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Hello!

My name is Christiana,  an            environmental storyteller


About Me

I'm currently reporting for the Chicago Tribune,  covering environment, agriculture and energy issues in the Midwest.  I hold a masters degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, specializing in health, environment, and science reporting and concentrating in data reporting. 

My reporting blends investigative, data-driven storytelling with on-the-ground community reporting to examine how environmental decisions affect people’s lives in our rapidly changing climate. 

Recent Work

Chicago Tribune •

Studies raise alarms as more warehouses are built near homes and schools in Illinois

ELWOOD — For Stephanie Irvine, the latest proposal for a massive warehouse and logistics center in Will County came as a relief. The new plan, unveiled earlier this month, moves warehouses north of her property in Manhattan.
But for Elwood resident Terri Papish, one of the proposed buildings now sits next to her home.

“You literally have a building right on top of us,” Papish told officials with Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development during a July 8 Jackson Township community meeting.
Chicago Tribune •

Lake Michigan communities outraged by proposed rollback of federal coal ash rules

TOWN OF PINES, Ind. — In the herb garden beside her home on Colorado Avenue, Cathi Murray digs through the soil and pulls out two glittering black rocks.
They’re not ordinary stones, she said. They’re pieces of coal ash — waste from coal burned at the nearby Michigan City Generating Station, less than 3 miles away on the southern shores of Lake Michigan.

The rocks and dust she finds in her backyard and along the overgrown right of way behind her home — places where her two daughters played growi...
Chicago Tribune •

At peak time for migratory birds flying through Chicago, birding groups are tracking deadly window collisions

As dawn broke over the Loop, Annette Prince patrolled the streets armed with a lime green net, racing to collect four colorful birds lying dead under glass skyscrapers before seagulls could snatch them up.

It’s like an Easter egg hunt, she said — just not the fun kind.

Every morning during the spring migration season of March to June, Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, leads hundreds of volunteers who scour downtown Chicago searching for migratory birds that have collided w...
Chicago Tribune •

Illinois farmers hope Supreme Court protects state safeguards in Roundup cancer case

Harold Wilken still remembers the moment nearly 30 years ago when he was sprayed with herbicides after a hose broke on his family farm in Danforth, Illinois.

A decade later, Wilken was diagnosed with cancer. He said he believes years of herbicide exposure contributed to his health problems, including tonsil and lymph node cancer.

“I’m done with this,” Wilken said of herbicides.
Today, Wilken grows 4,000 acres of grain, rye, corn and soybeans in central Illinois with his son — without the use of...
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"An Invisible Poison"

Watch my first short documentary about Chicago's lead contamination crisis. This short film premiered at Facets Theatre in June 2025. 

Photos