Our Staff

Gus Bennett is The Lens’ staff photographer and a contributing writer covering criminal justice. Bennett brings more than 40 years of experience as a celebrated portrait and conceptual street photographer, documenting the city’s cultural, spiritual, and social landscape. His personal work centers on the themes dignity, community, and legacy—especially through his acclaimed New Orleans People Project.

Bennett’s photography was used as set decoration for the 1999 season of the HBO series Sex and the City. In 2005, he was a lecturer in the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s Office Rehabilitation Program, using photography to support transformation. After being chosen as a 2019 Fulbright Scholar, he completed work in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He is the 2023 Grand Prize of the Jury Winner and the 2024 Prize of the Public Winner at the Photographic Nights of Selma Competition. His additional honors include the Urban League’s “Essence of New Orleans” award, the Mardi Gras Indian Council’s “Keeper of the Flame,” and a residency at the Joan Mitchell Center.

Delaney Dryfoos is the partnerships editor for The Lens. She works to expand reporting collaborations between journalists and identify stories from nonprofit newsrooms to republish for The Lens’ audience. Previously, they covered the environmental beat for The Lens as a Report for America corps member in collaboration with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk. While Dryfoos loved living in New Orleans, she is now working part-time for The Lens while reporting on the environment in the greater Boston area. They are thrilled for the opportunity to continue working with this wonderful southern Louisiana community.

Karen Gadbois, co-founder of The Lens. Originally trained as a textile artist, Gadbois became interested in blogging while in Katrina exile in Texas. Armed with a computer and an insatiable desire to help rebuild, she started a blog called “Squandered Heritage” which eventually grew into The Lens.

Her early work with Lee Zurik produced a number of shared awards. Gadbois also won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics in Journalism Award for reporting on the NOPD’s practice of releasing the criminal records of people murdered in the city. She now oversees donor relations and searches for new opportunities for The Lens. And she still works as a textile artist.  

Carolyne Heldman has been in media for 35 years, and is currently the podcast host and producer for Behind The Lens. Heldman served as executive director at Aspen Public Radio, an NPR affiliate, where she launched four weekly news, public affairs, and cultural affairs programs. She has been a guest lecturer at Tulane University, is a frequent guest and moderator for the Aspen Institute, Rocky Mountain Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. 

Marta Jewson covers education for The Lens. She began her reporting on at Gambit Weekly and helped to found the Mid-City Messenger, a hyperlocal news site.

Jewson has covered New Orleans schools for 14 years through the nation’s largest education-reform experiment, borne of Hurricane Katrina. She was a founding member of The Lens’ Charter School Reporting Corps in 2011 and was instrumental in holding schools and their boards accountable to sunshine laws during the rapid expansion of charter schools. Her awards include the New Orleans Press Club’s Alex Waller Memorial Award, which recognizes the best among all writing award-winners.

Jewson hails from the other end of the Mississippi River, growing up in Minneapolis. She enjoys exploring National Parks and walking the city with her extra-tall Blue Heeler. She lives in Mid-City.

Shawniece Mitchell is the social media coordinator for The Lens, where she oversees the organization’s digital presence and engagement across platforms and with New Orleanians at every level. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Mitchell is a storyteller and strategist currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications at Xavier University of Louisiana. Since moving to New Orleans, she has managed more than seven media pages and newsletters, using her skills to grow audiences and spark conversations that matter. Her writing has appeared in The Louisiana Weekly, New Orleans Data News Weekly, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, reflecting her passion for amplifying voices and sharing stories that shape communities.

Mark Moseley curates the The Lens’ “Monday Scoop” newsletter, which highlights essential local reporting and sharp commentary on issues that matter to New Orleanians. During an earlier stint with the Lens, he wrote opinion columns, coordinated the Charter Schools Reporting Corps and launched the “What We’re Reading” link roundup. His opinion writing earned a first-place award from The New Orleans Press Club in 2012.

Moseley has lived in New Orleans since 1996 and co-founded the Rising Tide new media conference, which ran annually from 2006 to 2015.

Anne M. Mueller serves as The Lens’ Executive Director, leading the organization’s strategic direction, long-term planning, and internal operations to ensure financial sustainability. She joined The Lens as its first development director in 2011, when she established the newsroom’s fundraising and development work.

Originally from Montreal, Canada, and having lived in Hamburg, Germany, Mueller has more than 30 years of nonprofit experience across New York City, New Orleans, and Oxford, Miss. Her background includes roles with the Echoing Green Foundation, Harlem Restoration Project, University of Mississippi Foundation, The National WWII Museum, and A Studio in the Woods, a program of Tulane University. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Bennington College (VT) and a master’s degree in Southern Studies, focusing on sense of place, from the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture.

Delaney Nolan is the environmental reporter for The Lens. She has covered climate change and displacement as a freelance journalist since 2021’s Hurricane Ida, with bylines in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Nation, and elsewhere. Her reporting has received support from the International Women’s Media Foundation, the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She’s also reported from conflict zones, including Ukraine and the Occupied West Bank.

Nolan moved to New Orleans from North Carolina in 2010, left to complete an MFA and a Fulbright Fellowship, and then returned in 2019. She also writes fiction; her debut novel, Happy Bad, comes out October 2025.

Katy Reckdahl, editor of The Lens, has been an award-winning journalist in New Orleans for 25 years. She started her news career at City Pages in Minneapolis, then moved downriver. 

Reckdahl has been a freelance reporter for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Weather Channel, among others. She was a producer for Floodlines, the Atlantic podcast that won a 2021 Peabody award. Locally, she has been a staff reporter at Gambit and the daily Times-Picayune. She also partnered with WDSU-TV for three Emmy Award-winning education pieces.

Her other awards include a Casey Journalism Media for “indefatigable reporting” on juvenile justice in Louisiana, a James Aronson award for ongoing coverage about New Orleans homeless people, and more than two-dozen first places at the New Orleans Press Club Awards. 

Bernard E. Smith is a criminal justice reporter for The Lens, covering courts, corrections, policing, and justice reform across New Orleans and Louisiana. With a background in justice-focused education and more than two decades of lived experience within the system, Smith brings a uniquely informed perspective to issues of incarceration, legal access, and systemic accountability. He holds associate’s and bachelor’s degrees in Christian Ministry, both earned during his time directly engaging with the justice system. His reporting aims to center the voices of those most affected by policy while scrutinizing the institutions that shape public safety and punishment.