslie did not pass away because of lack of love from her family,” her mother, April Simpkins, said. “She passed away because she was battling a mental illness — and that mental illness won that time around.”
In the two years since Cheslie’s death, Simpkins determined to save other families from the same pain. She has since finished the book Cheslie never finished, launched a nonprofit and traveled across the country sharing her daughter’s story.
Role: Editor.
Three couples and their IVF hopes, jolted by Alabama’s court ruling
IVF treatments gave a cancer patient left infertile a chance to grow her family. It renewed hope in a mother who had struggled to conceive. And it offered a lesbian couple a path to pregnancy.
Then, on Feb. 16, the Alabama Supreme Court weighed in. With its chief justice quoting from the Bible, the state’s top court ruled that frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization are legally children and that people could be held liable for destroying them.
After nearly three weeks of anguished pleas from families across the state, the governor on March 6 signed a law granting legal protections to both IVF providers and patients. But experts worry that the new law, which did not address when life begins, may prove fleeting.
Here are the stories of three Alabama families whose lives were shaken by the court ruling.
Role: Cinematographer and editor.
Riot police and over 2,000 arrests: A look at 2 weeks of campus protests
In the 15 days since police arrested dozens of Columbia University students protesting Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza, officers have cleared similar encampments at colleges and universities around the nation.
Most protesters, whose actions have ranged from gathering for daytime chants to pitching encampments in the heart of campus to occupying university buildings, have demanded schools cut ties with businesses linked to Israel, part of a broader movement that has intensified since its invasion of Gaza after Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel.
What began as pro-Palestinian demonstrations has grown into a nationwide movement, drawing attention to campuses that are thick with tensions not only over the war but also over whether the protesters are creating distractions or even dangers for other students.