Meet our Spring 2026 Contributor Class

January 15, 2025 — 

Young Voices has officially welcomed its Spring 2026 class of contributors, a cohort shaped by the our expanded focus on digital media and promoting speech, enterprise, and innovation.

We were honored to receive dozens qualified application, of which we were able to accept 24 percent, making this our most competitive application cycle to date. The Spring 2026 cohort also stands out for its diversity, spanning geography, age, and professional background:

• Geographic diversity: Contributors hail from five countries across four continents, including Australia and Brazil.
• Age range: The cohort spans ages 18 to 34, with a median age of 24.
• Institutional background: Contributors have experience at leading research organizations across the country, including the Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute, Abundance Institute, and the Reason Foundation.

We are pleased to introduce our new contributors!

• Braxton Steele - Braxton is a senior at Missouri State, majoring in Economics. He also runs his own business doing digital marketing for small businesses in Southwest Missouri. He spent last summer interning at the Show Me Institute in St. Louis as a policy analyst intern studying the effects of crime in major cities in Missouri.
• Anne Dias - Anne Dias is a political commentator, lawyer, and advocate for free speech in Brazil. She works at Gazeta do Povo, one of the country’s leading newspapers, where she provides daily analysis on national and international politics.
• Samiksha Bhattacharjee - Samikisha is a social commentator and student at University College London, exploring economics, politics, and culture from a Gen Z perspective. She’s the creator and host of Samiksha’s State of the Debate, a video and article series that covers global issues and culture. 
• Maria Giannopoulos - Maria served as the Director of Marketing and Digital for the 2024 Republican National Convention, where she pioneered the first influencer marketing program and led a team of 99 to produce the digital broadcast of the Convention. Post Convention, she founded RightClick Strategies, where she explores innovative marketing strategies and creative solutions for political organizations and corporate clients. 
• Mitchell Bahnsen - Mitchell is a Junior at Westmont College, majoring in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE).In the future, he hopes to contribute to the field of public policy and work through the never-ending list of books on his to-read list.
• May Kennedy - May Kennedy is the Chief of Staff at the Abundance Institute, where she works on the front lines of American tech policy and argues for a future where innovation is accelerated, rather than restrained, by government. With over a decade of experience working in politics, she brings a deep understanding of how policy gets made and why emerging technologies like AI demand a different regulatory playbook than the status quo.
• Grant Everist - Grant graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Economics and Design. He previously worked across healthcare, politics, and technology, and currently focuses on explaining how new financial and computational infrastructure will shape the future of markets and civic institutions.
• Benedict Capaldi - Benedict is a writer, investor, and AI professional specializing in the intersection of national security, finance, and industrial strategy. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former Naval officer, he began his private-sector career at Goldman Sachs and earned his MBA from Columbia Business School. He then worked as a private equity investor before moving into national-security technology. Today, he leads AI deployments across the Department of War and the broader defense industrial base.
• Layal Bou Harfouch - Layal is a Drug Policy Analyst at Reason Foundation and a DPhil student at the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on harm reduction, bridging evidence-based research with pragmatic policy solutions to improve addiction care. Her experience spans multiple facets of addiction treatment and drug policy, grounded in her background in translational health research and clinical coordination. 
• Jack Verrill - Jack is a Sophomore at the University of Michigan, studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. Raised in Portland, Maine, Jack got his start in the restaurant industry dishwashing at his mom’s bar. Now in college, Jack spends most of his time reading about politics and watching sports.
• Olivia D'Angelo - Olivia is a published journalist, creative writer, and literary editor based out of Western North Carolina. She received her bachelor’s degree in creative writing from UNC Asheville, where she served as the founder and president of the university’s chapters of Turning Point USA and Uncensored America. She is a graduate of the National Journalism Center and a current master's candidate in Publishing at The George Washington University.
• Tosin Akintola - Tosin Akintola is a DMV-based writer and reporter. He's been featured in publications such as Reason Magazine, Yahoo Finance, RealClearPolitics, Quillette, Short Circuit, Inkl, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He's a graduate of UMBC and a contributing writer at Last Word on Sports.
• Yaniv Regev - Yaniv is a graduate student in the Democracy & Governance M.A. program at Georgetown University. He was born in the U.S. and raised across Israel, the UK, and Australia. Yaniv has held policy, legal, and academic roles, including serving as an intern at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), where he covered geopolitical developments in the Israel–Hamas war, drafted research memos, and contributed to security reports. 
• Drew DiMeglio - Drew is a Freshman at Hampden-Sydney College studying government. He’s currently the President of the Hampden-Sydney College Republicans and is a fellow at the Wilson Center for Leadership.
• Gillian Laird - Gillian is a writer from Southeast Texas. Currently pursuing her Master's degree in English, she aspires to use her pen to open the eyes of America's youth through discussions on feminism, conservatism, and the detrimental effects of social media on Gen Z. Family is the cornerstone of her life and everything she does.
• Christopher Gardner - Christopher is a Research Associate at the Cato Institute, where he focuses on technology policy with a special interest in AI, online free expression, and antitrust debates in the tech industry. His work, which approaches these issues from a pro-innovation, pro-individual liberty perspective, has appeared on the Cato blog and in Inside Sources.
• Santiago Vidal Calvo - "Santiago is a policy analyst, working primarily on government accountability and transparency through the Manhattan Institute’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) efforts. He also works on immigration research, assessing how visa, asylum, and enforcement policies influence urban labor markets and civic integration, providing data-driven recommendations that reconcile economic and security needs. 
• Tony Vanderhoef - Tony is a law student at Florida State University College of Law, where he studies under a merit-based scholarship. He is the founder of Common Ground, a political newsletter dedicated to bridging divides and highlighting bipartisan solutions.
• Turner Loesel - Turner is a Technology Policy Analyst at the James Madison Institute’s Center for Technology and Innovation. In his role, he focuses on various technology policy topics, including artificial intelligence, broadband infrastructure, data privacy, and kids' online safety, from a state-level perspective. He regularly testifies before the Florida Legislature and often travels around the country to speak on kids’ online safety legislation.
• Sam Fox - Sam Fox is an honors student in Economics at the Australian National University in Canberra. His work and writing are shaped by the ideas of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ruchir Sharma — a belief in limited but effective government, open markets, energy abundance, and individual responsibility.
• Amanda Peterson - Amanda is a content creator and writer focused on religion, foreign policy, culture, and politics.
• Tyler Turman - Tyler Turman is a Research Associate on Budget and Entitlement Policy for the Cato Institute and a Don Lavoie fellow for the Mercatus Center. He has internship experience with the Acton Institute as a Koch Internship Program partner, the Manhattan Institute, the American Institute for Economic Research, and the Seattle Mayor's Office.
• Priyanka Venkat - Research Associate for the Politics and Society team at the Cato Institute. Originally from South Florida, she graduated with honors in Economics from George Mason University. 

We’ve already begun our work with this incredible group of writers, providing hands-on article, broadcast, and digital brand training. In the weeks ahead, they’ll start landing their first media hits — so keep an eye out for their bylines!