Brenda Wintrode joined the Center in July 2021 as a Roy W. Howard fellow. She is a native of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, and earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration at Bryant University in Rhode Island. After switching careers from finance, she was named the Philip Merrill College of Journalism’s outstanding master’s student when she graduated in 2020. As a reporter for the Howard Center, Wintrode was the lead writer on the award-winning investigation of the federal CARES Act’s failure to prevent evictions during the pandemic. She was also a key reporter on the center’s investigation of homelessness, documenting how cities treated people living in encampments. She covered Maryland state government for Capital News Service and was a data journalist for Maryland Matters.