The Better Government Association welcomes two interns to work with the BGA’s award-winning investigative team for the next six months.

Analisa Trofimuk and Siri Chilukuri were selected from more than 100 applicants nationwide to join the nonprofit newsroom as it continues an ambitious internship program launched last year.

Trofimuk is currently a graduate student at DePaul University where she studies data journalism. A native of suburban Tinley Park, she graduated from Columbia College in 2018, and has interned at the Chicago Sun-Times and Austin Talks. Most recently, Trofimuk worked as a Central Illinois government reporter for Lee Enterprises.

Chilukuri is a member of the class of 2021 of The New School in New York City where she studied Interdisciplinary Science and Journalism and Design. She previously interned for Block Club Chicago where she covered stories in her South Loop neighborhood and throughout the city. As a freelance journalist, she’s been published in outlets such as Vice, InStyle, Teen Vogue, the Chicago Reader and South Side Weekly.

The BGA’s paid internship program began in 2020 following a gift directed by then-Chicago Tribune investigative reporter David Jackson, who established the Gary Marx Journalism Fund to inspire a new generation of investigative reporters. Since funding this initiative, Jackson has joined the BGA as a senior investigative reporter.

Jackson established the Gary Marx internship fund to honor his longtime reporting partner who recently left the Tribune. Gary Marx began his career as a war correspondent in Africa, uncovered human rights abuses in Latin America and then returned to Chicago to expose prison murders, local political corruption and sexual violence against public school students.