ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM INSTITUTE APPOINTS NEW MEMBERS TO ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 14, 2025
CONTACT: Olivia Riggio | olivia@optout.news | 917-974-4383
NEW YORK, June 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The nonprofit Accountability Journalism Institute (AJI) announces new members of its Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Board. Anthropologist and science writer Wendy Orent will be joining the group’s Board of Directors, and scientist and science communicator Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS, Epidemiologist; physician Dr. Lauren Hughes; and climatologist and geophysicist Dr. Michael E. Mann will be joining the organization’s distinguished Scientific Advisory Board.
“At this critical moment in history, with America’s vital institutions and values under attack by far-right authoritarian forces inside and outside of the federal government, we at AJI are so grateful to these incredibly knowledgeable and talented people for joining up with us in the fight against efforts to undermine science and public health,” said AJI Executive Director Walker Bragman. “Our new additions are renowned experts in their fields and will help us be even more effective in exposing bad actors and disinformation.”
AJI relies on the diverse perspectives and experience of its members to achieve its mission of restoring faith in America's scientific and democratic institutions and reinforcing the nation’s sense of shared reality and purpose. Along with professional muckraking journalists, the AJI board of directors features media veterans, advertising professionals, respected academics, and renowned public health experts. The AJI scientific advisory board, meanwhile, consists of top experts in the fields of medicine, public health, virology, epidemiology, molecular biology and more.
About the Appointees
Wendy Orent (Board of Directors) is an anthropologist (she holds a PhD from the University of Michigan), author, and science writer who has written for over 25 years on biological weapons and the evolution of infectious disease. She is the author of Plague (Free Press, 2004, 2012) and co-author of Biowarrior: Inside the Soviet/Russian Biological War Machine, the memoir of Igor V. Domaradskij, the co-designer of the entire Soviet biological weapons program. She has reported on many infectious diseases and bioweapons threats, including SARS, Lyme disease, smallpox, monkeypox, polio, highly pathogenic avian flu, plague, the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic, and Covid. She co-hosts Dr. Jonathan Howard’s podcast based on his book We Want Them Infected.
“I am honored to have been elected to the Board of the Accountability Journalism Institute,” Orent said. “Over the last years, we have seen a tsunami of misinformation about the Covid pandemic, vaccines, and public health break across the nation. The Brownstone Institute, an association of contrarian scientists and physicians run by an open child-labor enthusiast, has pumped out streams of falsehoods, and I believe the AJI, with its board of science advisors and its commitment to truth, will serve as an effective foil for it. We need to help restore public confidence in scientific expertise, and stop the undermining of trust in science and medicine in general.”
Jessica Malaty Rivera (Scientific Advisory Board) is an infectious disease epidemiologist and award winning science communicator. She earned her MS in Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Georgetown School of Medicine and has dedicated the last 15 years of her career to emerging disease surveillance, public health policy, and vaccine advocacy. Her specialty is in translating complex scientific concepts into impactful, judgement-free, and accessible information for diverse audiences. From 2020-2021, she served as the Science Communication Lead for The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.
Currently, she is a Research Fellow at Boston Children's Hospital Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator, a Research Fellow and DrPH student at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Senior Advisor at the deBeaumont Foundation. She also promotes science literacy and debunks misinformation on social media, with a following of 428 thousand on Instagram.
“I joined AJI because we are experiencing an unprecedented information emergency in the U.S. From the death of expertise to the platforming of anti-science influencers, it’s more important than ever to hold decision-makers accountable for abandoning evidence and data,” Malaty Rivera said.
Dr. Lauren Hughes (Scientific Advisory Board) is a board-certified pediatrician, internationally board certified lactation consultant (IBCLC), breastfeeding medicine physician, wife, and a mother of three. She is the founder and lead physician of Bloom Pediatrics.
“I joined the Scientific Advisory Board in order to help battle the onslaught of misinformation online and unfortunately in our government. Joining the panel of experts is an honor,” Hughes said.
Dr. Michael E. Mann (Scientific Advisory Board) is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He also serves as Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action and Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM). He has received honors and awards, including NOAA's outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. He contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr. Mann is author of more than 300 peer-reviewed and edited publications, numerous op-eds and commentaries, and seven books including Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy and Science under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World.
"There’s never been a more important time to hold our media accountable for meeting basic journalistic standards of truth and objectivity, particularly when it comes to matters of science and technology that may well determine the continued viability of our civilization,” said Dr. Mann. “I couldn’t be more proud to be part of this effort.”
About the Accountability Journalism Institute
The Accountability Journalism Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to exposing threats to America's critical institutions, especially public health. AJI seeks to rebuild a shared reality and restore public trust in science and democracy through responsible journalism through investigative journalism that debunks politicized public health disinformation, as well as resources for journalists and the public in promoting public health and science literacy.
AJI’s investigative newsletter, Important Context, has broken a number of critical stories and gained national attention for its work, cited in publications like The New York Times and STAT News. Our reporters have been hard at work exposing how the Trump administration has been gutting public health in America. We published a sweeping exposė about the politicization of science and cuts to research happening inside the National Institutes of Health under the new director, Jay Bhattacharya. That piece was based on interviews with a dozen staffers working in various roles inside the agency. Important Context has long been at the forefront of reporting on public health misinformation, tracking the right-wing funding and operatives working to undermine science. We have collaborated with publications including Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and the Center for Media and Democracy.
