CalMatters Health Reporter Kristen Hwang films Maria Gomez, a St. John's Community Health patient, and Vanesa Duran, lead care manager at St. John's Community Health, talking outside Maria's group home in Compton on Feb. 6, 2026. Photo by Jules Hotz/CalMatters
Trusted, independent local journalism helps communities understand how big issues show up in people’s everyday lives. Today, we’re excited to share that we’ve received a $2.5 million award from the WIN Narrative Challenge to support more independent local reporting on women’s workplace experiences.
The award is part of the Workplace Innovation Now (WIN) Challenge, a $60 million grant competition led by Aspen Digital, a program of the Aspen Institute, and supported by Pivotal, a group of organizations founded by Melinda French Gates.
Over the next three years, we will support a cohort of nonprofit news organizations in our portfolio that want to pursue their own reporting on women’s workplace experiences. Newsrooms that choose to participate will have full control of their editorial strategies and what coverage to pursue in response to the needs of their communities. Our role will be to provide funding, coordination and fundraising support to sustain the added editorial capacity long term as the newsrooms expand their journalism.
Women’s workplace experiences shape family well-being, economic stability and opportunity in communities across the country. The reporting will increase capacity for real local stories to be told, helping to bring those lived experiences into everyday local conversation, so that people are more equipped with the information they need to navigate challenges, access resources, and consider solutions to the issues affecting their everyday lives. It will also help participating organizations build durable models for this journalism and seek additional funding so the work can continue beyond the award period.
We are grateful to the WIN Narrative Challenge for recognizing that independent local journalism is essential to helping communities understand the issues that shape their lives. We look forward to seeing the outcomes from this work.
