Our Staff

Gus Bennett is The Lens’ staff photographer and partnership coordinator. 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.

Karen Gadbois, is the Development and Chief Relationship Officer and 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. 

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 is The Lens’ Engagement Editor. He produces The Lens’ newsletters that highlight our reporting, 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 has been part of The Lens’s newsroom since 2011, when she joined as the organization’s first development director through funding from the Surdna Foundation. Over the next fifteen years, she expanded her role by creating and stepping into positions that responded to the organization’s evolving needs, ultimately serving as Chief Operating Officer before becoming Executive Director. She has played a foundational role in shaping The Lens’ growth and development from its early years, bringing a steady hand to financial stewardship, strategic planning and an instinct for integrating people, programs, and operations into a coherent whole.

Born in Montreal and raised partly in Northern Germany, Anne has spent most of her life in New Orleans, with stints in New York City and Oxford, Mississippi. Before The Lens, she built foundational programs across the nonprofit sector, partnering with founders, boards, and CEOs on the behind-the-scenes work of leadership that gives organizations the structure and stability to thrive. She holds a bachelor’s degree in politics and social welfare from Bennington College in Vermont and a master’s in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, a program that deepened her lifelong interest in community and sense of place.

When she’s not thinking about The Lens’ operations, sustainability, and future growth, Anne is usually working on her own writing—drawing from family letters and her mother’s old newspaper clippings—or doing Kaiut yoga and pilates.

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.

La’Shance Perry is an experienced photojournalist and multimedia content creator born in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is driven by a love of storytelling and a desire to provide the best media content possible. She has a primary focus on social justice and the culture of the Black community specifically in New Orleans. Perry received her Master’s degree in Specialized Journalism with a focus in documentary filmmaking from USC Annenberg. She is also a cum laude graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana with a bachelor’s degree in mass communication. She is a published writer and photographer with work featured in ESPN Undefeated and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Currently, she serves as the Deputy Editor and a photojournalist for The Lens. 

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. 

Vivi Smilgius is an education reporter for The Lens. Before she joined The Lens in 2026, she covered education at the hyperlocal outlet Brookline.News, and worked as a metro reporter for the Boston Globe. Vivi has reported on special education, municipal finance, teacher pay and student policy; outside the realm of education, she’s written about local businesses, libraries and Boston’s underground music scene. When she’s not chasing stories, you might find Vivi playing volleyball, reading a book or stress baking.  

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.